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Goodbye Spotify

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Re: Goodbye Spotify

#81

Post by miunau »

Tao3300 wrote: post #39
miunau wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vinyl and cassette are the most common right now for physical-exclusive stuff. CD sales are very mixed- you can do well or barely sell at all, even for established names, and the startup costs for a pressing are higher than with tapes. And if it's on CD it might as well be a download anyway.

> if it's on CD it might as well be a download anyway Unless you mean FLAC or something, CD is still higher quality than other formats, and they keep longer than vinyl or cassettes. Inb4 the "only audiophiles with high end equipment" arguments: if you were around in the days of Blade Encoder tweaking options and trying to fit mp3s onto a 32MB player the size of a cigarette box, you know what digital artifacts sound l…

I haven't bought lossy files in well over a decade, I assumed it was implied.

Re: Goodbye Spotify

#82

Post by derbOac »

piva00 wrote: post #75
cramjabsyn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly it should be both. Support artists deeply and ditch Spotify. We shouldn't be complacent and let Spotify make earning a living even harder for artists.

Has it made earning a living even harder though? Before streaming it was much harder to discover obscure artists from places outside of your own local area, usually you'd go crate-digging vinyls at 2nd hand shops to find the true gems. I don't understand how enabling access to music from anywhere in the world has made earning a living harder to music artists, the industry was always extremely hard outside of a few lu…

I guess I agree with you (and others making the same argument) but feel like it is ultimately arguing that to support artists, you need to go outside Spotify, which to me implies something is broken about it.

Maybe that's the nature of things but I think part of that argument is there could be something better. Maybe it's beside the point from a practical perspective but I guess I agree with that too. I think finding and supporting small artists probably never has been better, but I'm not sure if that's because of Spotify per se, or social media and the Internet in general.

Re: Goodbye Spotify

#83

Post by Brian_K_White »

oefrha wrote: post #63
thejarren wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, it's not outrageous, but I'd argue theft at any size is still wrong. I think it's likely they kept this number very low specifically to keep people arguing about whether or not the amount was important, versus if it was OK to be doing in the first place.

It’s basically a <= $3 publishing fee that’s refunded if minimum success is achieved. Professionally producing a track typically costs thousands (I have musician friends).

It's not really about the $3 to the artist. Spotify gets value from having all that material in their inventory, and doesn't pay anyone for it, and it wasn't a natural resource that they harvested, someone had to create it.

Actually worse, they say they do pay someone for it, they spread it among the other creators who they ARE paying.

You could try to think up ways to rationalize it like "publishing fee", but I don't see any reason why anyone should.

Re: Goodbye Spotify

#84

Post by Zigurd »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #4

I like Pandora's music stations (playing music like an artist), and reports are apparently that it is better than others for that But they pay little to the artists. What do you use?

I use Audials to aggregate internet radio. For curated music I mostly listen to KCRW and some Soma FM channels. Also, I use internet radio for news in German and Latvian to keep my language skills from rotting completely away.

I don't know how recent the feature is, but I recently stumbled upon YouTube Music's parameter-driven personal channel feature "Your music tuner." One of the parameters is how much music outside your favorites it will find for you. That works really well in my limited experience.

Re: Goodbye Spotify

#85

Post by pixxel »

tkgally wrote: post #25
COGlory wrote: post #2

Music consumption has basically never been in a better place. What Spotify pays artists, and how many employees at Bandcamp get laid off are minor, in the big picture. My music consumption goes something like this: 1) Queue up a known band on Spotify. See what else similar to them Spotify puts into a playlist 2) Listen to the new music, decide what I like or don't like 3) Head over to Bandcamp or Discogs with the stu…

> Music has never been in a better place. I have to agree. I’m 66 years old. When I was in my late teens, I was intensely into music and doing my best to explore and learn about a variety of genres. It was hard. I couldn’t afford to buy many albums, the music played on the radio was limited, and the only way to hear obscure music that I had read about was to go to a large public or university library and hope that th…

You may like this John Peel archive to (re)discover music:

https://davestrickson.blogspot.com/2020/05/john-peel-session...

Re: Goodbye Spotify

#86

Post by pixxel »

Jedd wrote: post #52
mrangle wrote: post #41

Liberal Joe Rogan is "questionable"? GMAB.. I mean he's open to questions so... I find it to be socially toxic that anyone expects massive companies to tailor their content to one's narrow sensibilities. Furthermore, the complaints rarely if ever go the other way in terms of platforming middle-of-the road personalities that land on the other side of the line. Though, they could in-volume. Man, was it terrrrible when…

This feels like a disingenuous take on TFA's in-passing reference. Spotify spending USD$100-$200 million on, say, that particular angertainment professional got a lot of people riled up because a) he's actively, demonstrably harmful, b) they had zero interest in patronising him, let along listening to him, but mostly c) their subscription costs had gone up to cover this indefensible payment. Like TFA, I get my podcas…

> got a lot of people riled up

No it didn’t. It got a tiny minority of a certain insignificant type upset. Step out into the real world and the number one podcast is, by definition, well received.

Re: Goodbye Spotify

#87

Post by thefourthchime »

bjord wrote: post #45
thefourthchime wrote: post #35

Funny, I finally ditched Spotify last week. I just can’t stand the pop up ads, the cluttered interface, and frankly I’m sick of the recommendations. So far I’ve been trying Apple Music, and have liked it so far. I’ve tried in the past but didn’t stick around long enough to learn how to use it. Also, I have HomePods as speakers for my living room tv and found that “streaming” to them using Apple Music isn’t streaming,…

I don't think it makes sense to compare free Spotify to paid Apple Music directly. Am I confused here? I've personally never seen popup ads in (paid) Spotify, either on mobile or desktop.

I am comparing paid Spotify, the ads I'm talking about are house ads. It's for things like a new Spofity special thing, or some new feature.

Re: Goodbye Spotify

#88

Post by sotix »

I have reduced my streaming use and switched to listening primarily on vinyl and an iPod with a set collection, and I have really preferred it. It’s very nice to have interfaces that just play exactly what I want and are not constantly pushing advertisements for podcasts and audiobooks in my face.

I’m spending more time listening to the music I love and the massive collection I already owned from back in the day. There’s something about not having unlimited access that helps me appreciate what I do have to a greater degree.

Re: Goodbye Spotify

#89

Post by lxgr »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #77
Tao3300 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if it's on CD it might as well be a download anyway Unless you mean FLAC or something, CD is still higher quality than other formats, and they keep longer than vinyl or cassettes. Inb4 the "only audiophiles with high end equipment" arguments: if you were around in the days of Blade Encoder tweaking options and trying to fit mp3s onto a 32MB player the size of a cigarette box, you know what digital artifacts sound l…

You don't need to be an "audiophile" or have "high end equipment" to realize that you absolutely want lossless for music archival. How would you want to, say, transcode a collection of MP3 to Opus to fit more tracks onto the same space at acceptable quality without keeping FLACs around? Although OTOH, people play lossy MP3s over lossy SBC via Bluetooth and don't care, so perhaps the bar of "acceptable quality" is muc…

> How would you want to, say, transcode a collection of MP3 to Opus to fit more tracks onto the same space at acceptable quality without keeping FLACs around?

Transcoding 320kbps MP3 to some other lossy codec, once, is really not that bad. LAME at 320kbps is transparent to many people, and while I don't have any A/B test data to back this up, I'd be surprised if re-coding once to Opus at, say, 160kbps, would fare noticeably worse in A/B tests.

> OTOH, people play lossy MP3s over lossy SBC via Bluetooth and don't care

Further evidence that transcoding from one high-bitrate lossy codec to another really isn't that bad :)

Re: Goodbye Spotify

#90

Post by Mistletoe »

OccamsMirror wrote: post #50
Mistletoe wrote: post #26

I recently said goodbye to Spotify as well. I tried Apple Music and found it sounded significantly better. The muddy quality I am used to with Spotify was gone and I’ve been enjoying music ever since. I really thought there was something wrong with me prior to this. I don’t know if it is the different codecs they use or what. I haven’t even tried the lossless audio yet on Apple Music. So it is just comparing the loss…

I’ve recently made the same move with a similar experience. Out of curiosity though did you try turning off volume normalization in Spotify?

I’ve uninstalled the app so I can’t check, but I do remember trying it with that off and on.
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