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Backing up Spotify

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Re: Backing up Spotify

#411

Post by tsukikage »

varenc wrote: post #256
Aurornis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing is, this doesn't even seem particularly useful for average consumers/listeners, since Spotify itself is so convenient, and trying to locate individual tracks in massive torrent files of presumably 10,000's of tracks each sounds horrible. I wouldn’t be so sure. There are already tools to automatically locate and stream pirated TV and movie content automatic and on demand. They’re so common that I had non-t…

Spotify is $12/month at most to get unlimited ad-free access to virtually all music. To get access to "all" TV content legally would be hundreds of dollars a month. And for many movies you must buy/rent each individually. And legal TV and movies are much more encumbered by DRM and lock in, limiting the way you can view them. (like many streaming apps removing AirPlay support, or limiting you to 720p in some browsers)…

Spotify used to be good, but have enshittified their UI past the point of usability for me. It really wants to play me tracks that are profitable for Spotify, not tracks I want to hear.

What you say is still true of the Amazon and Apple offerings, though. Haven't tried Youtube Music, so can't comment on that.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#412

Post by gorbachev »

rendaw wrote: post #326

Looking at the analysis, I'm totally surprised opera and psytrance are so prolific. Psy-trance... I thought it was the same as any other electronic genres, but do people get high and just start shoveling psy-trance tracks out or something? Opera I thought was a very strict discipline, needing rigorous somewhat esoteric training in order to produce the right sounds. How could there be so many opera artists? I mean, I'…

My guess is a large portion of the psytrance music is slop, whether AI or some other form of auto-generation.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#413

Post by saaaaaam »

injidup wrote: post #359
troupo wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify pays 70% of revenue to rights holders . Why don't you ask them where the money inteded for artists is going? You know? The small insignificant companies of Sony, Warner Music, EMI that own the vast majority of music and own all the contracts?

That is the decision of artists to sign with a mega corp. Any tom dick or harry can create a Spotify account, load their warbling autotuned ditty written by themselves ( or AI ) on any theme, in any genre and wait for fame or fortune to appear or not. You can take your 70% or whatever the exact number is with no.middle man if you like. Unfortunately the number of people producing music and the quantity of it is much…

(a) you can’t directly upload to Spotify. You need an intermediary in the shape of a distributor. Whether that’s a label or a DIY platform like DistroKid.

(b) Spotify introduced a threshold of 1000 streams before they pay anything. This disincentivises low quality warbling autotuned ditties as they are unlikely to pass that threshold. (It’s more nuanced - you don’t just need 1000 streams from a handful of accounts as that could easily be gamed.)

(c) Suno and Udio have been forced into licensing deals with the major record companies. The real threat will be when we see an open sourced Qwen or DeepSeek style genAI for music creation.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#414

Post by flir »

1dry wrote: post #244
nimih wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, precisely, is the point you’re trying to make here?

Expressing frustration at the pervasive tendency of technologists to look at everything, including art which is a reflection of peoples' subjective realities, with an "at-scale" lens, e.g., "let's collect ALL of it, and categorize it, and develop technologies to mash it all together and vomit out derivative averages with no compelling humanist point of view" I hope readers will feel our frustration.

I'm reminded of the Zero One Infinity rule (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_one_infinity_rule)

We're very much trained to solve the most general case of any problem, for sensible reasons.

I first learned about this formulation of the rule from a case study in Alan Cooper's The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, where breaking the rule resulted in a much better user experience.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#415

Post by silcoon »

komali2 wrote: post #339
avoutos wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I see far too many people rationalizing piracy as a principled thing to do. Instead of finding ways to improve the market such that the control of content isn't siloed in monopolistic corporations, many celebrate Annas Archive which is itself a more or less monopolistic profit-interested entity. The major difference being that we don't have to pay directly. The cost continues to fall on the writers and artist…

> Instead of finding ways to improve the market such that the control of content isn't siloed in monopolistic corporations I always assumed the "Anna" in the name was for "Anarchist." My assumption about the archive is that they don't believe there's an ethical solution to the restriction of access to data that involves a capitalist market.

I get your point but then let's not complains if creativity dies and things all look the same. Creative people don't have motivation to produce if they can't make a living out of it.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#416

Post by komali2 »

gosub100 wrote: post #398
komali2 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your savings account is just bits on a disk, yet presumably it represents value that you worked for and which belongs to you to do with what you wish. That's another example of the shared delusion, since yes, we tell eachother it represents labor and resources, and the market engages in allocation somewhat efficiently, and so the money is a pretty accurate representation of the value of labor and the value of resou…

> Your savings account's number is totally detached from accurately representing value. It's mostly a representation of where you were born This could also be true because the number of dollars in circulation is "just bits on a disk" that politicians can manipulate for various reasons. Someone can work very hard and save their earnings, only to have the value diluted in the future. Isn't that also a delusion?

> Someone can work very hard and save their earnings, only to have the value diluted in the future. Isn't that also a delusion?

Yes, it is.

It's one of my pet peeves about the cryptocurrency movement vs neoliberal institutional types. "Bitcoin is juts bits on a disk!" is always answered with "well, dollars is too!" To which the institutionalist can only say, "no, that's different." But really, it isn't.

What the cryptocurrency people get wrong is that replacing one shared delusion with another isn't a useful path to go down.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#417

Post by komali2 »

felixg3 wrote: post #410
komali2 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your savings account is just bits on a disk, yet presumably it represents value that you worked for and which belongs to you to do with what you wish. That's another example of the shared delusion, since yes, we tell eachother it represents labor and resources, and the market engages in allocation somewhat efficiently, and so the money is a pretty accurate representation of the value of labor and the value of resou…

„Shared delusion“ - just another term for „social contract“?

Sort of? The contract doesn't mention that "value" and "price" are just as often negatively correlated as positively so, though, and claims the opposite (always positive correlation), hence where the shared delusion comes in.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#418

Post by komali2 »

silcoon wrote: post #415
komali2 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of finding ways to improve the market such that the control of content isn't siloed in monopolistic corporations I always assumed the "Anna" in the name was for "Anarchist." My assumption about the archive is that they don't believe there's an ethical solution to the restriction of access to data that involves a capitalist market.

I get your point but then let's not complains if creativity dies and things all look the same. Creative people don't have motivation to produce if they can't make a living out of it.

> Creative people don't have motivation to produce if they can't make a living out of it.

I challenge you to ask 10 creative people in your life if they would stop doing whatever it is they do if they had a billion dollars.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#420

Post by gorbachev »

varenc wrote: post #256
Aurornis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing is, this doesn't even seem particularly useful for average consumers/listeners, since Spotify itself is so convenient, and trying to locate individual tracks in massive torrent files of presumably 10,000's of tracks each sounds horrible. I wouldn’t be so sure. There are already tools to automatically locate and stream pirated TV and movie content automatic and on demand. They’re so common that I had non-t…

Spotify is $12/month at most to get unlimited ad-free access to virtually all music. To get access to "all" TV content legally would be hundreds of dollars a month. And for many movies you must buy/rent each individually. And legal TV and movies are much more encumbered by DRM and lock in, limiting the way you can view them. (like many streaming apps removing AirPlay support, or limiting you to 720p in some browsers)…

It's not even close to virtually all music. 256M songs doesn't come even close.

It's virtually all popular music recently published commercially in the world.

It's missing large portions of bootlegs, old music, foreign music, radio shows, mixtapes and live streaming music to list a few prominent categories from music in my private archive of cultural works. Those categories, btw, are well represented by torrents on tracker sites.

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