I feel that even beyond enshittification, if a company considers itself to be a "tech company", they will constantly attempt to reinvent themselves and extend the capability or services. Sure,...
I feel that even beyond enshittification, if a company considers itself to be a "tech company", they will constantly attempt to reinvent themselves and extend the capability or services. Sure, there are monetary reasons for it, but it has just become a social expectation for them to do this kind of thing. But the problem with it is that it will usually make it more expensive, and that usually leads to some degree of precariousness, like depending on investor funds to prop them up or on advertisers to subsidize the costs for the users.
I see where you are coming from, but for all intends and purposes companies like Spotify need to be a tech company. More specifically, they need the development know-how as well as maintenance...
if a company considers itself to be a "tech company"
I see where you are coming from, but for all intends and purposes companies like Spotify need to be a tech company. More specifically, they need the development know-how as well as maintenance know-how to implement and maintain the entire infrastructure that comes with a music streaming service. Which in itself is no small feat. It effectively means that a large part of the company is shaped very similar to whatever you can consider "true" tech companies.
There is also an additional consideration, and this might be more a devil's advocate argument. What is a tech company? Google started with a search engine, Facebook with a social network. Both are considered tech companies, so why is the service that Spotify offers different from the services the other two started out with?
So the reason you see a lot of the same shenanigans is because they are not all that different and attract a lot of the same people in charge of "product".
Doesn't make it less annoying, just want to make that clear.
Exactly. Spotify is getting more expensive all the time because they add nonsense like music videos, podcasts and audiobooks. I wish I could opt out. I just want music and nothing else.
Exactly. Spotify is getting more expensive all the time because they add nonsense like music videos, podcasts and audiobooks. I wish I could opt out. I just want music and nothing else.
As someone that both has spotify going constantly while I'm working and was unaware any of this existed until this story was posted: How is this making you like Spotify less and less? It's still a...
As someone that both has spotify going constantly while I'm working and was unaware any of this existed until this story was posted: How is this making you like Spotify less and less? It's still a music streaming app, nothing seems to be pushing anyone to comment, read comments, post videos, or anything else.
While spotify is far from perfect, there's been zero barriers to me just starting a music stream with no other interaction necessary.
Not OP, but tuning in myself as a daily 6+ hour Spotify user. First, price. I work with my hands so I hate having to skip through ads cause it wastes time I could be using to get some work in. So...
Not OP, but tuning in myself as a daily 6+ hour Spotify user.
First, price. I work with my hands so I hate having to skip through ads cause it wastes time I could be using to get some work in. So I've been paying for Spotify Premium for probably 8 years now? And its getting more expensive to pay for features I don't use, and pay podcasters to host their shows on Spotify that I don't listen to.
Shuffle has gotten noticably worse in the last few years, especially the new smart shuffle that I can't opt out of. The whole reason I picked Spotify a decade or so ago was cause I can make custom playlists. I need control over my music, and all the recommended or AI boosted assumptions about my listening tastes do not work well. After a year or two of checking out the suggested playlists for me and skipping through 75% of the songs I gave up. I have several playlists over 100 songs, but I keep having to manually go through them to find songs I want to listen to, cause it keeps shuffling the same songs in a similar order instead of being a truly randomized shuffle.
Lastly, performance. I've had more and more issues lately with Spotify bugging out or not being able to play downloaded content in the last two years. Which is, the whole reason I pay for this service.
I'm a lifelong android user, but I've been eyeing Apple Music cause it looks less driven to making the app worse for my use cases.
Press twice? Pretty sure that's how you opt out of smart shuffle. Not saying I like how it's the first option every time, I'd much prefer it if it was a setting, but it's really easy not to use it.
especially the new smart shuffle that I can't opt out of.
Press twice?
Pretty sure that's how you opt out of smart shuffle.
Not saying I like how it's the first option every time, I'd much prefer it if it was a setting, but it's really easy not to use it.
The problem with smart shuffle is if you have a very long playlist like I do (I don't sort my music into playlists, so everything goes into my "music" playlist, which is about 5000+ songs),...
The problem with smart shuffle is if you have a very long playlist like I do (I don't sort my music into playlists, so everything goes into my "music" playlist, which is about 5000+ songs), turning off the smart shuffle feature doesn't work about half the time. It just spins while it thinks about removing all of the random songs they added in and it will say it's disabled, but if you look at the queue, you'll see them pop back in after a second. So now the process to turn off shuffle entirely has been: click turn off smart shuffle. Wait about a full minute. Click again. If you don't wait that whole time, it'll revert to having the smart shuffle on, so you're just toggling between smart shuffle and shuffle.
It's extremely annoying for a feature I don't want to use and never wanted to use. Is it the end of the world? No. But it is an example where the average experience has gotten worse for some users recently.
Oh it's for sure bad and unnecessary how much they're pushing a feature half won't even notice exists. My own flow has changed from pressing the shuffle button once to twice, so I'm good, but I do...
Oh it's for sure bad and unnecessary how much they're pushing a feature half won't even notice exists.
My own flow has changed from pressing the shuffle button once to twice, so I'm good, but I do see how this is another notch on the belt.
I've had some issues with it. Either I'm fat fingering it when I hit twice, or it doesn't always send the message to the server to remove the smart shuffled songs. I'll only realize it when a song...
I've had some issues with it. Either I'm fat fingering it when I hit twice, or it doesn't always send the message to the server to remove the smart shuffled songs. I'll only realize it when a song I don't like ends up on the smart shuffle.
YouTube Premium is my solution on the Android, if you have a family plan where everyone chips in, it's pretty valuable with ad free YouTube as well as ad free music.
YouTube Premium is my solution on the Android, if you have a family plan where everyone chips in, it's pretty valuable with ad free YouTube as well as ad free music.
You still have to pay for features you don't use. Any time I am buying any product, no matter the category, I try to go for one within my price point that has the feature set that best matches my...
You still have to pay for features you don't use.
Any time I am buying any product, no matter the category, I try to go for one within my price point that has the feature set that best matches my exact use case; the ideal product has everything I'll use and nothing I won't use. This rule of thumb will generally get you superior quality for a lower price.
There can be some exceptions. For example, if a product has a feature that the great majority of customers want, even if I don't, the higher volume of sales can contribute to an economy of scale and still make it a good value for me.
However, when a product gains features I don't want and the price goes up, that strongly implies that the higher price is paying for those extra features and that they expect me to just suck it up and pay the loyalty tax.
Everything they add has to be paid for. That's why they keep raising the subscription price. I wish I could opt out of all the nonsense they add that I will never use to lower my subscription price.
Everything they add has to be paid for. That's why they keep raising the subscription price. I wish I could opt out of all the nonsense they add that I will never use to lower my subscription price.
I have Pandora and Napster. I use Pandora like customizable radio (I pay for a no ad tier), and Napster is for music discovery and streaming entire albums. Kimd of pricey, but right now it's best...
I have Pandora and Napster. I use Pandora like customizable radio (I pay for a no ad tier), and Napster is for music discovery and streaming entire albums. Kimd of pricey, but right now it's best use for our household.
Oh believe me, it's fully commercialized now. It was called Rhapsody a number of years ago, then they changed it to Napster. I have no idea why. ╮ (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) ╭
Oh believe me, it's fully commercialized now. It was called Rhapsody a number of years ago, then they changed it to Napster. I have no idea why.
╮ (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) ╭
My dad used to have Rhapsody upwards of a decade ago. It was pretty decent for its time, before streaming was really a thing. Changing the name to Napster of all things is hilarious to me.
My dad used to have Rhapsody upwards of a decade ago. It was pretty decent for its time, before streaming was really a thing. Changing the name to Napster of all things is hilarious to me.
I can see the appeal of a music-centric social network, but I have no faith in Spotify to do it well. And even if they do, I have no faith that people won't completely ruin it immediately. Just...
I can see the appeal of a music-centric social network, but I have no faith in Spotify to do it well. And even if they do, I have no faith that people won't completely ruin it immediately. Just gonna be a lot of flaming, trolling, and other nonsense.
Last.fm was a music based social network (no idea if it still exists in a usable form), and though I usually despise social networks, that one I didn't mind since I could see what my friends were...
Last.fm was a music based social network (no idea if it still exists in a usable form), and though I usually despise social networks, that one I didn't mind since I could see what my friends were listening to and compare out musical tastes. That was also a long time ago before social networks became a pit of algorithm based despair and abuse.
Last.fm still exists and is basically the same as it always was (which is a good thing). I have mostly used it for personal stats and recommendations, and not really the social aspect.
Last.fm still exists and is basically the same as it always was (which is a good thing). I have mostly used it for personal stats and recommendations, and not really the social aspect.
Interesting, I thought they had lost the ability to actually stream music a very long time ago due to licensing costs. Either way, I imagine the scrobbling for stats and recommendations is still...
Interesting, I thought they had lost the ability to actually stream music a very long time ago due to licensing costs. Either way, I imagine the scrobbling for stats and recommendations is still good as long as they still have their excellent community driven music metadata. I found it to be better at recommendations that everything else.
I love last.fm - i have over 10 years of data in it probably. My favourite thing on that site is to look at my music "neighbors" from around the world, then listed to their top few tracks or artists.
I love last.fm - i have over 10 years of data in it probably.
My favourite thing on that site is to look at my music "neighbors" from around the world, then listed to their top few tracks or artists.
Yeah, I love using Last.fm, gotta get my scrobbling stats! Also it's a cool way of documenting gigs and events and looking back on them in the future. Fun way to feel nostalgic about going to see...
Yeah, I love using Last.fm, gotta get my scrobbling stats! Also it's a cool way of documenting gigs and events and looking back on them in the future. Fun way to feel nostalgic about going to see some band that doesn't exist anymore back in 2008 or something!
Maybe I'm just old, but I've had a personal mp3 playlist pretty much since mp3s hit the consumer level. I used to have to cut my collection down to carry it with me, back when SD cards were small...
Maybe I'm just old, but I've had a personal mp3 playlist pretty much since mp3s hit the consumer level. I used to have to cut my collection down to carry it with me, back when SD cards were small and memory was precious. But now, I mean hell, I have nearly twenty movies on my phone just in case I get stuck somewhere and decide I want one of them.
The mp3 collection mostly doesn't even register honestly. My phone is my mobile library device for all intents and purposes, keeping me happy when I'm away from my servers.
So I guess what I'm saying is I just do not understand this need to offload everything onto a monthly subscription. Wouldn't it be more empowering to have your music, you know, with you?
Music streaming is more than just a place where people listen to music they really like. It's also radio. It's a place where people discover new artists and songs, where they can see what their...
Music streaming is more than just a place where people listen to music they really like. It's also radio. It's a place where people discover new artists and songs, where they can see what their friends are listening to (see: the title, and definitely something that happens often on spotify), and listen to songs that lie in that awkward zone where you don't love it, but like it enough to have in a broader rotation.
If you're the kind of person who sticks with a small, but highly curated catalog of music, it may not be the model for you, but you're also in the minority.
That radio aspect is key, I think. I watched Silicon Valley a while back and found myself often looking up the song playing over the end credits. Predictably, there are playlists on Spotify of...
That radio aspect is key, I think. I watched Silicon Valley a while back and found myself often looking up the song playing over the end credits. Predictably, there are playlists on Spotify of those end-credits songs... I think they released an "official" OST at some point, but after half a dozen (ish?) seasons, that album is very outdated. Now I could copy all of that work finding and compiling those playlists on my Jellyfin server, or I could just, not bother. I don't use Spotify, so I've just moved on, but I'm very aware that that is real value offered by Spotify in return for the subscription fee. Being able to turn on a "Silicon Valley radio" or "TV shows radio" or "Christmas radio" is very, very convenient.
From a “me owning and listening to my purchased music” standpoint, I totally agree with you - hell, I still own and use an iPod Classic for the same reason. I do pay for and enjoy Spotify as well,...
From a “me owning and listening to my purchased music” standpoint, I totally agree with you - hell, I still own and use an iPod Classic for the same reason. I do pay for and enjoy Spotify as well, but for the specific use case of discovering new music, or giving a new group a listen before I decide to invest in buying an entire LP / vinyl / tickets to a show when they come through town. Spotify is priceless with that kind of use case in mind.
As a musician, I wish their royalty structure was, ahem, improved, but I won’t get into all that for the time being.
I used to do it that way, but my music-listening habits changed. I still have my mp3 collection, but I rarely listen to it, and I've discovered a fair bit of music since then. I've gotten into...
I used to do it that way, but my music-listening habits changed. I still have my mp3 collection, but I rarely listen to it, and I've discovered a fair bit of music since then. I've gotten into live recordings. I watch music videos on YouTube more often than I listen to audio-only music these days. I rarely listen to music in the background anymore. (Maybe I would if I were still commuting.)
Some of these are recordings that aren't published as mp3's - it's someone's amateur video on YouTube, or someone uploaded a rip of a BlueRay or DVD. I don't really have the workflow set up to rip those. (Though I did it once to burn a CD for the car.)
I use Spotify sometimes to listen to songs for which there's no video. But I'd have to buy the songs I like, which means deciding which ones those are. For Hiromi alone, there are maybe a dozen albums on Spotify.
YouTube and Spotify are both vast collections with some overlap. There's an illusion that they have everything, but nobody has everything.
(Another thing that changed is that I listen to everything through AirPod Pros these days.)
"keeping me away from my servers". I know that feel. I do love having Traefik in front of a few of my favorite applications and using dynamic DNS to route to a domain.
"keeping me away from my servers". I know that feel.
I do love having Traefik in front of a few of my favorite applications and using dynamic DNS to route to a domain.
Youtube Music has had this for songs since September. And, as always, it's a mixed bag. It's kinda neat finding a handful of comments on hidden gem tracks, and it's quite wholesome when you see them.
Youtube Music has had this for songs since September. And, as always, it's a mixed bag.
It's kinda neat finding a handful of comments on hidden gem tracks, and it's quite wholesome when you see them.
Same here, and now I get a few kicks when I find a song with only one or two "likes" or a comment of someone somewhere enjoying the same piece of weird eclectic and niche musi enough to reach out...
Same here, and now I get a few kicks when I find a song with only one or two "likes" or a comment of someone somewhere enjoying the same piece of weird eclectic and niche musi enough to reach out into the void of the web. I don't know, its just comforting, cozy even.
Incidentally, Spotify raised the subscription price again, but there is a 'Basic' plan that's the same price as before, without audiobooks, so I "downgraded" to what I thought I already had. (I...
Incidentally, Spotify raised the subscription price again, but there is a 'Basic' plan that's the same price as before, without podcasts audiobooks, so I "downgraded" to what I thought I already had. (I never listen to them anyway.)
I did the same. I just happened to be perusing my Spotify account settings page and saw it and immediately switched to the 'Basic Family' plan. I thought it wasn't mentioned in my email regarding...
I did the same. I just happened to be perusing my Spotify account settings page and saw it and immediately switched to the 'Basic Family' plan. I thought it wasn't mentioned in my email regarding the price increase but it was actually - still a bit sneaky IMO.
Double sneaky that they don't talk about it and it's pretty hard to find out what a "basic" account is. I can't find it defined anywhere on Spotify's actual site.
Double sneaky that they don't talk about it and it's pretty hard to find out what a "basic" account is. I can't find it defined anywhere on Spotify's actual site.
It's really smart of them to move into this segment. Music streaming services probably have the smallest moat of any of the streaming services. Since they all pretty much have the same library,...
It's really smart of them to move into this segment. Music streaming services probably have the smallest moat of any of the streaming services. Since they all pretty much have the same library, they compete on other things. IMO Spotify already had social media aspects due to shared playlist and integrations into other social media (like Discord) - I know more than a few people who still use Spotify, or who pay for Spotify and ANOTHER music streaming service just for this reason.
Having more social media aspects will allow them to make switching providers harder for that segment of their userbase. It's something they should have done ages ago imo. When they were dominant, they should have been building moats to defend against platforms like Apple Music which have first party benefits Spotify will never have.
I'm not sure how adding comments to podcasts constitutes making it social media, that's just basic website functionality in a podcasting section of a streaming app. Even now Spotify's social...
I'm not sure how adding comments to podcasts constitutes making it social media, that's just basic website functionality in a podcasting section of a streaming app. Even now Spotify's social features are more adapters to actual social media than their own fully fledged features. And you can still turn off all social features anyway.
I mean that's basically how they started through their integration with FB in the super early days, its quite literally the way they survived and are still around today was launching on that so...
I mean that's basically how they started through their integration with FB in the super early days, its quite literally the way they survived and are still around today was launching on that so hard. In a way its a return to their roots, but with the modern amount of enshitification added and without the soul or heart.
I've been supporting Digitally Imported, Rock Radio, Radio tunes and all of their other sites for years. Excellent streaming quality, great curation and a good suite of apps - plus, I'd rather...
I've been supporting Digitally Imported, Rock Radio, Radio tunes and all of their other sites for years. Excellent streaming quality, great curation and a good suite of apps - plus, I'd rather support the little guy.
Huh. I was wondering why Amazon Music just added usernames/handles to their system. I guess they see a future in either the social networkification or having influencers create curated playlists...
Huh. I was wondering why Amazon Music just added usernames/handles to their system. I guess they see a future in either the social networkification or having influencers create curated playlists like they have the curated radio stations.
Horror movie protagonist: "Oh my God...This isn't a music app! heavy breathing It's a fucking SOCIAL NETWORK!! chorus of screams <quick cuts to other characters' horrified faces interlaced with...
Horror movie protagonist: "Oh my God...This isn't a music app! heavy breathing It's a fucking SOCIAL NETWORK!! chorus of screams <quick cuts to other characters' horrified faces interlaced with images of awful comments>
That explains why I'm starting to like Spotify less and less. I just want a music streaming app.
I feel that even beyond enshittification, if a company considers itself to be a "tech company", they will constantly attempt to reinvent themselves and extend the capability or services. Sure, there are monetary reasons for it, but it has just become a social expectation for them to do this kind of thing. But the problem with it is that it will usually make it more expensive, and that usually leads to some degree of precariousness, like depending on investor funds to prop them up or on advertisers to subsidize the costs for the users.
I see where you are coming from, but for all intends and purposes companies like Spotify need to be a tech company. More specifically, they need the development know-how as well as maintenance know-how to implement and maintain the entire infrastructure that comes with a music streaming service. Which in itself is no small feat. It effectively means that a large part of the company is shaped very similar to whatever you can consider "true" tech companies.
There is also an additional consideration, and this might be more a devil's advocate argument. What is a tech company? Google started with a search engine, Facebook with a social network. Both are considered tech companies, so why is the service that Spotify offers different from the services the other two started out with?
So the reason you see a lot of the same shenanigans is because they are not all that different and attract a lot of the same people in charge of "product".
Doesn't make it less annoying, just want to make that clear.
Exactly. Spotify is getting more expensive all the time because they add nonsense like music videos, podcasts and audiobooks. I wish I could opt out. I just want music and nothing else.
As someone that both has spotify going constantly while I'm working and was unaware any of this existed until this story was posted: How is this making you like Spotify less and less? It's still a music streaming app, nothing seems to be pushing anyone to comment, read comments, post videos, or anything else.
While spotify is far from perfect, there's been zero barriers to me just starting a music stream with no other interaction necessary.
Not OP, but tuning in myself as a daily 6+ hour Spotify user.
First, price. I work with my hands so I hate having to skip through ads cause it wastes time I could be using to get some work in. So I've been paying for Spotify Premium for probably 8 years now? And its getting more expensive to pay for features I don't use, and pay podcasters to host their shows on Spotify that I don't listen to.
Shuffle has gotten noticably worse in the last few years, especially the new smart shuffle that I can't opt out of. The whole reason I picked Spotify a decade or so ago was cause I can make custom playlists. I need control over my music, and all the recommended or AI boosted assumptions about my listening tastes do not work well. After a year or two of checking out the suggested playlists for me and skipping through 75% of the songs I gave up. I have several playlists over 100 songs, but I keep having to manually go through them to find songs I want to listen to, cause it keeps shuffling the same songs in a similar order instead of being a truly randomized shuffle.
Lastly, performance. I've had more and more issues lately with Spotify bugging out or not being able to play downloaded content in the last two years. Which is, the whole reason I pay for this service.
I'm a lifelong android user, but I've been eyeing Apple Music cause it looks less driven to making the app worse for my use cases.
Press twice?
Pretty sure that's how you opt out of smart shuffle.
Not saying I like how it's the first option every time, I'd much prefer it if it was a setting, but it's really easy not to use it.
The problem with smart shuffle is if you have a very long playlist like I do (I don't sort my music into playlists, so everything goes into my "music" playlist, which is about 5000+ songs), turning off the smart shuffle feature doesn't work about half the time. It just spins while it thinks about removing all of the random songs they added in and it will say it's disabled, but if you look at the queue, you'll see them pop back in after a second. So now the process to turn off shuffle entirely has been: click turn off smart shuffle. Wait about a full minute. Click again. If you don't wait that whole time, it'll revert to having the smart shuffle on, so you're just toggling between smart shuffle and shuffle.
It's extremely annoying for a feature I don't want to use and never wanted to use. Is it the end of the world? No. But it is an example where the average experience has gotten worse for some users recently.
Oh it's for sure bad and unnecessary how much they're pushing a feature half won't even notice exists.
My own flow has changed from pressing the shuffle button once to twice, so I'm good, but I do see how this is another notch on the belt.
I've had some issues with it. Either I'm fat fingering it when I hit twice, or it doesn't always send the message to the server to remove the smart shuffled songs. I'll only realize it when a song I don't like ends up on the smart shuffle.
Really think it should be an opt in feature
YouTube Premium is my solution on the Android, if you have a family plan where everyone chips in, it's pretty valuable with ad free YouTube as well as ad free music.
You still have to pay for features you don't use.
Any time I am buying any product, no matter the category, I try to go for one within my price point that has the feature set that best matches my exact use case; the ideal product has everything I'll use and nothing I won't use. This rule of thumb will generally get you superior quality for a lower price.
There can be some exceptions. For example, if a product has a feature that the great majority of customers want, even if I don't, the higher volume of sales can contribute to an economy of scale and still make it a good value for me.
However, when a product gains features I don't want and the price goes up, that strongly implies that the higher price is paying for those extra features and that they expect me to just suck it up and pay the loyalty tax.
Everything they add has to be paid for. That's why they keep raising the subscription price. I wish I could opt out of all the nonsense they add that I will never use to lower my subscription price.
Pandora still exists.
I have Pandora and Napster. I use Pandora like customizable radio (I pay for a no ad tier), and Napster is for music discovery and streaming entire albums. Kimd of pricey, but right now it's best use for our household.
Cue the surprised Pikachu face when I find out Napster still exists ~30 years later and is something that people actually use.
Oh believe me, it's fully commercialized now. It was called Rhapsody a number of years ago, then they changed it to Napster. I have no idea why.
╮ (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) ╭
My dad used to have Rhapsody upwards of a decade ago. It was pretty decent for its time, before streaming was really a thing. Changing the name to Napster of all things is hilarious to me.
IIRC Napster changed their name to Rhapsody in the past, but they must have changed it back.
Not in my country.
I can see the appeal of a music-centric social network, but I have no faith in Spotify to do it well. And even if they do, I have no faith that people won't completely ruin it immediately. Just gonna be a lot of flaming, trolling, and other nonsense.
I think Myspace is still kicking around, is it still a music based social media?
Last.fm was a music based social network (no idea if it still exists in a usable form), and though I usually despise social networks, that one I didn't mind since I could see what my friends were listening to and compare out musical tastes. That was also a long time ago before social networks became a pit of algorithm based despair and abuse.
My scrobbles! My beautiful scrobbles!
Last.fm still exists and is basically the same as it always was (which is a good thing). I have mostly used it for personal stats and recommendations, and not really the social aspect.
Interesting, I thought they had lost the ability to actually stream music a very long time ago due to licensing costs. Either way, I imagine the scrobbling for stats and recommendations is still good as long as they still have their excellent community driven music metadata. I found it to be better at recommendations that everything else.
I love last.fm - i have over 10 years of data in it probably.
My favourite thing on that site is to look at my music "neighbors" from around the world, then listed to their top few tracks or artists.
I used to do that as well, it felt fairly "social", but not in an intrusive way.
Yeah, I love using Last.fm, gotta get my scrobbling stats! Also it's a cool way of documenting gigs and events and looking back on them in the future. Fun way to feel nostalgic about going to see some band that doesn't exist anymore back in 2008 or something!
I don't use the social aspect of Last.fm though.
Maybe I'm just old, but I've had a personal mp3 playlist pretty much since mp3s hit the consumer level. I used to have to cut my collection down to carry it with me, back when SD cards were small and memory was precious. But now, I mean hell, I have nearly twenty movies on my phone just in case I get stuck somewhere and decide I want one of them.
The mp3 collection mostly doesn't even register honestly. My phone is my mobile library device for all intents and purposes, keeping me happy when I'm away from my servers.
So I guess what I'm saying is I just do not understand this need to offload everything onto a monthly subscription. Wouldn't it be more empowering to have your music, you know, with you?
Music streaming is more than just a place where people listen to music they really like. It's also radio. It's a place where people discover new artists and songs, where they can see what their friends are listening to (see: the title, and definitely something that happens often on spotify), and listen to songs that lie in that awkward zone where you don't love it, but like it enough to have in a broader rotation.
If you're the kind of person who sticks with a small, but highly curated catalog of music, it may not be the model for you, but you're also in the minority.
That radio aspect is key, I think. I watched Silicon Valley a while back and found myself often looking up the song playing over the end credits. Predictably, there are playlists on Spotify of those end-credits songs... I think they released an "official" OST at some point, but after half a dozen (ish?) seasons, that album is very outdated. Now I could copy all of that work finding and compiling those playlists on my Jellyfin server, or I could just, not bother. I don't use Spotify, so I've just moved on, but I'm very aware that that is real value offered by Spotify in return for the subscription fee. Being able to turn on a "Silicon Valley radio" or "TV shows radio" or "Christmas radio" is very, very convenient.
From a “me owning and listening to my purchased music” standpoint, I totally agree with you - hell, I still own and use an iPod Classic for the same reason. I do pay for and enjoy Spotify as well, but for the specific use case of discovering new music, or giving a new group a listen before I decide to invest in buying an entire LP / vinyl / tickets to a show when they come through town. Spotify is priceless with that kind of use case in mind.
As a musician, I wish their royalty structure was, ahem, improved, but I won’t get into all that for the time being.
I used to do it that way, but my music-listening habits changed. I still have my mp3 collection, but I rarely listen to it, and I've discovered a fair bit of music since then. I've gotten into live recordings. I watch music videos on YouTube more often than I listen to audio-only music these days. I rarely listen to music in the background anymore. (Maybe I would if I were still commuting.)
Some of these are recordings that aren't published as mp3's - it's someone's amateur video on YouTube, or someone uploaded a rip of a BlueRay or DVD. I don't really have the workflow set up to rip those. (Though I did it once to burn a CD for the car.)
I use Spotify sometimes to listen to songs for which there's no video. But I'd have to buy the songs I like, which means deciding which ones those are. For Hiromi alone, there are maybe a dozen albums on Spotify.
YouTube and Spotify are both vast collections with some overlap. There's an illusion that they have everything, but nobody has everything.
(Another thing that changed is that I listen to everything through AirPod Pros these days.)
"keeping me away from my servers". I know that feel.
I do love having Traefik in front of a few of my favorite applications and using dynamic DNS to route to a domain.
Youtube Music has had this for songs since September. And, as always, it's a mixed bag.
It's kinda neat finding a handful of comments on hidden gem tracks, and it's quite wholesome when you see them.
I thought I would dislike this feature but I actually kinda like it sometimes.
Same here, and now I get a few kicks when I find a song with only one or two "likes" or a comment of someone somewhere enjoying the same piece of weird eclectic and niche musi enough to reach out into the void of the web. I don't know, its just comforting, cozy even.
Incidentally, Spotify raised the subscription price again, but there is a 'Basic' plan that's the same price as before, without
podcastsaudiobooks, so I "downgraded" to what I thought I already had. (I never listen to them anyway.)Looks like the 'Basic' subscription is new.
Musescore seems to have done a similar thing with a price increase that you can downgrade from.
Just FYI it's not podcasts, but audiobooks that aren't included in a basic plan.
Oops, you're right! I edited my response.
I did the same. I just happened to be perusing my Spotify account settings page and saw it and immediately switched to the 'Basic Family' plan. I thought it wasn't mentioned in my email regarding the price increase but it was actually - still a bit sneaky IMO.
Double sneaky that they don't talk about it and it's pretty hard to find out what a "basic" account is. I can't find it defined anywhere on Spotify's actual site.
It's really smart of them to move into this segment. Music streaming services probably have the smallest moat of any of the streaming services. Since they all pretty much have the same library, they compete on other things. IMO Spotify already had social media aspects due to shared playlist and integrations into other social media (like Discord) - I know more than a few people who still use Spotify, or who pay for Spotify and ANOTHER music streaming service just for this reason.
Having more social media aspects will allow them to make switching providers harder for that segment of their userbase. It's something they should have done ages ago imo. When they were dominant, they should have been building moats to defend against platforms like Apple Music which have first party benefits Spotify will never have.
Maybe this makes them look into advanced features such as copy-pasting and ctrl+f search.
I'm not sure how adding comments to podcasts constitutes making it social media, that's just basic website functionality in a podcasting section of a streaming app. Even now Spotify's social features are more adapters to actual social media than their own fully fledged features. And you can still turn off all social features anyway.
I mean that's basically how they started through their integration with FB in the super early days, its quite literally the way they survived and are still around today was launching on that so hard. In a way its a return to their roots, but with the modern amount of enshitification added and without the soul or heart.
I've been supporting Digitally Imported, Rock Radio, Radio tunes and all of their other sites for years. Excellent streaming quality, great curation and a good suite of apps - plus, I'd rather support the little guy.
Huh. I was wondering why Amazon Music just added usernames/handles to their system. I guess they see a future in either the social networkification or having influencers create curated playlists like they have the curated radio stations.
Horror movie protagonist: "Oh my God...This isn't a music app! heavy breathing It's a fucking SOCIAL NETWORK!! chorus of screams <quick cuts to other characters' horrified faces interlaced with images of awful comments>