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I really hope Spotify succeeds. I've mentioned this before on Hacker News, but as an artist, the algorithmic playlists are amazing. On a good week I get ~4,000

I really hope Spotify succeeds. I've mentioned this before on Hacker News, but as an artist, the algorithmic playlists are amazing. On a good week I get ~4,000 new listeners. It's incredible. Discovery Weekly drives the most but Release Radar and Radio also send a good chunk. Apple Music on the hand hasn't even verified my artist profile— which I need in order to view analytics. So I don't even know if people listen to me there.

Improvotter 9y ago
I constantly listen to Discover Weekly on an almost daily basis and always find some great songs that I otherwise would never have found. Spotify is THE service I would never want to be without.
estomagordo 9y ago
Glad to hear Discover Weekly works out that way for you as an artist. As a listener, I'm quite happy about it too. Sure, a lof of there is a bit meh to me, but I've easily discovered 50 new artists that I like a reasonable lot through that channel.
sharkweek 9y ago
On the other side of this, I love how easy it is to find new music on Spotify! Every week, the "Discover Weekly" playlist nets me at least one or two new artists I end up loving.
- tj-teej 9y ago
  Discover Weekly will suggest a song I loved 10 years ago and completely forgot about. It's really great stuff.
- shostack 9y ago
  I've found I almost exclusively listen to "Discover Weekly" and "Release Radar" during my commutes, and every now and then grab a song for some playlists for other times. I do wish there were better ways to shape what songs end up in there as sometimes it can be a bit of a miss.
- jqbx_jason 9y ago
  If you ever get tired of Discover Weekly give JQBX[1] a try. I built it so that I could bust out of the same old genres Spotify tends to re-suggest every week. [1] https://www.jqbx.fm https://www.jqbx.fm
  - rileyt 9y ago
    This is neat! It's cool how powerful Spotify's API is. I built Amplitude [1], which uses Spotify's recommendations API to create artist based discovery playlists, if you need more new music than Discover Weekly provides and also Rediscover [2], to save your discover weekly playlists so you don't lose songs. [1] https://amplitudeapp.com/ https://amplitudeapp.com/ [2] https://rediscover.rile.yt/ https://rediscover.rile.yt/
  - sp00ls 9y ago
    This looks great, I'm definitely going to give it a try. Spotify has been slowly driving me crazy with the same exact songs in my daily mixes day after day just reshuffling.
    - dabockster 9y ago
      This is the big reason why I switched to Apple Music. Spotify has an amazing UI/UX, but it doesn't change the fact that I don't want to listen to the same stuff each week. I have FM radio for that.
  - tim-- 9y ago
    Jason, this is amazing! Every few years I look for something that will be able to suggest new/different music to listen to, and the product gets killed. Spotify used to have apps which had something like this (... I forget the name of the app), it's good to have a replacement. I would happily pay $1 a month for this. Where is the $12 a year subscription?
- lolive 9y ago
  I am a subscriber of Spotify, because I follow the "This Week's Releases" playlist of jlarome. It is some kind of ancestor of the automatic algorithms, but I always find some interesting new stuff in genres that I rarely listen to, otherwise. cf https://open.spotify.com/user/jlarome/playlist/6KErOvRQFEAnY5SdrrBDOD https://open.spotify.com/user/jlarome/playlist/6KErOvRQFEAnY... (and https://open.spotify.com/user/jlarome/playlist/6CfIDri6dejaBC1WMUbin0 https://open.spotify.com/user/jlarome/playlist/6CfIDri6dejaB... for "Last week's releases").
actuator 9y ago
Even I hope so. Discover Weekly and their curated playlists are some of the best I have seen across all music services. Even their cross platform support is the best. Play Music has a terrible app and web UI. Even Apple Music doesn't fare any better.
- foepys 9y ago
  > Even their cross platform support is the best. Even if it's based on Electron, their Linux desktop client at least exists and this is reason enough for me to keep being a subscriber. The web player is working but is missing features and has some major bugs (e.g., I cannot "dislike" a song on a playlist). My one wish would be for it to get on the same level of playlist management that Amarok, Foobar2000 and similar music players were on like 15 years ago... Amazon Music's desktop client, despite also being Electron-based, is only available on Windows and Mac and its usability is so bad, I cannot even describe it. There is a reason why Amazon Music is a lot cheaper: it's worse in every metric beside costs that I were evaluating.
  - arghwhat 9y ago
    > despite also being Electron-based, is only available on Windows and Mac Electron does not make cross-compilation easy. It's about as cumbersome as building any other C++ project for multiple platforms.
  - diggan 9y ago
    Since when is Spotify a Electron application? I recall it having the UI made with JavaScript, HTML and CSS but all the rest is handled with C++. Think they were using Chromium Embedded Framework.
    - foepys 9y ago
      Oh, I were under the impression that it's electron. Even better then.
  - kristianc 9y ago
    As far as I know the Ubuntu port was made by Canonical and is a Snap package, not an Electron app.
wufufufu 9y ago
Wow, that sounds great for small/new artists.
pythonaut_16 9y ago
I also hope Spotify succeeds because this is not an area where Google, Apple, and Amazon bring anything unique or need to succeed.
juicy-fruit 9y ago
I've had Spotify before and switched to Apple Music because of the student pricing. When I had Spotify, I would discover new music and new artists all the time. Since getting Apple Music, I really haven't discovered anyone new. Although I've graduated, Apple seems to think I'm still in school and is still only charging me $5/month. The moment that ends, I'm switching to Spotify. Also, the Apple Music app on iOS is horrible. Spotify's app is so much better.
- DennisAleynikov 9y ago
  You might have already known this but Spotify had the same $5/mo student discount but they may be more diligent about checking your enrollment. Def loved the 5 dollar plan :)
  - iamjk 9y ago
    And it now comes with Hulu for free! (At least in the US)
    - dag11 9y ago
      And they have a deal with my credit card where it's 50% off, so I pay $2.50/month for Spotify and Hulu :D
    - froidpink 9y ago
      It comes with Headspace free in the UK curiously enough
- vesrah 9y ago
  The only annoying issue I have with IOS Spotify is that it caches your playlists until ??? or the application gets restarted. I frequently add songs to my library at work, but find that the songs don't show up on my phone when leaving for the day.
- spike021 9y ago
  Almost posted the exact same comment. I know Spotify has a similar student deal but for whatever reason I went with AM and now that I've graduated I've just kind of stuck with it since they still charge me the student rate. Apple Music is incredibly awful at music discovery, and even fairly bad when it comes to just showing me music I might be interested based on what I've listened to. For example I might listen to one song somewhere without necessarily liking the genre of it, and then AM repeatedly shows me music for that genre. Not very intelligent.
extr 9y ago
I've said it before, but Spotify is the single most valuable subscription service I pay for. Video streaming is convenient, but some of the music I've come across on Spotify has literally changed my life and that would never have happened if I was still forced to torrent everything. It's just so easy, it's everything they said the steaming model would be.
- visarga 9y ago
  > the steaming model
  - curiousGambler 9y ago
    Care to elaborate? Edit: Cuz steaming? lol
- stochastic_monk 9y ago
  I use Tidal more often because it has higher quality audio most of the time and a better UI, but fall back to Spotify prn. The emphasis on original music is nice. I subscribe to both because one is not a subset of the other, which I dislike. But hey, it’s been great, and I’ve actually found new music I love on Spotify/Tidal, unlike every other platform which has attempted recommendations.
  - p1esk 9y ago
    Can you tell audio quality of Spotify vs Tidal in a blind test?
    - Nadya 9y ago
      The default quality for the desktop app is in OGG Vorbis at 160kbps and for the mobile app is 96kbps. With a Premium subscription you can change these to 'Extreme' (320kbps). The web player reaches is 128kbps AAC or 256kbps with Premium [0]. Many users might be unaware they can change the quality at all (or they don't use the desktop app but use the web player so can't change the quality at all). I can definitely hear the difference between 96/160/256. Between 256/320/lossless I'd probably fail an ABX test [1] and I'm very doubtful of anyone claiming to hear the differences between 320/lossless regardless of how much of an audiophile they claim to be if they refuse to take an ABX test. I'd maybe believe telling 256 and lossless apart but still be doubtful without any ABX results. [0] https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/system_settings/high-quality-streaming/ https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/system_settings... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABX_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABX_test
TomK32 9y ago
Discovery. That's what I loved about last.fm in the olden days, as a listener. My scrobbler profile is still a bit extreme in the sheer amount of artists and music I listen to. Yet I never moved on to Spotify, rather started browsing and buying on bandcamp (who have a great weekly podcast, just enough for me).
- xikrib 9y ago
  Spotify's head of product was also head of product at last.fm
- ryanmerket 9y ago
  Spotify has a sett my that allows you to scribble to last.fm. I still do it to this day.
superted 9y ago
If you do not mind me asking, as a fellow artist, how have you reached the point of getting this regular influx of listeners on Spotify? Through external promotion or is this solely driven by the Spotify platform and its algorithms?
Tiktaalik 9y ago
I enjoy Spotify so much that Apple's weird hard ball with Spotify is making me less interested in their products. I actually think the Apple Watch is a pretty interesting product and I'm a bit interested in buying one, but the lack of Spotify support has turned me off the idea for the time being.
TekMol 9y ago
What means 'new listeners' in this context?
yash1th 9y ago
For me it has to be Apple music because of library. AM has so many Indian songs (90s) library than Spotify. Otherwise the UI and app are awful with AM
- character0 9y ago
  You should check out Saavn for more Indian music. I worked at their parent company as an intern back in the day.
indescions_2018 9y ago
One of Spotify's engineering managers provided some details on the Discover Weekly implementation. From Idea to Execution: Spotify's Discover Weekly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A259Yo8hBRs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A259Yo8hBRs
thirdsun 9y ago
Ok, but do those listeners earn you any significant money? Maybe compared to a traditional album sold on Bandcamp?
- KozmoNau7 9y ago
  Maybe not directly, but it does gain him new fans, which means more people show up at shows, which means he can get booked for bigger shows and sell more merch.
  - thirdsun 9y ago
    Yes, I see this argument everywhere, but I really don't like the idea of artists earning their money with cheap merchandise instead of the product itself: The music. The album should be the good to sell, not some unnecessary accessoires. And remember that not every project is a rock band. Think of an ambient, experimental artist creating calm music for home listening and an adult audience - those artists won't fill any venues or impress their listeners with colorful t-shirts. They rely on album sales.
    - KozmoNau7 9y ago
      The vast majority of money-earning musicians don't earn anything significant from album sales, they have to rely on live gigs and merchandise sales. This shouldn't come as a surprise. And a lot of musicians don't make anything, or are actually losing money. But they keep doing it for the love of the art. Would I like to see these talented individuals properly compensated? Hell yes! But between predatory record labels and the sheer vast number of people out there also producing music, it's not easy to break through.

Improvotter 9y ago

I constantly listen to Discover Weekly on an almost daily basis and always find some great songs that I otherwise would never have found. Spotify is THE service I would never want to be without.

estomagordo 9y ago

Glad to hear Discover Weekly works out that way for you as an artist. As a listener, I'm quite happy about it too. Sure, a lof of there is a bit meh to me, but I've easily discovered 50 new artists that I like a reasonable lot through that channel.

sharkweek 9y ago

On the other side of this, I love how easy it is to find new music on Spotify! Every week, the "Discover Weekly" playlist nets me at least one or two new artists I end up loving.

tj-teej 9y ago
Discover Weekly will suggest a song I loved 10 years ago and completely forgot about. It's really great stuff.
shostack 9y ago
I've found I almost exclusively listen to "Discover Weekly" and "Release Radar" during my commutes, and every now and then grab a song for some playlists for other times. I do wish there were better ways to shape what songs end up in there as sometimes it can be a bit of a miss.
jqbx_jason 9y ago
If you ever get tired of Discover Weekly give JQBX[1] a try. I built it so that I could bust out of the same old genres Spotify tends to re-suggest every week. [1] https://www.jqbx.fm https://www.jqbx.fm
- rileyt 9y ago
  This is neat! It's cool how powerful Spotify's API is. I built Amplitude [1], which uses Spotify's recommendations API to create artist based discovery playlists, if you need more new music than Discover Weekly provides and also Rediscover [2], to save your discover weekly playlists so you don't lose songs. [1] https://amplitudeapp.com/ https://amplitudeapp.com/ [2] https://rediscover.rile.yt/ https://rediscover.rile.yt/
- sp00ls 9y ago
  This looks great, I'm definitely going to give it a try. Spotify has been slowly driving me crazy with the same exact songs in my daily mixes day after day just reshuffling.
  - dabockster 9y ago
    This is the big reason why I switched to Apple Music. Spotify has an amazing UI/UX, but it doesn't change the fact that I don't want to listen to the same stuff each week. I have FM radio for that.
- tim-- 9y ago
  Jason, this is amazing! Every few years I look for something that will be able to suggest new/different music to listen to, and the product gets killed. Spotify used to have apps which had something like this (... I forget the name of the app), it's good to have a replacement. I would happily pay $1 a month for this. Where is the $12 a year subscription?
lolive 9y ago
I am a subscriber of Spotify, because I follow the "This Week's Releases" playlist of jlarome. It is some kind of ancestor of the automatic algorithms, but I always find some interesting new stuff in genres that I rarely listen to, otherwise. cf https://open.spotify.com/user/jlarome/playlist/6KErOvRQFEAnY5SdrrBDOD https://open.spotify.com/user/jlarome/playlist/6KErOvRQFEAnY... (and https://open.spotify.com/user/jlarome/playlist/6CfIDri6dejaBC1WMUbin0 https://open.spotify.com/user/jlarome/playlist/6CfIDri6dejaB... for "Last week's releases").

actuator 9y ago

Even I hope so. Discover Weekly and their curated playlists are some of the best I have seen across all music services. Even their cross platform support is the best. Play Music has a terrible app and web UI. Even Apple Music doesn't fare any better.

foepys 9y ago
> Even their cross platform support is the best. Even if it's based on Electron, their Linux desktop client at least exists and this is reason enough for me to keep being a subscriber. The web player is working but is missing features and has some major bugs (e.g., I cannot "dislike" a song on a playlist). My one wish would be for it to get on the same level of playlist management that Amarok, Foobar2000 and similar music players were on like 15 years ago... Amazon Music's desktop client, despite also being Electron-based, is only available on Windows and Mac and its usability is so bad, I cannot even describe it. There is a reason why Amazon Music is a lot cheaper: it's worse in every metric beside costs that I were evaluating.
- arghwhat 9y ago
  > despite also being Electron-based, is only available on Windows and Mac Electron does not make cross-compilation easy. It's about as cumbersome as building any other C++ project for multiple platforms.
- diggan 9y ago
  Since when is Spotify a Electron application? I recall it having the UI made with JavaScript, HTML and CSS but all the rest is handled with C++. Think they were using Chromium Embedded Framework.
  - foepys 9y ago
    Oh, I were under the impression that it's electron. Even better then.
- kristianc 9y ago
  As far as I know the Ubuntu port was made by Canonical and is a Snap package, not an Electron app.

wufufufu 9y ago

Wow, that sounds great for small/new artists.

pythonaut_16 9y ago

I also hope Spotify succeeds because this is not an area where Google, Apple, and Amazon bring anything unique or need to succeed.

juicy-fruit 9y ago

I've had Spotify before and switched to Apple Music because of the student pricing. When I had Spotify, I would discover new music and new artists all the time. Since getting Apple Music, I really haven't discovered anyone new. Although I've graduated, Apple seems to think I'm still in school and is still only charging me $5/month. The moment that ends, I'm switching to Spotify. Also, the Apple Music app on iOS is horrible. Spotify's app is so much better.

DennisAleynikov 9y ago
You might have already known this but Spotify had the same $5/mo student discount but they may be more diligent about checking your enrollment. Def loved the 5 dollar plan :)
- iamjk 9y ago
  And it now comes with Hulu for free! (At least in the US)
  - dag11 9y ago
    And they have a deal with my credit card where it's 50% off, so I pay $2.50/month for Spotify and Hulu :D
  - froidpink 9y ago
    It comes with Headspace free in the UK curiously enough
vesrah 9y ago
The only annoying issue I have with IOS Spotify is that it caches your playlists until ??? or the application gets restarted. I frequently add songs to my library at work, but find that the songs don't show up on my phone when leaving for the day.
spike021 9y ago
Almost posted the exact same comment. I know Spotify has a similar student deal but for whatever reason I went with AM and now that I've graduated I've just kind of stuck with it since they still charge me the student rate. Apple Music is incredibly awful at music discovery, and even fairly bad when it comes to just showing me music I might be interested based on what I've listened to. For example I might listen to one song somewhere without necessarily liking the genre of it, and then AM repeatedly shows me music for that genre. Not very intelligent.

extr 9y ago

I've said it before, but Spotify is the single most valuable subscription service I pay for. Video streaming is convenient, but some of the music I've come across on Spotify has literally changed my life and that would never have happened if I was still forced to torrent everything. It's just so easy, it's everything they said the steaming model would be.

visarga 9y ago
> the steaming model
- curiousGambler 9y ago
  Care to elaborate? Edit: Cuz steaming? lol
stochastic_monk 9y ago
I use Tidal more often because it has higher quality audio most of the time and a better UI, but fall back to Spotify prn. The emphasis on original music is nice. I subscribe to both because one is not a subset of the other, which I dislike. But hey, it’s been great, and I’ve actually found new music I love on Spotify/Tidal, unlike every other platform which has attempted recommendations.
- p1esk 9y ago
  Can you tell audio quality of Spotify vs Tidal in a blind test?
  - Nadya 9y ago
    The default quality for the desktop app is in OGG Vorbis at 160kbps and for the mobile app is 96kbps. With a Premium subscription you can change these to 'Extreme' (320kbps). The web player reaches is 128kbps AAC or 256kbps with Premium [0]. Many users might be unaware they can change the quality at all (or they don't use the desktop app but use the web player so can't change the quality at all). I can definitely hear the difference between 96/160/256. Between 256/320/lossless I'd probably fail an ABX test [1] and I'm very doubtful of anyone claiming to hear the differences between 320/lossless regardless of how much of an audiophile they claim to be if they refuse to take an ABX test. I'd maybe believe telling 256 and lossless apart but still be doubtful without any ABX results. [0] https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/system_settings/high-quality-streaming/ https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/system_settings... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABX_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABX_test

TomK32 9y ago

Discovery. That's what I loved about last.fm in the olden days, as a listener. My scrobbler profile is still a bit extreme in the sheer amount of artists and music I listen to. Yet I never moved on to Spotify, rather started browsing and buying on bandcamp (who have a great weekly podcast, just enough for me).

xikrib 9y ago
Spotify's head of product was also head of product at last.fm
ryanmerket 9y ago
Spotify has a sett my that allows you to scribble to last.fm. I still do it to this day.

superted 9y ago

If you do not mind me asking, as a fellow artist, how have you reached the point of getting this regular influx of listeners on Spotify? Through external promotion or is this solely driven by the Spotify platform and its algorithms?

Tiktaalik 9y ago

I enjoy Spotify so much that Apple's weird hard ball with Spotify is making me less interested in their products. I actually think the Apple Watch is a pretty interesting product and I'm a bit interested in buying one, but the lack of Spotify support has turned me off the idea for the time being.

TekMol 9y ago

What means 'new listeners' in this context?

yash1th 9y ago

For me it has to be Apple music because of library. AM has so many Indian songs (90s) library than Spotify. Otherwise the UI and app are awful with AM

character0 9y ago
You should check out Saavn for more Indian music. I worked at their parent company as an intern back in the day.

indescions_2018 9y ago

One of Spotify's engineering managers provided some details on the Discover Weekly implementation. From Idea to Execution: Spotify's Discover Weekly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A259Yo8hBRs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A259Yo8hBRs

thirdsun 9y ago

Ok, but do those listeners earn you any significant money? Maybe compared to a traditional album sold on Bandcamp?

KozmoNau7 9y ago
Maybe not directly, but it does gain him new fans, which means more people show up at shows, which means he can get booked for bigger shows and sell more merch.
- thirdsun 9y ago
  Yes, I see this argument everywhere, but I really don't like the idea of artists earning their money with cheap merchandise instead of the product itself: The music. The album should be the good to sell, not some unnecessary accessoires. And remember that not every project is a rock band. Think of an ambient, experimental artist creating calm music for home listening and an adult audience - those artists won't fill any venues or impress their listeners with colorful t-shirts. They rely on album sales.
  - KozmoNau7 9y ago
    The vast majority of money-earning musicians don't earn anything significant from album sales, they have to rely on live gigs and merchandise sales. This shouldn't come as a surprise. And a lot of musicians don't make anything, or are actually losing money. But they keep doing it for the love of the art. Would I like to see these talented individuals properly compensated? Hell yes! But between predatory record labels and the sheer vast number of people out there also producing music, it's not easy to break through.