6 ms·

Keep in mind this doesn't actually "copy the files" but creates songs and playlist entries in another service, so nothing nefarious is happening. Spotify is jus

by lxe 6y ago

Keep in mind this doesn't actually "copy the files" but creates songs and playlist entries in another service, so nothing nefarious is happening. Spotify is just salty there's a service that allows to quickly find the same songs elsewhere.

madbkarim 6y ago
Playing devil’s advocate here. But, I think it can be bad for Spotify if the user copies the playlist that’s being curated by Spotify to another streaming service. It’s good for them if they could add some friction to it by, you know—manually copy it and doesn’t let it update automatically every time they make a change to the playlist—by shutting down the API for this kind of request altogether. It’s not about “allows user to quickly find the same songs elsewhere”, because if you’re not ready for that then you shouldn’t probably be in this business in the first place.
- theshrike79 6y ago
  This is exactly what I use SongShift for :D Apple's "New Music Mix" is absolute shit compared to Spotify's "Discover Weekly". Most of the stuff Spotify suggests to me are either complete bangers or listen-worthy at worst. Apple's stuff though... It's like they don't have ANY intelligence in the system at all. I listen to 80's gangsta-rap once, then I get modern mumblerap shit for months and months. BUT I do love how Apple Music integrates with my iOS devices and I think the sound quality is better. So I just use Songshift to sync the discovery playlists to AM (semi)automatically.
  - tpmx 6y ago
    Btw, I wish Spotify would expand further on Discover Weekly/Release Radar: - a builtin weekly personal archive of DW/RR - a "get me more more interesting music in this style based on other peoples recommendations" button etc.
    - sbarre 6y ago
      It's not exactly what you're asking for, but a few years ago I started creating a new playlist at the start of each month, naming it "<Month> <Year>", and I add any songs I'm enjoying that month.. Most of them come from Discover Weekly or Release Radar, but sometimes for other sources. It's an easy and interesting way to go back in time and see what I was listening to etc.. I have a "house rule" where I never remove any songs from them after the fact. If I added it, then it stays. At the end of the year, I try to pick 2 songs from each month to make a curated "Best of <Year>" and then compare that to the algorithmic one that Spotify sends me. Anyways, it's been a really fun thing and a reasonable substitute for DW/RR archives.
      - Fnoord 6y ago
        Although this probably doesn't work for me (see entire post) I really like this idea. I still got my Starred playlist from back when you couldn't like. Been using dual like and Starred ever since they added like list. Since Starred playlist still contains dates, I could retroactively do what you did. However there would be some months with a lot and some with (almost) none and I have a tendency to hyperfocus on certain genres/artists for a while which might split but not on exact start of month.
      - avg_dev 6y ago
        I think you just gave me a new project idea!
    - mechathor 6y ago
      I’ve used IFTT successfully to run a weekly sync from the current Discover Weekly into a special DW Archive playlist so I don’t lose each weeks suggestions. It’s gotten the job done well.
      - tpmx 6y ago
        Yeah, Spotify has even contributed offical IFTTT triggers: https://ifttt.com/spotify https://ifttt.com/spotify I think this functionality belongs in the core experience.
  - bnt 6y ago
    Apple Music is shit. Period. I rage quit the 6 month free trial the other day after “Siri, play the US top charts” resulted in “Sure, here’s the top charts in Serbia”. I’m not in Serbia. Their discovery is crap, YouTube has better music recommendations, most EDM is missing. No value in it at all.
    - tpmx 6y ago
      Yeah. I thought everyone knew Apple Music is shit wrt their recommendations.
    - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
      I quit the trial because the web app was totally broken. Not only was it super slow, it was buggy. Clicking a song would often play a different one in the list and it would regularly get stuck trying to play a song.
    - musicale 6y ago
      > “Sure, here’s the top charts in Serbia”. I’m not in Serbia. Their discovery is crap That's exactly the sort of unexpected "music discovery" I'd be looking for. ;-)
  - fossuser 6y ago
    This is actually a fine thing for Spotify since you’re still paying for both. Now that they’ve threatened songshift they’re forcing you to make a choice (or manually sync). Hopefully you won’t choose Spotify.
    - kalleboo 6y ago
      Couldn't you do this on the Spotify free tier?
  - laurentb 6y ago
    I don't understand how many people seem to praise Spotify for their "Discover Weekly", it's been consistently shit for me for the past 2 years if not more. there's about 10 german songs in one of my playlists and I consistently get german tunes I don't care for and it doesn't seem to stop. On the other hand, I have a fair bit of French songs in about 3 or 4 playlists and yet have never gotten a recommendation of French stuff... I've tried to understand how the algo somewhat works to suggest stuff but with no luck... I keep hitting the don't like this song or artist and yest somehow I still manage to get dreadful recommendations each week :(
  - ragazzina 6y ago
    >Most of the stuff Spotify suggests to me are either complete bangers or listen-worthy at worst. Can I ask you how many songs are in your Liked playlist? It's a lucky week if I find 3 songs that I like in my Discover Weekly. The rest are forgettable at best, often terrible. I think I am not using Spotify the way I'm supposed to, because i find it really hard to discover new music I like.
    - karlshea 6y ago
      My Discover Weekly was really garbage awhile back until I made an effort to listen to a bunch of music of different genres that I'm into for a week or two. Also make a point to favorite stuff you'd actually like to listen to again. It really improved after that and it's typically pretty great (with some weeks being exceptions). For reference, I've got 1,272 tracks in "Liked".
- mortenjorck 6y ago
  There’s a simple solution to this, and that is to only allow playlist-level API access where the playlist author matches the account making the request. Users can transfer out any playlists they created, while Spotify keeps Rap Caviar or whatever exclusive to the service.
BlueGh0st 6y ago
Somewhat bemusingly, Spotify has an IFTTT applet that does nearly the same thing called "Automatically add your saved tracks in Spotify to a Google spreadsheet". https://ifttt.com/applets/n6RGLXBf https://ifttt.com/applets/n6RGLXBf
- theturtletalks 6y ago
  Songshift could allow users to add their own API keys to allow transfers at their own risk.
  - digdigdag 6y ago
    ...and spotify would then sue SongShift. Because why not? Even if you can empirically prove that SongShift is in the right and the API keys belong to the end users, Spotify would only need to litigate long enough for SongShift to give in, settle and disable such a feature again. That's how this game works.
    - edanm 6y ago
      I mean, wouldn't this worldview imply that literally any company with cash will be able to cause any company with less cash to do whatever they wanted?
      - vr46 6y ago
        The golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules.
    - r-w 6y ago
      Anti-SLAPP is a thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...
      - sjwright 6y ago
        Not everywhere.

by lxe 6y ago

madbkarim 6y ago

Playing devil’s advocate here. But, I think it can be bad for Spotify if the user copies the playlist that’s being curated by Spotify to another streaming service. It’s good for them if they could add some friction to it by, you know—manually copy it and doesn’t let it update automatically every time they make a change to the playlist—by shutting down the API for this kind of request altogether. It’s not about “allows user to quickly find the same songs elsewhere”, because if you’re not ready for that then you shouldn’t probably be in this business in the first place.

theshrike79 6y ago
This is exactly what I use SongShift for :D Apple's "New Music Mix" is absolute shit compared to Spotify's "Discover Weekly". Most of the stuff Spotify suggests to me are either complete bangers or listen-worthy at worst. Apple's stuff though... It's like they don't have ANY intelligence in the system at all. I listen to 80's gangsta-rap once, then I get modern mumblerap shit for months and months. BUT I do love how Apple Music integrates with my iOS devices and I think the sound quality is better. So I just use Songshift to sync the discovery playlists to AM (semi)automatically.
- tpmx 6y ago
  Btw, I wish Spotify would expand further on Discover Weekly/Release Radar: - a builtin weekly personal archive of DW/RR - a "get me more more interesting music in this style based on other peoples recommendations" button etc.
  - sbarre 6y ago
    It's not exactly what you're asking for, but a few years ago I started creating a new playlist at the start of each month, naming it "<Month> <Year>", and I add any songs I'm enjoying that month.. Most of them come from Discover Weekly or Release Radar, but sometimes for other sources. It's an easy and interesting way to go back in time and see what I was listening to etc.. I have a "house rule" where I never remove any songs from them after the fact. If I added it, then it stays. At the end of the year, I try to pick 2 songs from each month to make a curated "Best of <Year>" and then compare that to the algorithmic one that Spotify sends me. Anyways, it's been a really fun thing and a reasonable substitute for DW/RR archives.
    - Fnoord 6y ago
      Although this probably doesn't work for me (see entire post) I really like this idea. I still got my Starred playlist from back when you couldn't like. Been using dual like and Starred ever since they added like list. Since Starred playlist still contains dates, I could retroactively do what you did. However there would be some months with a lot and some with (almost) none and I have a tendency to hyperfocus on certain genres/artists for a while which might split but not on exact start of month.
    - avg_dev 6y ago
      I think you just gave me a new project idea!
  - mechathor 6y ago
    I’ve used IFTT successfully to run a weekly sync from the current Discover Weekly into a special DW Archive playlist so I don’t lose each weeks suggestions. It’s gotten the job done well.
    - tpmx 6y ago
      Yeah, Spotify has even contributed offical IFTTT triggers: https://ifttt.com/spotify https://ifttt.com/spotify I think this functionality belongs in the core experience.
- bnt 6y ago
  Apple Music is shit. Period. I rage quit the 6 month free trial the other day after “Siri, play the US top charts” resulted in “Sure, here’s the top charts in Serbia”. I’m not in Serbia. Their discovery is crap, YouTube has better music recommendations, most EDM is missing. No value in it at all.
  - tpmx 6y ago
    Yeah. I thought everyone knew Apple Music is shit wrt their recommendations.
  - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
    I quit the trial because the web app was totally broken. Not only was it super slow, it was buggy. Clicking a song would often play a different one in the list and it would regularly get stuck trying to play a song.
  - musicale 6y ago
    > “Sure, here’s the top charts in Serbia”. I’m not in Serbia. Their discovery is crap That's exactly the sort of unexpected "music discovery" I'd be looking for. ;-)
- fossuser 6y ago
  This is actually a fine thing for Spotify since you’re still paying for both. Now that they’ve threatened songshift they’re forcing you to make a choice (or manually sync). Hopefully you won’t choose Spotify.
  - kalleboo 6y ago
    Couldn't you do this on the Spotify free tier?
- laurentb 6y ago
  I don't understand how many people seem to praise Spotify for their "Discover Weekly", it's been consistently shit for me for the past 2 years if not more. there's about 10 german songs in one of my playlists and I consistently get german tunes I don't care for and it doesn't seem to stop. On the other hand, I have a fair bit of French songs in about 3 or 4 playlists and yet have never gotten a recommendation of French stuff... I've tried to understand how the algo somewhat works to suggest stuff but with no luck... I keep hitting the don't like this song or artist and yest somehow I still manage to get dreadful recommendations each week :(
- ragazzina 6y ago
  >Most of the stuff Spotify suggests to me are either complete bangers or listen-worthy at worst. Can I ask you how many songs are in your Liked playlist? It's a lucky week if I find 3 songs that I like in my Discover Weekly. The rest are forgettable at best, often terrible. I think I am not using Spotify the way I'm supposed to, because i find it really hard to discover new music I like.
  - karlshea 6y ago
    My Discover Weekly was really garbage awhile back until I made an effort to listen to a bunch of music of different genres that I'm into for a week or two. Also make a point to favorite stuff you'd actually like to listen to again. It really improved after that and it's typically pretty great (with some weeks being exceptions). For reference, I've got 1,272 tracks in "Liked".
mortenjorck 6y ago
There’s a simple solution to this, and that is to only allow playlist-level API access where the playlist author matches the account making the request. Users can transfer out any playlists they created, while Spotify keeps Rap Caviar or whatever exclusive to the service.

BlueGh0st 6y ago

Somewhat bemusingly, Spotify has an IFTTT applet that does nearly the same thing called "Automatically add your saved tracks in Spotify to a Google spreadsheet". https://ifttt.com/applets/n6RGLXBf https://ifttt.com/applets/n6RGLXBf

theturtletalks 6y ago
Songshift could allow users to add their own API keys to allow transfers at their own risk.
- digdigdag 6y ago
  ...and spotify would then sue SongShift. Because why not? Even if you can empirically prove that SongShift is in the right and the API keys belong to the end users, Spotify would only need to litigate long enough for SongShift to give in, settle and disable such a feature again. That's how this game works.
  - edanm 6y ago
    I mean, wouldn't this worldview imply that literally any company with cash will be able to cause any company with less cash to do whatever they wanted?
    - vr46 6y ago
      The golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules.
  - r-w 6y ago
    Anti-SLAPP is a thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...
    - sjwright 6y ago
      Not everywhere.