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Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

neil.computer

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Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#481

Post by ymolodtsov »

mcjiggerlog wrote: post #16

This is a big frustration of mine, too. The other is that Spotify is extremely biased towards playlist listening and makes browsing and listening to a library of albums really painful. The good news is that Spotify's SDK and API are actually powerful enough that you can build up an entire alternative interface, which is actually what I recently started doing: https://i.imgur.com/ar7VrYy.png . It's still work in progr…

I'm pretty sure they're just targeting the widest demographics where people no longer care about albums, especially in the age of streaming, singles and EPs.

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#482

Post by PestoDiRucola »

sprremix wrote: post #369

There are some alternative frontends for Spotify available. None of the ones I found works on M1 mac, but Windows and Linux users have some options available. https://github.com/jpochyla/psst https://github.com/toothbrush/Spotiqueue https://github.com/xou816/spot

It's ridiculous that we'd have to set up and use a third-party app for a service we pay for.

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#483

Post by throwaway675309 »

javajosh wrote: post #203
frogstomp19 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like we've lost essentially nothing. In the streaming era, it's easier than ever before to discover new artists and listen to an unprecedented variety of music with minimal investment. If it's slightly cumbersome to listen to albums on Spotify, it's still much less cumbersome that going to a store to buy a CD or purchasing online and waiting for it to arrive + keeping your collection physically organized and i…

>I feel like we've lost essentially nothing. We've lost: cover art, liner notes, the ability to share or sell your music without 3rd party permission, music stores, and in many cases local music scenes that formed around music stores. Bret Victor has been harping on this for years, but we've also lost a great deal of tactility - putting a CD in a player and pressing buttons to play it uses your hands in pleasant ways…

Let's cover each one of these in turn:

1. Cover art / liner notes - any given digital album can include links to these notes or even a website with the cover art, and if you're referring to the physical component I would argue that's just less trash that comes with the predominant reason for me purchasing music... which is the music.

2. Ability to share music - I frequently share music from Spotify all the time, either using the Spotify link and sending it to my friends over Chat, or even just telling them the name of it and they can frequently find the exact song on YouTube.

3. Ability to sell music - since I'm not really purchasing the music on Spotify I don't feel like this is a fair argument

4. Music stores - i'll give you this one though for a lot of us we simply don't have the free time to physically browse for music in a brick and mortar store.

5. Discovery - anecdotal of course but I've had the exact opposite experience, the Discover weekly list that Spotify provides invariably introduces me to new artists that I would've otherwise never even heard of, and if I like a song I can look for playlists curated by users that contain that song, which is an additional avenue of discovery.

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#484

Post by throwaway675309 »

reaperducer wrote: post #296
frogstomp19 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like we've lost essentially nothing. In the streaming era, it's easier than ever before to discover new artists and listen to an unprecedented variety of music with minimal investment. If it's slightly cumbersome to listen to albums on Spotify, it's still much less cumbersome that going to a store to buy a CD or purchasing online and waiting for it to arrive + keeping your collection physically organized and i…

it's easier than ever before to discover new artists Not really. It's easier than ever to be exposed to a select group of pre-selected songs by a small subset of artists churned out by a computer program for the purpose of getting you to continue your subscription. That's not discovery. Go into any real music store, like Louisiana Music Factory in New Orleans, Amoeba Music in Los Angeles, or Electric Fetus in Minneap…

I'm not sure I understand what your point is, that since digital discovery doesn't provide every single artist in perpetuity throughout the universe that it is somehow not useful as an avenue of discovery?

I can spin this argument directly around and guarantee that if you go to the Louisiana music factory in New Orleans, that for every artist and album they know about, there are 1000 international or country specific artists that are available only online to listeners in America via online channels.

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#485

Post by throwaway675309 »

butwhywhyoh wrote: post #327
daveoc64 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enjoyment of music linked to a specific physical item seems incredibly shallow to me. If the music is worth listening to, the medium shouldn't matter at all.

I suppose then you're a proponent of photographing all famous works of art and displaying them on a webpage somewhere, because if the painting is worth looking at, the medium shouldn't matter at all, right? I guess going to a museum to view artwork is an incredibly shallow experience for you?

This isn't really an accurate analogy because the art is produced with a visual medium in mind.

Whereas music is produced with the transference of auditory information in mind (album art, concerts, and all the physical swag garbage is ancilliary)

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#486

Post by neycoda »

mcjiggerlog wrote: post #16

This is a big frustration of mine, too. The other is that Spotify is extremely biased towards playlist listening and makes browsing and listening to a library of albums really painful. The good news is that Spotify's SDK and API are actually powerful enough that you can build up an entire alternative interface, which is actually what I recently started doing: https://i.imgur.com/ar7VrYy.png . It's still work in progr…

Recently I've been going through artists by genre and decade, clicking into their discography, looking up their official studio albums on Wikipedia or Discogs, then adding those albums to a playlist for the artist, just for my own listening convenience. Maybe I should be listening by album instead?

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#488

Post by monkeypilot »

asdojasdosadsa wrote: post #174

Only reason I use Spotify (Premium = no ads) is that I don't have to manage my music anymore and I can find all the music I need / want. But holy moly it is going towards a bad direction, in fact so bad that I am considering moving to Apple Music... Their desktop app used to have a "search bar" in their Home -view which is now moved to a separate "Search" -view, which is.. one of the most annoying things ever. I used…

You can still do a Cmd+L or a Cmd+K (Might be Ctrl instead of Cmd for you) to get to Search.

Try using Apple Music. That shit is 5 years behind Spotify in any UX measure.

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#489

Post by robertlagrant »

solarkraft wrote: post #305
robertlagrant wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be cool, but then some of those interfaces (probably the ones with the most ad funding) would be part-owned by one of the streaming services and would push their content the most. Feels like it'd be just one more hull on the Titanic.

Which is fine as long as the better ones are available.

My point being that most people will get the experience I mention, as they'll only be able to follow the ads.

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#490

Post by AlecSchueler »

cortesoft wrote: post #417
AlecSchueler wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the medium not matter? I actually feel that's the shallow take Quite often, historically, music comes as part of a complete experiential package. Gatherings around fire, singing and dancing in groups, celebrating life's milestones, getting dressed up for concerts, excitement at buying tickets, journeying in and out of the city to pick up new recordings. All of those things are valid aspects of musical cult…

Weren’t those things stripped from music when we invented recording?

Some things were lost, yes, and some things were gained. My list included both types of things.

Some things are lost again with the move to streaming and, again, some things are lost.

I was uncomfortable with the idea that the meta musical aspects of one milieu were shallow and that the music should be something that can essentially survive being stripped of them if it was ever of value at all.

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