4 ms·

Spotify is: a library, a streaming service, and a web/desktop player. This is: a streaming service and a web player. You have to provide your own library, which

by jmilloy 11y ago

Spotify is: a library, a streaming service, and a web/desktop player. This is: a streaming service and a web player. You have to provide your own library, which I think goes hand in hand with self-hosted.

laumars 11y ago
Indeed. This is how I describe Subsonic to people as well. In fact there's quite a few of these solutions out there: Subsonic (and clones, eg Madsonic), Plex, Ampache, PlayOn, mpd (which has a plethora of supported web frontends). A lot of standalone players also support web frontends too, eg VLC. So it's quite an established market this is joining - which is great for us given the variety of choices we have available to us.
krisdol 11y ago
Spotify is all about Music Discovery. It is: 1. a music recommendation engine 2. social sharing of playlists 3. a music subscription service To me, those are more important than the player itself -- in fact, I'd say #2 and #3 on that list are the defining aspects of Spotify for the general user, where #1 is more of a personal killer-feature for me.
- jmilloy 11y ago
  Yeah, that's fair. When you self-host, you obviously also miss out on the social aspects, which includes music recommendation, unless you use a third-party service. p.s. Do you really find that Spotify's music discovery is better than last.fm + curated reviews? New Releases could be a differentiator if they would at least offer a filter for full albums (not to mention filters by genre or "recommended for you").
  - krisdol 11y ago
    I don't know if it's better, but it's easy. I rarely look at my last.fm scrobbles. For me it's about hearing a variety of good music while I'm banging out code, driving, or gaming. I sometimes use last.fm and hypemachine to dig deeper but there are many more steps involved to get to hearing music that way. With Spotify, I get to be lazy. Discover Weekly has been great. Shared playlists are great too. As for radios, they were OK when I first threw my music at them, but now I just hear the same old stuff.
- wmeredith 11y ago
  I agree. In fact Spotify is kind of a shitty music player, but is so good at the other stuff that I love it.
- untog 11y ago
  Spotify is "all about" whatever you use it for. As someone who does not share playlists nor use the sub-par radio feature, it certainly isn't about music discovery for me.
  - krisdol 11y ago
    Do you use it for its player, or its cloud library? Music subscription was on my list. But, if you already have all the songs you'd listen to, and don't care for finding new music, what do you use it for?
    - kenbellows 11y ago
      If you already have all the songs you'd listen to, you won't be using Spotify. My use of Spotify has historically been about listening to music I love without having to purchase/download it myself. That's plenty incentive without any of the social/discovery aspects.
      - jmilloy 11y ago
        You're mostly right, but the streaming service is useful, too, even if you have all the songs you listen to somewhere. That's particularly relevant considering the OP.
      - mbrock 11y ago
        The way I use Spotify is I just use the "saved albums" feature, plus offline caching. This is how I like music: as objects called albums, which I "have" so I can browse and play them easily. I feel like most music systems, Spotify too, does a kind of violence to the album structure, with all their playlists and shuffling and whatnot. The very idea of "streaming" is vaguely antithetical to the album structure and to the idea of possessing discrete artifacts... If I designed the perfect music player for me, it would almost be a kind of simulator of a record collection with a record player. Anyway, I am also completely uninterested in Spotify's "social" features. I think their metadata interface is pretty poor and their "Related Artists" is totally haphazard compared to the actual musical knowledge embedded in databases like AllMusicGuide (which I adore). I also get irrationally upset about Spotify's prominent display of what I call lifestyle propaganda, like their playlists of the day like "Saturday Beach Party Bonanza" or "Yoga Morning Zen Relaxathon" or whatever. (For some reason I never see "Technical Death Metal Tuesday" or "Zappaesque Hell Jazz Extravaganza" or "Lonely Bong Haze Headphone Friday".) So I dream of a music player with another type of appeal, more album orientation, more facts and knowledge based relational metadata, and better catalogue curation (Spotify's artist pages are overloaded and unorganized and the metadata for classical and jazz especially are messy).
- unethical_ban 11y ago
  I use it to play songs I already know and like. Its radio service is worse than Pandora, and I don't care to socialize music via the app - my friends and I use our voices. I /do/, however, have a large music library for which a web player/library would be awesome.
- danvayn 11y ago
  last.fm has a much better recommendation system.
- samstave 11y ago
  Re: 1. -- I find the recommendation engine ABHORRENT. Disclaimer -- I have only recently started to use Spotify on a daily basis. And typically I am playing an already known-good-to-me Artist channel, and I am admittedly a newbie to using spotify in general. With that said though, there was some feature, I believe it was called "discover music while you listen" or some such thing that would play some other artists amongst that which I chose to shuffle/play. The genres werent even in the same galaxy! I listen to EDM and industrial almost exclusively. It was interjecting Taylor swift, some country-sounding stuff and some other stuff that I couldnt identify but was the complete opposite of the spectrum from what I was into... Further, finding a particular song that has the same word in the title as some song that is being heavily pushed seems impossible. There is some band called TOVE LO -- and any time I search for a song actually titled "habits" not by them - the only thing it shows me is this TOVE LO page... so, yeah - my experience with their recommendations has been worse than sub par.
  - rjp0008 11y ago
    I found 3 different "Habits" songs relatively easily. Are you sure it was Taylor Swift? Or just Taylor Swift-esque? Because she has relatively-famously not allowed her music on the platform. I would recommend giving Spotify another shot, maybe spend some time favoriting and saving songs you do like, as it's recommendations have been on point for me.
    - samstave 11y ago
      I was looking for "Maria Mena, Habits" and various remixes... Maybe she isnt on Spotify... But ill give it a try...
- danpalmer 11y ago
  > I'd say #2 and #3 on that list are the defining aspects of Spotify for the general user I agree. I think most users find it very difficult to differentiate between features, so Spotify is 1, 2 and 3 all together. This is a sad state of affairs, because it means users are far less able to choose a product or service that solves the problems they actually have.

by jmilloy 11y ago

laumars 11y ago

Indeed. This is how I describe Subsonic to people as well. In fact there's quite a few of these solutions out there: Subsonic (and clones, eg Madsonic), Plex, Ampache, PlayOn, mpd (which has a plethora of supported web frontends). A lot of standalone players also support web frontends too, eg VLC. So it's quite an established market this is joining - which is great for us given the variety of choices we have available to us.

krisdol 11y ago

Spotify is all about Music Discovery. It is: 1. a music recommendation engine 2. social sharing of playlists 3. a music subscription service To me, those are more important than the player itself -- in fact, I'd say #2 and #3 on that list are the defining aspects of Spotify for the general user, where #1 is more of a personal killer-feature for me.

jmilloy 11y ago
Yeah, that's fair. When you self-host, you obviously also miss out on the social aspects, which includes music recommendation, unless you use a third-party service. p.s. Do you really find that Spotify's music discovery is better than last.fm + curated reviews? New Releases could be a differentiator if they would at least offer a filter for full albums (not to mention filters by genre or "recommended for you").
- krisdol 11y ago
  I don't know if it's better, but it's easy. I rarely look at my last.fm scrobbles. For me it's about hearing a variety of good music while I'm banging out code, driving, or gaming. I sometimes use last.fm and hypemachine to dig deeper but there are many more steps involved to get to hearing music that way. With Spotify, I get to be lazy. Discover Weekly has been great. Shared playlists are great too. As for radios, they were OK when I first threw my music at them, but now I just hear the same old stuff.
wmeredith 11y ago
I agree. In fact Spotify is kind of a shitty music player, but is so good at the other stuff that I love it.
untog 11y ago
Spotify is "all about" whatever you use it for. As someone who does not share playlists nor use the sub-par radio feature, it certainly isn't about music discovery for me.
- krisdol 11y ago
  Do you use it for its player, or its cloud library? Music subscription was on my list. But, if you already have all the songs you'd listen to, and don't care for finding new music, what do you use it for?
  - kenbellows 11y ago
    If you already have all the songs you'd listen to, you won't be using Spotify. My use of Spotify has historically been about listening to music I love without having to purchase/download it myself. That's plenty incentive without any of the social/discovery aspects.
    - jmilloy 11y ago
      You're mostly right, but the streaming service is useful, too, even if you have all the songs you listen to somewhere. That's particularly relevant considering the OP.
    - mbrock 11y ago
      The way I use Spotify is I just use the "saved albums" feature, plus offline caching. This is how I like music: as objects called albums, which I "have" so I can browse and play them easily. I feel like most music systems, Spotify too, does a kind of violence to the album structure, with all their playlists and shuffling and whatnot. The very idea of "streaming" is vaguely antithetical to the album structure and to the idea of possessing discrete artifacts... If I designed the perfect music player for me, it would almost be a kind of simulator of a record collection with a record player. Anyway, I am also completely uninterested in Spotify's "social" features. I think their metadata interface is pretty poor and their "Related Artists" is totally haphazard compared to the actual musical knowledge embedded in databases like AllMusicGuide (which I adore). I also get irrationally upset about Spotify's prominent display of what I call lifestyle propaganda, like their playlists of the day like "Saturday Beach Party Bonanza" or "Yoga Morning Zen Relaxathon" or whatever. (For some reason I never see "Technical Death Metal Tuesday" or "Zappaesque Hell Jazz Extravaganza" or "Lonely Bong Haze Headphone Friday".) So I dream of a music player with another type of appeal, more album orientation, more facts and knowledge based relational metadata, and better catalogue curation (Spotify's artist pages are overloaded and unorganized and the metadata for classical and jazz especially are messy).
unethical_ban 11y ago
I use it to play songs I already know and like. Its radio service is worse than Pandora, and I don't care to socialize music via the app - my friends and I use our voices. I /do/, however, have a large music library for which a web player/library would be awesome.
danvayn 11y ago
last.fm has a much better recommendation system.
samstave 11y ago
Re: 1. -- I find the recommendation engine ABHORRENT. Disclaimer -- I have only recently started to use Spotify on a daily basis. And typically I am playing an already known-good-to-me Artist channel, and I am admittedly a newbie to using spotify in general. With that said though, there was some feature, I believe it was called "discover music while you listen" or some such thing that would play some other artists amongst that which I chose to shuffle/play. The genres werent even in the same galaxy! I listen to EDM and industrial almost exclusively. It was interjecting Taylor swift, some country-sounding stuff and some other stuff that I couldnt identify but was the complete opposite of the spectrum from what I was into... Further, finding a particular song that has the same word in the title as some song that is being heavily pushed seems impossible. There is some band called TOVE LO -- and any time I search for a song actually titled "habits" not by them - the only thing it shows me is this TOVE LO page... so, yeah - my experience with their recommendations has been worse than sub par.
- rjp0008 11y ago
  I found 3 different "Habits" songs relatively easily. Are you sure it was Taylor Swift? Or just Taylor Swift-esque? Because she has relatively-famously not allowed her music on the platform. I would recommend giving Spotify another shot, maybe spend some time favoriting and saving songs you do like, as it's recommendations have been on point for me.
  - samstave 11y ago
    I was looking for "Maria Mena, Habits" and various remixes... Maybe she isnt on Spotify... But ill give it a try...
danpalmer 11y ago
> I'd say #2 and #3 on that list are the defining aspects of Spotify for the general user I agree. I think most users find it very difficult to differentiate between features, so Spotify is 1, 2 and 3 all together. This is a sad state of affairs, because it means users are far less able to choose a product or service that solves the problems they actually have.