When I first started using Spotify in my teens, I moved my small music collection of punk rock, pop, game and movie soundtracks onto the platform. Discover Weekly, together with the song...
Spotify’s goal is to keep you listening no matter what. In her book Mood Machine, journalist Liz Pelly recounts a story told to her by a former Spotify employee in which Daniel Ek said, “our only competitor is silence.”
Artists, especially new ones trying to break through, actually started changing how they composed to play better in the algorithmically driven streaming era. Songs got shorter, albums got longer, and intros went away. The hook got pushed to the front of the song to try to grab listeners’ attention immediately, and things like guitar solos all but disappeared from pop music. The palette of sounds artists pulled from got smaller, arrangements became more simplified, pop music flattened.
Market research firm MIDiA published an alarming study in September that said, “the more reliant users are on algorithms, the less music they hear.” It found that while new music discovery is traditionally associated with youth, “16-24-year-olds are less likely than 25-34-year-olds to have discovered an artist they love in the last year.” Gen Z might hear a song they like on TikTok, but they rarely investigate beyond that to listen to more music from the artist.
Algorithm fatigue has been building for some time. Apple made human curation a central selling point of its music service, enlisting big names like Jimmy Iovine and Zane Lowe. But recently, the rebellion against the algorithm has picked up steam.
At this stage, anti-algorithm is itself an entire genre of content. Particularly on YouTube, where creators make videos about ditching streaming, stopping doomscrolling, and how the algorithm has flattened culture.
More companies will probably start offering off-ramps as algorithm fatigue grows. But, eventually, companies will figure out how to create the illusion of serendipitous discovery. They will serve up algorithmic recommendations, but package them in a way that feels more natural.
When I first started using Spotify in my teens, I moved my small music collection of punk rock, pop, game and movie soundtracks onto the platform. Discover Weekly, together with the song suggestions to extend playlists, became my primary way of discovering new music. Until then, my collection had been strongly influenced by my older brother and my father, adding in some country music into my weird mix.
I used Spotify for years, and my favorites got longer and longer, fueled by the algorithmic suggestions. What I didn't realize is that my suggestions gravitated towards a very certain direction: A sort of acoustic indie pop music. The rock, the electric guitars, the punk, it gradually filtered out. Now, I didn't hate it, but I later realized, I didn't love it either. I just listened to it. Spotify's goal of providing content, not music, had worked on me without me even realizing.
When I got into my first relationship, my then girlfriend also listened to punk rock, and introduced me to Billy Talent, a band that I had not heard anything from beyond their most famous song Red Flag. When I checked out more of their albums, I rediscovered my love for the punk rock genre, and had a stark wake up call when I realized that my favourite songs playlist with 400+ entries had gradually transformed into a series of similar sounding acoustic indie pop songs from artists that I didn't give a shit about, but that crucially, you could just listen to inoffensively. It was the sort of playlist you'd hear in a bougie modern café, playing on in the background while you were chatting with someone.
I detested it, and started cleaning house. Since then, I've tried to be much more active about my listening and active about finding new music to listen to.
Thank you for putting so succinctly. This is my biggest argument against the people who praise streaming platforms for their algorithm and how that helps you find new music more easily. Yes,...
Thank you for putting so succinctly.
This is my biggest argument against the people who praise streaming platforms for their algorithm and how that helps you find new music more easily.
Yes, streaming definitely helps you find new music, I've been there too, but if you actually analyze the music you find, you will invariably notice sooner or later that everything you're finding basically concentrates into this amorphous blob of same-sounding songs.
It's not that the new songs you find are bad, but they start trending toward "music you turn on just to have music playing" rather than music you listen actively, and at that point is the algorithm doing that much for you? (note I am not saying that having background music to zone out or focus on work is bad, I'm just criticizing the discovery process of the music specifically)
I ended up hating losing the love I had for music when I strictly listened to my mp3 collection that was 100% curated by me, so I went back to it (and switched it all to flac versions while I was at it) and bought a DAP as well to take my collection on the go, and now I'm so much more engaged. Yes I might not discover new songs as quickly and effortlessly as I used to with streaming (though there are mitigating tools for this a la last.fm), but when I do, I genuinely think it feels better because it was a conscious decision, like digging for a treasure and finding it and feeling all giddy over it.
I seriously recommend people try being more active in their music library. It can be such an engaging activity.
I switched over to Qobuz, which is still a streaming service, but one that takes a much more manual approach to recommending music. They do also offer the ability to purchase albums entirely and...
I switched over to Qobuz, which is still a streaming service, but one that takes a much more manual approach to recommending music. They do also offer the ability to purchase albums entirely and without DRM, but which you can also then stream, even if you're not subscribing. It had a similar effect. I don't think lossless streaming is any better than a good 320kbps mp3, but it's a nice bonus.
I had become fed up with Spotify mostly because it stopped being a service only for music. Their podcast push only alienated me further, since it didn't feel like I, as a music listener, was their customer any more. Asine UI decisions like "canvas" video covers, that played short gifs from music videos instead of just showing you an album cover also felt like a UX department that lacked any direction.
I toyed with the idea of doing my own streaming thing, or like you, returning to listening from local libraries on the go and then syncing when I come back home. What made me opt against setting up my own streaming was that my homelab isn't running 24/7 yet, only when someone is watching movies. Qobuz felt like a neat solution that's still very easy to use and can tide me over until my homelab is running 24/7.
This is kind of offtopic, but if you don't mind, why did you decide to change to FLACs? Just a few days ago I went down a rabbit hole of learning more about the different encoding formats and...
and switched it all to flac versions while I was at it
This is kind of offtopic, but if you don't mind, why did you decide to change to FLACs? Just a few days ago I went down a rabbit hole of learning more about the different encoding formats and codecs because I'm looking to start building my own collection and wanted to determine what level of quality was actually worth paying for. The short version is that, after reading layman's explanations, one or two scientific studies, and doing my own tests, I decided that 320mbps MP3s were the most I needed to bother with. I get that MP3s are lossy and FLACs (more or less) hit the sweet spot of being lossless while also compressed, but I (and most others, from the sound of it) can rarely hear a difference. I'm no audio engineer, but most of my education and work has relied on and developed my critical listening abilities, so I'm definitely more practiced than most people. Maybe I missed something in my research?
In a broad sense, peace of mind I suppose? Not having to worry whether I'm missing some frequencies that I could otherwise hear. The only reason lossy formats exist is to save storage, but since...
In a broad sense, peace of mind I suppose? Not having to worry whether I'm missing some frequencies that I could otherwise hear.
The only reason lossy formats exist is to save storage, but since storage isn't much of a concern to me, having everything in flac is acceptable for my use case.
Got it, that makes sense I suppose. Storage isn't exactly tight for me, but if I was to purchase and download my entire Spotify library as FLACs, I absolutely would not have space at the moment....
Got it, that makes sense I suppose. Storage isn't exactly tight for me, but if I was to purchase and download my entire Spotify library as FLACs, I absolutely would not have space at the moment. So I'm just trying to plan ahead and be judicious.
I keep FLAC versions of my music archived essentially in case I ever want to re-encode. The files I actually listen to are Vorbis-encoded (which achieves roughly 85% compression over FLAC with no...
I keep FLAC versions of my music archived essentially in case I ever want to re-encode. The files I actually listen to are Vorbis-encoded (which achieves roughly 85% compression over FLAC with no degradation I can hear), since e.g. I only have a few tens of gigabytes free on my phone. But non-portable bulk storage is very cheap, and even lossless audio just isn't that heavy storage-wise (a literal chronological year of FLAC audio is roughly 2.5TB), so the confidence that I can re-encode to some newfangled format without compounding losses is easily worth that.
(Now I guess I should caveat that my actual music library is a terrific mishmash, and includes stuff like mp3s shared with classmates from high school and college, audio ripped from Youtube videos, albums and soundtracks which were only offered in lossy formats, etc., etc. Most of my FLACs are actually ripped from CD. But my ideal format is FLAC for archival and Vorbis to put on devices to listen to.)
Ahh, gotcha. I read about using FLACs as archival versions so that you could re-encode to other formats if needed and decided it didn't seem likely to be something I would need, but I didn't...
I can re-encode to some newfangled format without compounding losses
Ahh, gotcha. I read about using FLACs as archival versions so that you could re-encode to other formats if needed and decided it didn't seem likely to be something I would need, but I didn't consider the possibility of some newer, more efficient format coming along in the future. Wonder what the chances of that actually are.
Songs got shorter, albums got longer, and intros went away. The hook got pushed to the front of the song to try to grab listeners’ attention immediately, and things like guitar solos all but disappeared from pop music.
The article mentions Last.fm and says it became somewhat obsolete by recommendation builtin into streaming services. I never stopped using it, exactly because it works separately from how you...
The article mentions Last.fm and says it became somewhat obsolete by recommendation builtin into streaming services. I never stopped using it, exactly because it works separately from how you consume your music. It doesn't vendorlock you into a specific service. And I have always found its recommendations to be way better than most of what the various streaming services threw at me. The only thing I found streaming services' recommendation useful for, was when they highlight a new release by an artist I have listened to a lot. However that is also increasingly becoming broken as it frequently features AI slop music that piggybacks on an existing artist name.
I know that last.fm has stuck around through it all somehow. Maybe I should take a look at it. It just always emphasized the social network part of listening to music and it's something I've been...
I know that last.fm has stuck around through it all somehow. Maybe I should take a look at it. It just always emphasized the social network part of listening to music and it's something I've been trying to cut from my life rather than enhance it's presence in it.
It is perfectly usable without any sort of social interactions or "friends". Its recommendation for similar artists or even "bands you haven't listened to in a while" is pretty great on its own....
It is perfectly usable without any sort of social interactions or "friends". Its recommendation for similar artists or even "bands you haven't listened to in a while" is pretty great on its own. Your profile is public though, but you don't have to mention any identifiable information.
I’ve used last.fm for years without ever interacting with another person on it, so I wouldn’t be too worried about the social aspects. Also, it’s kind of a ghost town these days anyway.
I’ve used last.fm for years without ever interacting with another person on it, so I wouldn’t be too worried about the social aspects.
Also, it’s kind of a ghost town these days anyway.
It's weird to me that people actually use those parts of Spotify. I've been using Spotify since it first opened up in the US, and have never really used them, because they're not good. I've always...
It's weird to me that people actually use those parts of Spotify. I've been using Spotify since it first opened up in the US, and have never really used them, because they're not good. I've always either found music on YouTube or maybe user-curated playlists on Spotify, then I listen and add music to my own categorical playlists.
Spotify, for me, is just a better iTunes that has anything most things I want to search for, on-demand, and I shuffle my playlists or open full albums just like I would do back then.
things like guitar solos all but disappeared from pop music
That cart is leading its horse. Guitars, in general, have been on the way out from pop music for decades. We've had over four decades of EDM and hip hop existing, and guitar genres are profoundly old school. (And, speaking from experience, it's now very approachable to learn to arrange music in a DAW, and learning some piano is essential for that, but guitar is very much a detour away from that goal.)
Thanks for sharing that article. It sums up a lot of my own feelings on “discovery” services. I dropped Spotify a few years ago when I realized that while I was “listening” to much more music than...
Thanks for sharing that article. It sums up a lot of my own feelings on “discovery” services. I dropped Spotify a few years ago when I realized that while I was “listening” to much more music than I used to, I wasn’t actively listening, I was just letting it play and fill silence. I’ve since moved back to acquiring albums via bandcamp, record stores, etc. I haven’t been spinning as much vinyl, but I did get an iPod classic on eBay last year and it’s one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. I like that it’s filled with music that I organically discovered and that it’s completely divorced from my phone or any apps.
I do truly recommend everyone take at least one step to de-algorithm their media, whether that’s music, movies, tv, or anything else. You don’t realize how much apps are governing your consumption of art until you go back to the old fashioned ways of discovering media, actually doing research, instead of letting an app dictate your tastes.
One other thing the article mentioned that I agree with is that it noted many people are using apps like Spotify to be a background soundtrack to their life to fill silence. I largely agree with that, I know a few people that cannot just exist and need some sort of stimulation in everything they do. Like a 2 minute drive to McDonald’s or whatever requires a soundtrack. This extends beyond music, too. For example, whenever I go to a sporting event, it’s depressing that as soon as there’s a break in the game, everyone’s phones come out. People are just straight up addicted to algorithms. Tildes seems like the kind of crowd to be hyper aware of this already, but yeah, try to take steps to divorce yourself if you can.
I guess the way I use Spotify is atypical? I've been using the Discover Weekly playlist of new songs and artists for years to find new tracks. It recommends things that are similar to artists and...
I guess the way I use Spotify is atypical? I've been using the Discover Weekly playlist of new songs and artists for years to find new tracks. It recommends things that are similar to artists and songs I like, but it's always fresh. It has helped me discover plenty of bands I now really enjoy like The Consouls.
When I find new songs I like, I add them to a playlist. When that playlist is full enough, I start a new one. This keeps my listening new and novel while also making it easy to replay and relive playlists I made at different moments in my life.
Music streaming services insist on running algorithms in the background. But what if, instead of force-feeding people algorithmic recommendations, they provided tools for music exploration? For...
Music streaming services insist on running algorithms in the background. But what if, instead of force-feeding people algorithmic recommendations, they provided tools for music exploration? For instance, something like Every Noise at Once, which offers the virtual equivalent of walking along the various genre sections of a record store, or Rate Your Music Custom Charts, which allow you to find music according to parameters that you specify.
Spotify’s goal is to keep you listening no matter what. In her book Mood Machine, journalist Liz Pelly recounts a story told to her by a former Spotify employee in which Daniel Ek said, “our only competitor is silence.”
According to this employee, Spotify leadership didn’t see themselves as a music company, but as a time filler. The employee explained that, “the vast majority of music listeners, they’re not really interested in listening to music per se. They just need a soundtrack to a moment in their day.”
Simply providing a soundtrack to your day might seem innocent enough, but it informs how Spotify’s algorithm works. Its goal isn’t to help you discover new music, its goal is simply to keep you listening for as long as possible.
[…]
In a world where most content is being served up to us algorithmically, whether that’s on Spotify, YouTube, or TikTok, music discovery has suffered. Market research firm MIDiA published an alarming study in September that said, “the more reliant users are on algorithms, the less music they hear.”
I think this is the problem. Music streaming services and tech companies in general aren't putting control in the hands of users because (1) doing so won't benefit these companies according to the metrics they are using, and (2) most users have embraced passive consumption.
When I first started using Spotify in my teens, I moved my small music collection of punk rock, pop, game and movie soundtracks onto the platform. Discover Weekly, together with the song suggestions to extend playlists, became my primary way of discovering new music. Until then, my collection had been strongly influenced by my older brother and my father, adding in some country music into my weird mix.
I used Spotify for years, and my favorites got longer and longer, fueled by the algorithmic suggestions. What I didn't realize is that my suggestions gravitated towards a very certain direction: A sort of acoustic indie pop music. The rock, the electric guitars, the punk, it gradually filtered out. Now, I didn't hate it, but I later realized, I didn't love it either. I just listened to it. Spotify's goal of providing content, not music, had worked on me without me even realizing.
When I got into my first relationship, my then girlfriend also listened to punk rock, and introduced me to Billy Talent, a band that I had not heard anything from beyond their most famous song Red Flag. When I checked out more of their albums, I rediscovered my love for the punk rock genre, and had a stark wake up call when I realized that my favourite songs playlist with 400+ entries had gradually transformed into a series of similar sounding acoustic indie pop songs from artists that I didn't give a shit about, but that crucially, you could just listen to inoffensively. It was the sort of playlist you'd hear in a bougie modern café, playing on in the background while you were chatting with someone.
I detested it, and started cleaning house. Since then, I've tried to be much more active about my listening and active about finding new music to listen to.
Thank you for putting so succinctly.
This is my biggest argument against the people who praise streaming platforms for their algorithm and how that helps you find new music more easily.
Yes, streaming definitely helps you find new music, I've been there too, but if you actually analyze the music you find, you will invariably notice sooner or later that everything you're finding basically concentrates into this amorphous blob of same-sounding songs.
It's not that the new songs you find are bad, but they start trending toward "music you turn on just to have music playing" rather than music you listen actively, and at that point is the algorithm doing that much for you? (note I am not saying that having background music to zone out or focus on work is bad, I'm just criticizing the discovery process of the music specifically)
I ended up hating losing the love I had for music when I strictly listened to my mp3 collection that was 100% curated by me, so I went back to it (and switched it all to flac versions while I was at it) and bought a DAP as well to take my collection on the go, and now I'm so much more engaged. Yes I might not discover new songs as quickly and effortlessly as I used to with streaming (though there are mitigating tools for this a la last.fm), but when I do, I genuinely think it feels better because it was a conscious decision, like digging for a treasure and finding it and feeling all giddy over it.
I seriously recommend people try being more active in their music library. It can be such an engaging activity.
I switched over to Qobuz, which is still a streaming service, but one that takes a much more manual approach to recommending music. They do also offer the ability to purchase albums entirely and without DRM, but which you can also then stream, even if you're not subscribing. It had a similar effect. I don't think lossless streaming is any better than a good 320kbps mp3, but it's a nice bonus.
I had become fed up with Spotify mostly because it stopped being a service only for music. Their podcast push only alienated me further, since it didn't feel like I, as a music listener, was their customer any more. Asine UI decisions like "canvas" video covers, that played short gifs from music videos instead of just showing you an album cover also felt like a UX department that lacked any direction.
I toyed with the idea of doing my own streaming thing, or like you, returning to listening from local libraries on the go and then syncing when I come back home. What made me opt against setting up my own streaming was that my homelab isn't running 24/7 yet, only when someone is watching movies. Qobuz felt like a neat solution that's still very easy to use and can tide me over until my homelab is running 24/7.
This is kind of offtopic, but if you don't mind, why did you decide to change to FLACs? Just a few days ago I went down a rabbit hole of learning more about the different encoding formats and codecs because I'm looking to start building my own collection and wanted to determine what level of quality was actually worth paying for. The short version is that, after reading layman's explanations, one or two scientific studies, and doing my own tests, I decided that 320mbps MP3s were the most I needed to bother with. I get that MP3s are lossy and FLACs (more or less) hit the sweet spot of being lossless while also compressed, but I (and most others, from the sound of it) can rarely hear a difference. I'm no audio engineer, but most of my education and work has relied on and developed my critical listening abilities, so I'm definitely more practiced than most people. Maybe I missed something in my research?
In a broad sense, peace of mind I suppose? Not having to worry whether I'm missing some frequencies that I could otherwise hear.
The only reason lossy formats exist is to save storage, but since storage isn't much of a concern to me, having everything in flac is acceptable for my use case.
Got it, that makes sense I suppose. Storage isn't exactly tight for me, but if I was to purchase and download my entire Spotify library as FLACs, I absolutely would not have space at the moment. So I'm just trying to plan ahead and be judicious.
I keep FLAC versions of my music archived essentially in case I ever want to re-encode. The files I actually listen to are Vorbis-encoded (which achieves roughly 85% compression over FLAC with no degradation I can hear), since e.g. I only have a few tens of gigabytes free on my phone. But non-portable bulk storage is very cheap, and even lossless audio just isn't that heavy storage-wise (a literal chronological year of FLAC audio is roughly 2.5TB), so the confidence that I can re-encode to some newfangled format without compounding losses is easily worth that.
(Now I guess I should caveat that my actual music library is a terrific mishmash, and includes stuff like mp3s shared with classmates from high school and college, audio ripped from Youtube videos, albums and soundtracks which were only offered in lossy formats, etc., etc. Most of my FLACs are actually ripped from CD. But my ideal format is FLAC for archival and Vorbis to put on devices to listen to.)
Ahh, gotcha. I read about using FLACs as archival versions so that you could re-encode to other formats if needed and decided it didn't seem likely to be something I would need, but I didn't consider the possibility of some newer, more efficient format coming along in the future. Wonder what the chances of that actually are.
Amazing. Exactly the opposite of what I like.
The article mentions Last.fm and says it became somewhat obsolete by recommendation builtin into streaming services. I never stopped using it, exactly because it works separately from how you consume your music. It doesn't vendorlock you into a specific service. And I have always found its recommendations to be way better than most of what the various streaming services threw at me. The only thing I found streaming services' recommendation useful for, was when they highlight a new release by an artist I have listened to a lot. However that is also increasingly becoming broken as it frequently features AI slop music that piggybacks on an existing artist name.
I know that last.fm has stuck around through it all somehow. Maybe I should take a look at it. It just always emphasized the social network part of listening to music and it's something I've been trying to cut from my life rather than enhance it's presence in it.
It is perfectly usable without any sort of social interactions or "friends". Its recommendation for similar artists or even "bands you haven't listened to in a while" is pretty great on its own. Your profile is public though, but you don't have to mention any identifiable information.
I’ve used last.fm for years without ever interacting with another person on it, so I wouldn’t be too worried about the social aspects.
Also, it’s kind of a ghost town these days anyway.
It's weird to me that people actually use those parts of Spotify. I've been using Spotify since it first opened up in the US, and have never really used them, because they're not good. I've always either found music on YouTube or maybe user-curated playlists on Spotify, then I listen and add music to my own categorical playlists.
Spotify, for me, is just a better iTunes that has
anythingmost things I want to search for, on-demand, and I shuffle my playlists or open full albums just like I would do back then.That cart is leading its horse. Guitars, in general, have been on the way out from pop music for decades. We've had over four decades of EDM and hip hop existing, and guitar genres are profoundly old school. (And, speaking from experience, it's now very approachable to learn to arrange music in a DAW, and learning some piano is essential for that, but guitar is very much a detour away from that goal.)
Thanks for sharing that article. It sums up a lot of my own feelings on “discovery” services. I dropped Spotify a few years ago when I realized that while I was “listening” to much more music than I used to, I wasn’t actively listening, I was just letting it play and fill silence. I’ve since moved back to acquiring albums via bandcamp, record stores, etc. I haven’t been spinning as much vinyl, but I did get an iPod classic on eBay last year and it’s one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. I like that it’s filled with music that I organically discovered and that it’s completely divorced from my phone or any apps.
I do truly recommend everyone take at least one step to de-algorithm their media, whether that’s music, movies, tv, or anything else. You don’t realize how much apps are governing your consumption of art until you go back to the old fashioned ways of discovering media, actually doing research, instead of letting an app dictate your tastes.
One other thing the article mentioned that I agree with is that it noted many people are using apps like Spotify to be a background soundtrack to their life to fill silence. I largely agree with that, I know a few people that cannot just exist and need some sort of stimulation in everything they do. Like a 2 minute drive to McDonald’s or whatever requires a soundtrack. This extends beyond music, too. For example, whenever I go to a sporting event, it’s depressing that as soon as there’s a break in the game, everyone’s phones come out. People are just straight up addicted to algorithms. Tildes seems like the kind of crowd to be hyper aware of this already, but yeah, try to take steps to divorce yourself if you can.
Mirror: https://archive.is/b4SHr
I guess the way I use Spotify is atypical? I've been using the Discover Weekly playlist of new songs and artists for years to find new tracks. It recommends things that are similar to artists and songs I like, but it's always fresh. It has helped me discover plenty of bands I now really enjoy like The Consouls.
When I find new songs I like, I add them to a playlist. When that playlist is full enough, I start a new one. This keeps my listening new and novel while also making it easy to replay and relive playlists I made at different moments in my life.
Music streaming services insist on running algorithms in the background. But what if, instead of force-feeding people algorithmic recommendations, they provided tools for music exploration? For instance, something like Every Noise at Once, which offers the virtual equivalent of walking along the various genre sections of a record store, or Rate Your Music Custom Charts, which allow you to find music according to parameters that you specify.
I think this is the problem. Music streaming services and tech companies in general aren't putting control in the hands of users because (1) doing so won't benefit these companies according to the metrics they are using, and (2) most users have embraced passive consumption.