26 ms·

The beauty of this comment is that it's probably serious, but it also perfectly satirizes HN's nostalgia for the 90s internet and software. We started with Spo

The beauty of this comment is that it's probably serious, but it also perfectly satirizes HN's nostalgia for the 90s internet and software. We started with Spotify pulling a douchey anticompetitive move, and ended up at > Spotify doesn't really add anything. The only convenience over Winamp is social sharing. Somewhere along the way we've gotten lost. The only convenience of Spotify over Winamp is "social sharing"? Am I taking the bait here or do you actually believe this? How can you believe this? What about the convenience of being able to play a massive amount of music without having to download and store it on your device? What about facilitating new music discovery? How did you come up with social sharing of all things as the honorable mention Spotify has over Winamp, when the latter is desktop software that requires you to manage all your music on your own? I can understand if you don't personally value Spotify because you like owning media with no restrictions. But I can't understand being in denial about inarguable, significant conveniences offered by the platform.

silexia 6y ago
Thank you, I was shocked by OP saying the only difference between Winamp and Spotify was social sharing...
hacknat 6y ago
Also, everyone has anxiety and/or depression right now. I’m trying my best to take everything everyone is saying with a grain of salt. Everyone appears to be having a hard time right now.
Integrity 6y ago
Sometimes conveniences ruin things. I've heard it said "Having everything feels a lot like having nothing at all." The comparison of how we used to do things, to how we do them now are often just a marketing tactic, because old and new are relative regarding value. E.g., an old violin is better. What's lacking with the new internet is about this and that, or lack of options. So the entirety of the culture is flavored by an oligopoly in their respective market.And Spotify is missing loads of music. Music needs to change its perspective to a this and that view. Is "this" what you want over "that"? How old or new something is, is irrelevant. No musician that I know, and I know lots as a lifelong musician, is enthusiastic about Spotify. Most of us feel we just have no choice. Same with Facebook etc. Most people don't even like it.
bosswipe 6y ago
The only reason that Spotify is a "convenience" is because of the laws that the record companies bought for themselves.
- echelon 6y ago
  Here's the answer. In twenty years, ML is going to wipe the slate clean.
  - emptyparadise 6y ago
    The only ML I can picture wiping away copyright laws is Marxism-Leninism.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    What ML even has to do with it? Assuming you mean "Machine Learning".
    - echelon 6y ago
      > What ML even has to do with it? Assuming you mean "Machine Learning". That's exactly what I mean. There's a change coming that will disrupt everything. Generative music will replace musicians and art will become dirt cheap - effectively valued the same as the memes on Reddit and Twitter. The same thing that happened to photography is coming to music, film, and games. https://github.com/r9y9/nnsvs https://github.com/r9y9/nnsvs https://github.com/NVIDIA/mellotron https://github.com/NVIDIA/mellotron https://github.com/xushengyuan/FastSing2 https://github.com/xushengyuan/FastSing2 https://github.com/jik876/hifi-gan-demo https://github.com/jik876/hifi-gan-demo https://github.com/bshall/VectorQuantizedCPC https://github.com/bshall/VectorQuantizedCPC And I can keep going. It's such a fertile field. Vocalists can and will be improved upon, duplicated, and generated. Instruments played to match any style or theme desired. Entire albums generated in seconds. The latent space will yield more than any human could conceive. Of course artists will still exist, but they'll exist in a space that is much bigger and more complicated than today. The tooling will also help them make more and become more productive. I think the cheapness of it all will erode copyright. Companies like Spotify will simply be selling bandwidth, which doesn't sound like a profitable venture. I give it a twenty year time horizon to be safe, but it'll probably be faster.
nindalf 6y ago
Completely agree but you’re missing the one thing that makes it really classic HN. > What’s so great about New Thing? It’s just Existing Technology but with a Small Improvement. This is exemplified in the best HN comment of all time where someone showed their new product called “Dropbox” and this dude was like “but I can get the same with FTPFS and versioning with a version control system”. Technically correct, but completely missing the point. OP is worse, because he can’t even acknowledge the value that Spotify brings to hundreds of millions of people. Implicit is the claim that they’re only using it because they don’t know any better. If they were as intelligent as OP they would use Winamp and share songs manually.
- echelon 6y ago
  > Technically correct, but completely missing the point. OP is worse, because he can’t even acknowledge the value that Spotify brings to hundreds of millions of people. Implicit is the claim that they’re only using it because they don’t know any better. If they were as intelligent as OP they would use Winamp and share songs manually. Clearly this was my intent, and I'm glad you appreciate the intelligence of my remarks. The substance of my argument isn't to point out that WinAmp should have a 50 billion dollar market cap instead of Spotify. It's an observation that the trends in our industry are disappointing because they favor lock-in, simple interfaces for non-power users, monopoly, and consolidation. You get "sharing" with a whole lot of bad. A hypothetical "good" company could provide much more than what Spotify does and in the same breath not monopolize all the podcasters or prevent data export. But why do that when you can capture 90% of the market, hold them completely captive, and not do these things which take effort or risk your stranglehold? I dislike the future we found ourselves in. There was a lot of promise, I suppose wholly imagined, that never panned out. I'm angry because I imagine better. This shit sucks.
  - dividedbyzero 6y ago
    > You get "sharing" with a whole lot of bad. I really doubt the anemic social sharing they offer is all that compelling to that many people. Sure, it has its uses, but if did nothing else, I doubt it would see much use. What's extremely, extremely compelling to me personally, though, is that for the price of half a CD a month, I get access to almost everything I'd ever want to listen to, on all my devices, everywhere, without any friction whatsoever. Even if I really wanted, I could never replicate that with Winamp on my own. As to the rest for your argument, I'm basically with you and I think you have an important point, I guess you've just made it in a needlessly incendiary way. There are many things to be said in favor of capitalism, but I'm severely disillusioned with the way the currently-favored brand of capitalism is shaping out on the internet and in computing in general.
reportgunner 6y ago
> How can you believe this? Perhaps for some people the process of discovering music, downloading it and storing on their device is super trivial. Did you know you can only listen 24 hours of music per day and that's only if you don't sleep at all ? You don't need a "massive amount" of music and you never will.
- nhlx2 6y ago
  > You don't need a "massive amount" of music and you never will. This cracked me up!
- nhlx2 6y ago
  Perhaps the "massive amount" out there is the reason you need the likes of Spotify to consume it in a meaningful way.
  - reportgunner 6y ago
    Yes definitely this kind of service can be helpful if you don't know what you want to listen to and/or don't know where/how to find new music.
1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
Perhaps it's the tradeoffs that bother HN. For example, accepting "douchey anticompetitive moves" in exchange for utilising inevitable progress of the internet. One common response could be that the tradeoff isn't worth it; HN would be willing to sacrifice utilising the progress being made in exchange for avoiding the neverending "douchey anticompetitive moves". As I read these "nostalgic" comments, HN is not denying that progress is occurring. HN is questioning whether the tradeoff for utilising the progress, under "douchey anticompetitive" terms, is actually worth it. HN does not long for the level of progress of the 90/00's, it reminisces about the time before every iota of progress was extricably linked to "douchey anticompetitive moves".

silexia 6y ago

Thank you, I was shocked by OP saying the only difference between Winamp and Spotify was social sharing...

hacknat 6y ago

Also, everyone has anxiety and/or depression right now. I’m trying my best to take everything everyone is saying with a grain of salt. Everyone appears to be having a hard time right now.

Integrity 6y ago

Sometimes conveniences ruin things. I've heard it said "Having everything feels a lot like having nothing at all." The comparison of how we used to do things, to how we do them now are often just a marketing tactic, because old and new are relative regarding value. E.g., an old violin is better. What's lacking with the new internet is about this and that, or lack of options. So the entirety of the culture is flavored by an oligopoly in their respective market.And Spotify is missing loads of music. Music needs to change its perspective to a this and that view. Is "this" what you want over "that"? How old or new something is, is irrelevant. No musician that I know, and I know lots as a lifelong musician, is enthusiastic about Spotify. Most of us feel we just have no choice. Same with Facebook etc. Most people don't even like it.

bosswipe 6y ago

The only reason that Spotify is a "convenience" is because of the laws that the record companies bought for themselves.

echelon 6y ago
Here's the answer. In twenty years, ML is going to wipe the slate clean.
- emptyparadise 6y ago
  The only ML I can picture wiping away copyright laws is Marxism-Leninism.
- coldtea 6y ago
  What ML even has to do with it? Assuming you mean "Machine Learning".
  - echelon 6y ago
    > What ML even has to do with it? Assuming you mean "Machine Learning". That's exactly what I mean. There's a change coming that will disrupt everything. Generative music will replace musicians and art will become dirt cheap - effectively valued the same as the memes on Reddit and Twitter. The same thing that happened to photography is coming to music, film, and games. https://github.com/r9y9/nnsvs https://github.com/r9y9/nnsvs https://github.com/NVIDIA/mellotron https://github.com/NVIDIA/mellotron https://github.com/xushengyuan/FastSing2 https://github.com/xushengyuan/FastSing2 https://github.com/jik876/hifi-gan-demo https://github.com/jik876/hifi-gan-demo https://github.com/bshall/VectorQuantizedCPC https://github.com/bshall/VectorQuantizedCPC And I can keep going. It's such a fertile field. Vocalists can and will be improved upon, duplicated, and generated. Instruments played to match any style or theme desired. Entire albums generated in seconds. The latent space will yield more than any human could conceive. Of course artists will still exist, but they'll exist in a space that is much bigger and more complicated than today. The tooling will also help them make more and become more productive. I think the cheapness of it all will erode copyright. Companies like Spotify will simply be selling bandwidth, which doesn't sound like a profitable venture. I give it a twenty year time horizon to be safe, but it'll probably be faster.

nindalf 6y ago

Completely agree but you’re missing the one thing that makes it really classic HN. > What’s so great about New Thing? It’s just Existing Technology but with a Small Improvement. This is exemplified in the best HN comment of all time where someone showed their new product called “Dropbox” and this dude was like “but I can get the same with FTPFS and versioning with a version control system”. Technically correct, but completely missing the point. OP is worse, because he can’t even acknowledge the value that Spotify brings to hundreds of millions of people. Implicit is the claim that they’re only using it because they don’t know any better. If they were as intelligent as OP they would use Winamp and share songs manually.

echelon 6y ago
> Technically correct, but completely missing the point. OP is worse, because he can’t even acknowledge the value that Spotify brings to hundreds of millions of people. Implicit is the claim that they’re only using it because they don’t know any better. If they were as intelligent as OP they would use Winamp and share songs manually. Clearly this was my intent, and I'm glad you appreciate the intelligence of my remarks. The substance of my argument isn't to point out that WinAmp should have a 50 billion dollar market cap instead of Spotify. It's an observation that the trends in our industry are disappointing because they favor lock-in, simple interfaces for non-power users, monopoly, and consolidation. You get "sharing" with a whole lot of bad. A hypothetical "good" company could provide much more than what Spotify does and in the same breath not monopolize all the podcasters or prevent data export. But why do that when you can capture 90% of the market, hold them completely captive, and not do these things which take effort or risk your stranglehold? I dislike the future we found ourselves in. There was a lot of promise, I suppose wholly imagined, that never panned out. I'm angry because I imagine better. This shit sucks.
- dividedbyzero 6y ago
  > You get "sharing" with a whole lot of bad. I really doubt the anemic social sharing they offer is all that compelling to that many people. Sure, it has its uses, but if did nothing else, I doubt it would see much use. What's extremely, extremely compelling to me personally, though, is that for the price of half a CD a month, I get access to almost everything I'd ever want to listen to, on all my devices, everywhere, without any friction whatsoever. Even if I really wanted, I could never replicate that with Winamp on my own. As to the rest for your argument, I'm basically with you and I think you have an important point, I guess you've just made it in a needlessly incendiary way. There are many things to be said in favor of capitalism, but I'm severely disillusioned with the way the currently-favored brand of capitalism is shaping out on the internet and in computing in general.

reportgunner 6y ago

> How can you believe this? Perhaps for some people the process of discovering music, downloading it and storing on their device is super trivial. Did you know you can only listen 24 hours of music per day and that's only if you don't sleep at all ? You don't need a "massive amount" of music and you never will.

nhlx2 6y ago
> You don't need a "massive amount" of music and you never will. This cracked me up!
nhlx2 6y ago
Perhaps the "massive amount" out there is the reason you need the likes of Spotify to consume it in a meaningful way.
- reportgunner 6y ago
  Yes definitely this kind of service can be helpful if you don't know what you want to listen to and/or don't know where/how to find new music.

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago

Perhaps it's the tradeoffs that bother HN. For example, accepting "douchey anticompetitive moves" in exchange for utilising inevitable progress of the internet. One common response could be that the tradeoff isn't worth it; HN would be willing to sacrifice utilising the progress being made in exchange for avoiding the neverending "douchey anticompetitive moves". As I read these "nostalgic" comments, HN is not denying that progress is occurring. HN is questioning whether the tradeoff for utilising the progress, under "douchey anticompetitive" terms, is actually worth it. HN does not long for the level of progress of the 90/00's, it reminisces about the time before every iota of progress was extricably linked to "douchey anticompetitive moves".