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No, but they could lose subscribers due to Podcasts. See, I pay for Spotify because of their playlists. Playlists have nothing to do with podcasts. I listen to
by Lendal 6y ago
No, but they could lose subscribers due to Podcasts.
See, I pay for Spotify because of their playlists. Playlists have nothing to do with podcasts. I listen to my podcasts using a different app. Yet Spotify keeps throwing its podcasts in my face. Spotify is not good at podcasts. That's why I use a different app for that. I'm getting tired of scrolling past all the podcast spam in my Spotify UI, and yet Spotify provides NO option in Settings to turn OFF their podcast advertisements/recommendations. That is annoying to me, a paying customer. So they're pushing this, and annoying me, at their own peril.
- jonnycomputer 6y agoI feel same way! Also paying, also using other app, because spotify podcasting misses the features I want.
- devoutsalsa 6y agoNot very related... The reason I canceled Spotify Account is because I couldn’t downvote songs in a playlist. The music suggestions for some artists were horrible, and I couldn’t opt out of them.
- tachyonbeam 6y agoWhat's losing my interest more and more is that their music recommendations are terrible, rarely match my taste... And, uh, I wish there was an easier way for me to just browse music by category. I just want to see all the new releases under electronic music and browse through them quickly. I don't need to be spoon-fed things as part of "discover weekly". Also, the Spotify Chromecast integration is utter shit. It has been utter shit for a while, but it seems it's just getting worse? It's laggy, it randomly pauses during my playlist for no reason. I ended up buying a bluetooth receiver to hook to my AV system so I could get reliable playback. What the fuck? Why isn't this getting fixed?
- claudiulodro 6y agoThe Every Noise at Once guy also has a project where it's a raw weekly dump of all the new Spotify releases sorted by categories: https://everynoise.com/new_releases_by_genre.cgi?genre=edm®ion=US https://everynoise.com/new_releases_by_genre.cgi?genre=edm&r... That's what I use to get more in-depth than the tiny amount of new releases Spotify features in its official playlists.
- vorticalbox 6y ago> What's losing my interest more and more is that their music recommendations are terrible, rarely match my taste... I found a lot of the release radar and other recommendations are spot on and I end up liking a lot of the songs it suggests.
- emayljames 6y agoYT Music has it all, categories, easy library listening, no podspaming, Chromecast. Spotify is like a salesman who has been drinking too much coffee.
- devoutsalsa 6y agoFor some reason, YouTube Music still puts music I've downvoted in the playlists it makes for me.
- emayljames 5y agoI've never encountered this. Sounds like an odd account specific bug.
- dankwizard 5y agoDoesn't YouTube Music suggest music based on Youtube Video watching habits? I think I read something about that which turned me off instantly.
- devoutsalsa 5y agoIt used to for me. I don't think it does at the moment.
- nitrogen 6y agoWhat's losing my interest more and more is that their music recommendations are terrible, rarely match my taste... The really aggravating thing is that we know they have the tech to do better. There was that demo of a 2D embedding of genre-space that actually did a pretty decent job of grouping similar-sounding songs together, but their recommendations all seem to be based off of what was popular at the same time, or what came from the same label. E.g. when I ask for recommendations for a song like "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness," I should get "Avril 14th," not "Bullet with Butterfly Wings."
- piva00 5y agoI don't see the connection between Smashing Pumpkins and Aphex Twin though, what kind of genre matching do you think would enable that on your specific example? Not nit-picking, just piqued my curiosity about how you would connect those artists.
- nitrogen 5y agoThat's exactly the problem, those songs are not in either artist's genre. The artists don't sound similar, but the songs do. By "genre" I mean the effective genre (mood/vibe, instrumentation, pacing, chord progression, etc) of the song, not the nominal genre of the artist. I would listen to those two songs in a row and be completely satisfied by the transition.
- piva00 5y agoI was a huge Smashing Pumpkins fan when I was young, I'm a big Aphex Twin/Richard D. James fan and I don't know if I'd ever connect those two songs on a playlist or even play them together. That might be the issue, it's too much a subjective judgment. I've worked and interviewed for companies that do music analysis to find moods, atmospheres, similar timbres, chords and structure to mix and match automated playlists for business needs (restaurants, cafés, retail stores and so on), would like to see what kind of similarity scores they could get between the songs you mentioned.
- iscrewyou 6y agoLately, I've even been scared of listening to music other than my usual taste (e.g. a radio hit, a foreign song, song in one of those instagram videos) because their algorithm seems to amplify my "smart" playlists with anything that's different. There should be an option to turn off simple things like that: turn off podcasts, pause learning from my music for then next 30 minutes, etc. I always thought the advantage of standalone apps like Spotify(updated anytime) vs something like Apple Music(updated on big iOS releases) is that they can iterate faster. But seems like they are throwing more eggs in content creation basket than UX.
- hellohiyesokay 6y agoPrivate sessions are my solution for branching out. Still a pain, and shouldn't happen. Google Play Music did this really well and for me, even with its issues, was miles ahead of Spotify.
- mackrevinack 6y agoi instinctively turn on private mode every time i open spotify on my desktop. i really wish it worked the opposite way, have it turned off all the time and then turn it on when you want spotify to build up new recommendations for you
- aerospace_guy 6y ago> There should be an option to turn off simple things like that: turn off podcasts, pause learning from my music for then next 30 minutes, etc. They state that private listening 'may' not influence your music recommendations. https://support.spotify.com/us/article/private-listening/ https://support.spotify.com/us/article/private-listening/
- tshaddox 6y agoI recently gave Spotify a try for about 8 months but just switched back to Apple Music. My reason for switching back had nothing to do with podcasts, it was simply Spotify's terrible interface that makes it impossible to just browse all the music in your library. But I had also started to notice podcasts infiltrating UI that used to be only music playlists. A few times I even mistakenly clicked on a podcast thinking that it was a music playlist that sounded interesting.
- neves 6y agoIt's even worse if you want to hear your mp3 collection. Terrible interface.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- NopeNotToday 6y agoI dont think Spotify cares about the 0.1% of users that bring their own MP3s. It's a shrinking market. The growth is all the people who never even heard of an EmPeaThree. I think back when I ripped my 350+ CDs to FLAC. In retrospect, it wasn't worth it.
- tshaddox 6y agoI didn’t even try to upload my own songs. I just want to add stuff to my library and then be able to browse everything in my library by artist and album. On the iPhone app, this is impossible, which is absolutely baffling.
- aeon97 6y agoThe only way to get around this is to make playlists that are just different albums, which is what I do. Not a great system, and I think it has actually changed the way I listen to music for the worse
- dingaling 5y agoWhy hold on to the concept of a library? I just pick a genre that fits my mood and let ${MUSIC_SERVICE} generate a playlist. If I don't like a song I just skip it. I don't see any advantages of spending time and effort curating a library, which harks back to the days of physical media.
- loosetypes 6y agoAudible has been doing similarly recently and it’s quite frustrating. I understand everyone’s doing it and you as a company feel entitled to a slice of whatever podcast pie. What I don’t understand is how that can take focus when your audio player has been getting steadily worse - corrupted offline download, buggy buffering, choppy audio after jumping back 30s. If your bread and butter - what I’m actually paying for - doesn’t work I’ll gladly save a few bucks and go to the public library.
- captn3m0 6y agoAmazon Music has also started the same, even putting a banner ad for Amazon Music Podcasts in the Amazon app.
- smegger001 6y agolets not forget the awful UI for podcasts on audible. Only showing the last three episodes in the app having to go through multiple screens just to download back episodes, having to manually start the next episode instead of playing them automatically. having to subscribe to each season of the same podcast separately so if you don't already know they next is out you don't get it, the whole experience is painful enough I have pretty much given up on listening to any amazon produced podcast as it s just to much of a pain in the ass to listen to them.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Sphax 6y agoI did just that about a month ago. I don't give a shit about their podcasts, I'm only interested in their music, the home screen is garbage now. I moved to Qobuz (which has other problems, but it's generally fine).
- cgriswald 6y agoThey could lose them in the other direction as well. Unlike you, I don't mind podcasts being thrown at me. However, having come to enjoy a couple of the podcasts on offer, I'm not offered a way to subscribe to the pay versions of those podcasts, so I end up subscribing directly. Unfortunately, the Spotify app doesn't provide me a way to add my private RSS feeds from those subscriptions, so I spend much less time on Spotify and question whether I need the service at all.
- stjohnswarts 6y agoI doubt if spotify will ever add RSS capabilities.
- amatecha 6y agoYup, I've been noticing that. Indeed, I've been preparing to cancel my subscription (backing up my "library"/playlists externally etc.), and their push into podcasts (and pushing them on me) is one of the reasons.
- zouhair 6y agoSpotify is also not good as a music player. You have no real control.
- emayljames 6y agoThat is why I use YT Music. Podcasts are in a different Google realm (Google podcasts), and get no podspaming. I also find spotify too in your face in general, like an over eager salesman.
- Cd00d 6y agoCan you tell me how Spotify is with playlists of comedy albums? I started falling asleep to comedy a couple months ago to manage poor sleep based on a generally negative attitude. It was fine on YT Music for a while, but now a lot of the community playlists are garbage, or most of the clips have been pulled (I assume some copyright issues). I'd move to Spotify for that, and pay, if they had a catalog of decent standup comedy.
- blastro 6y agoit's been a while, but I remember Pandora having pretty good comendy stations. good luck!
- Causality1 6y agoDo you find a significant difference between that and comedy podcasts?
- Cd00d 5y agoI don't know of any comedy podcasts that are more like comedy albums - recommendations would be appreciated! The podcasts I listen to from comedians is more along the lines of interviews, like WTF, or a few people spitballing on various topics. Not well formed jokes.
- Causality1 5y agoSounds like the podcasts from Sanspants Radio are right up your alley. "Shut Up a Second" is spitballing on a different random topic every show, and "Plumbing the Death Star" is discussion on different pop-culture related questions such as "what if Professor X ran Hogwarts?" Their D&D podcast is probably my favorite of the genre as well.
- pnutjam 6y agoI really liked Pandora for comedy. Spotify has lots of comedy albums, but the interface is not as easy to navigate.
- 6y ago
- gurkendoktor 5y agoPodcasts have really ruined Spotify's mobile app. The worst part is that there is space for a "Podcasts" tab in the bottom bar that would have made everyone happy by clearly separating types of content. Apple has gone a similar route recently with reducing the Activity/Fitness app to just two/three tabs, mushing all sorts of content together. I hope this doesn't become another user-hostile UI trend.
- Tsiklon 5y agoSpotify have obviously weighed the pros and cons of being actively intrusive into their user's experience in order to build brand awareness of their nascent podcast business. Personally they keep advertising podcasts by people who I find morally or politically objectionable, which makes me quite unhappy that I cannot hide or remove their content (and podcasts as a whole) from the Home Screen.
- gurkendoktor 5y agoGood point. Honestly, in Spotify I don't even want to see political content from people I agree with. Sometimes I just want to take a break from my European duty to care about US politics 24/7, but it's getting hard to do so anywhere on the internet.