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Spotify podcasters are making $18k a month with nothing but white noise
- vicwhiten 4y agoAlmost sounds like what Vulfpeck did with the Sleepify album back in the earlier days of Spotify, while serving more of a purpose than "just give this band some money" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepify https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepify
- amelius 4y ago> The album was pulled by Spotify on April 26, 2014, citing violations of the service's content policies. Regulation by companies is so refreshing compared to being regulated by the government!
- Shadonototra 4y ago"farmers feeding the world are struggling to make a living" "random dude can retire in peace by uploading a white noise on spotify"
- irthomasthomas 4y agoWho are these poor farmers? All the farmers around me are millionaires.
- honkler 4y agoi heard bill gates is a farmer too these days
- arvinsim 4y agoWhen trying to find out what society really values, don't listen to what society says. Rather look at who they actually pay more.
- tgv 4y agoYou seem to be under the impression that society values the likes of Bernie Madoff and Elizabeth Holmes.
- kweinber 4y agoSociety values investment strategies and medical innovations. If society finds out it has been defrauded, then society tries to reclaim its investments and punish the fraudsters.
- williamtrask 4y agoSociety sounds very cranky
- derbOac 4y agoNot disagreeing with what you wrote, but the word "fraud" itself implies a distinction between perceived and actual value.
- wongarsu 4y agoTo be fair, if societal values are determined by capital allocation then the values are almost entirely determined by the top 10%.
- 8note 4y agoSociety did at some point, but I think society would pay more for a loaf of bread than a Madoff share today
- slibhb 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalism
- codethief 4y agoTo be fair, there are millions of farmers around the world and only a handful of white noise producers. Moreover, each white noise producer seems to be serving hundreds of thousands of people. Economy of scale is a thing.
- booleandilemma 4y agoThat’s enough HN for me today.
- UmbertoNoEco 4y agoExpect being flagged in 3 ... 2... Conform, consume, follow or ...simply die. That's our era's motto.
- qolop 4y ago>>> "To be fair" You're joking right? It's not fair. It's capitalism.
- dwighttk 4y agoGet back to me when this continues into the guy’s retirement.
- hp48fan 4y agoYa, but I wouldn't be surprised if half the white noise guys are watching farming videos or woodworking videos to calm their anxiety at night. Clearly, Im projecting.
- karaterobot 4y agoThe farmers didn't earn the $18k, and splitting it between them all wouldn't change anything for them. As ridiculous as it is to sell white noise for a living, it's a logical consequence of the kind of world that allows so many of us here on HN to make a living selling little bits of symbolic logic arranged in patterns.
- relativ575 4y agoThis is Exhibit A of how awful social media can be: low effort, wrong, lack of nuance comment that invokes fake outrage and aims at stirring emotion from an wound up audience
- 8note 4y agoYou're comparing the p99 to the p25. Farming has its wealthy members too
- tenebrisalietum 4y agoat least they aren't starving though? also farming machines make some pretty nice noise so maybe they should get it on it.
- drorco 4y agoLiving close to a noisy road, I play white noise on Spotify every night. Usually though I just go with a playlist or one/few particular tracks running in a loop. Why would anyone go for a podcast rather than a playlist/track? I also wonder if Spotify somehow adjust the earnings of these creators, as obviously I don't actually listen to their white noise for the whole night.
- Michelangelo11 4y ago> Why would anyone go for a podcast rather than a playlist/track? This is the biggest mystery to me too. Why not just use a 10-hour-long (or whatever) YouTube clip?
- MaxGabriel 4y agoUnless something has changed, you have to pay for YouTube premium to play audio while the screen is off. YouTube is also a worse choice if you want offline access, such as on an airplane or when camping
- hardware2win 4y agoTry firefox+desktop mode
- paskozdilar 4y ago> you have to pay for YouTube premium to play audio while the screen is off NewPipe (from fdroid repositories) can play audio from YouTube while the screen is off.
- rajamaka 4y agoSo can Brave browser
- paskozdilar 4y agoSo can any browser if you request desktop site, as mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31630807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31630807 This functionality is in no way specific to Brave browser.
- Hackbraten 4y ago> Moore and his white noise team — yes, he has five employees and contractors I assume their duties are mostly mundane things, such as accounting, marketing, vendor relations, and app (store) maintenance. But what I really like to imagine is that those five employees are cryptographers, and that their duty is to painstakingly work on new secure white noise generation algorithms in order to push the envelope in the white noise industry.
- saagarjha 4y agoWell, I only listen to white noise that fills buffers that are allocated using new and lovingly filled with an artisanal memcpy.
- afandian 4y agoI hope you zero the memory first! Otherwise you can hear the ghosting on good headphones.
- bigyikes 4y agoGhosting problems are why I refuse to listen to anything on machines with RAM older than DDR4.
- thematrixturtle 4y agoSurely you mean newer? The quantum tunneling artifacts on modern dense memory are simply ghastly, which why I stick to hand-wound magnetic core memory.
- mrexroad 4y agoOnly way to go is w/ either magnetic core memory or isolinear chips.
- systemvoltage 4y agoExpert here (degree in engineering), Analog core wounded memory or gtfo.
- HPsquared 4y agoI wonder if they ever get copyright strikes.
- fideloper 4y agoHey, I've used this show to act as my own sound machine when trying to nap! Some nights are the kids are terrible sleepers, so my wife and I take turns napping during the day while the other watches the kids. As you might imagine, they're loud - the white noise helps block out the extra noise.
- formvoltron 4y agoIf Spotify does not create their own white noise channels then I certainly would not be happy being a Spotify investor.
- bluedino 4y agoIt's built into the iPhone now
- mizzao 4y agoAnalogically... if Spotify did not create their own pop music you would not be a happy Spotify investor either? Spotify is the platform, not the artist. They make money as long as people are publishing content. They don't need do make anything of their own...
- solarkraft 4y agoRight, but they do publish their own Playlists and, like Netflix, could theoretically cover some low hanging fruit pretty cheaply.
- paulluuk 4y agoThe problem with Netflix, Disney+, HBO, etc etc is that a lot of people are going back to pirating video content or abusing their "family" accounts, all because each platform insists on having exclusive content. If this trend continues, I think we'll see a more and more dramatic loss for all video streaming services as piracy becomes mainstream again (as it was for decades). I don't think that the music streaming platforms should follow their example, but instead should all offer as much content as possible and simply compete for listening experience, not content. I know that there is already a battle going on for exclusive music content, but I'd say about 90% of music can be found on all the major music streaming platforms right now.
- honkler 4y agoimagine paying when you can get things for free lol
- tartoran 4y agoThere’s plenty of white noise on radio bands between stations, FM or AM, it’s got plenty of flavors. Any old radio would do.
- throwaway15908 4y agoAre you sure, there is no signal in background radiation? Someone should check.
- digitalsankhara 4y agoSure, it's possible but there are plenty of gaps where its random noise - but even a very very weak signal would be swamped with noise if the radio is in FM mode. Pure radio static is the sound of the universe! Very frequency dependent - the higher up in frequency (or shorter the wavelength) the more of it is cosmic in nature - point a microwave radio dish towards/away from the sun and hear the difference, or even down towards the ground to hear the sky/earth noise. [1] I personally find a clear spot between military submarine stations in the low frequency 10-60 KHz range quite relaxing to listen to as it's a mix of random noise and thunder static. Go VLF or ELF for earth sounds; https://theinspireproject.org/default.asp?contentID=17 https://theinspireproject.org/default.asp?contentID=17 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_noise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_noise
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoA super nerdy, customisable noise generator: https://mynoise.net/noiseMachines.php https://mynoise.net/noiseMachines.php And they have a spotify channel: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1gRJBUyCeihBrgcCtDdEfv https://open.spotify.com/artist/1gRJBUyCeihBrgcCtDdEfv
- zimpenfish 4y ago+1 for mynoise. Extremely handy for public transport, etc.
- i_like_apis 4y agoMyNoise has a great app that I have used for years. Very good.
- eatbitseveryday 4y agoDon’t forget to donate!
- michaelcampbell 4y agoEnough +1's here from me too; I even donate. Great selection, not streaming, wonderful UI.
- brandonmenc 4y ago+1 - I have had this app running on my phone near my head while I sleep for many years.
- mjfl 4y agojust white noise, no colored noise?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hp48fan 4y agoIts probably pink noise. (In fact, it's physically impossible it is white, you can only get arbitrarily close ;))
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- raesene9 4y agoOne thing I didn't realise till recently, is you don't need spotify to generate white noise if you have an iPhone/iPad, as it's an in-built function under accessibility --> Audio/Visual and background sounds.
- dontbenebby 4y agoThank you for this, great way to "keep things offline", a skill that the youth are rapidly losing.
- thatguy0900 4y agoOdd thing to blame the youth for. Losing, or having stolen from them? The people on this site who make these things are the ones making those decisions, if you expect a 14 year old to take hard ethical stances on theoretical privacy rights you are crazy.
- dontbenebby 4y ago[flagged]
- dylan604 4y agoLosing could be read as not from something they did themselves, but I lose the ability to do something if it has been taken away from me.
- languageserver 4y agoto be fair I have seen more people loose precious photographs from film than from iCloud
- chucknelson 4y agoWoah, that is news to me! What’s strange is that iOS gives you no indication of where that sound is coming from…I guess I expected to be able to pause it somehow. Interesting, though!
- dontbenebby 4y agoHow does this make sense when I also hear many artists hate it because they get very little per play? Or is it because people play it continuously on a loop in ways you wouldn't play EDM or rap that's 3-10 min? (Paywalled so difficult to respond to more than the headline.)
- Schiphol 4y agoif you use linux you can listen to my brown-noise podcast by typing this in your favorite terminal emulator: play -n synth brownnoise. Please do a thumbs-up gesture if you like it.
- avian 4y agoHah, good tip. I've been using Sox for ages and it never occurred to me that it can generate noise as well.
- dylan604 4y agoDoes your brown-noise generate brown-notes? You might not get as many thumbs-up terminal gestures if you do.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- amlib 4y agoYou may also go trough the experience of being aboard the enterprise as Captain Picard with the following on your favorite terminal emulator: play -n synth brownnoise lowpass 150
- robmsmt 4y ago... and please hit subscribe. Now a message from our sponsor.
- jaggederest 4y agoJust moved back to the countryside, this article makes me think about hooking up some microphones in the woods and catching the progression of birds into frogs into rain sounds into birds that happens every night. Certainly a big part of why I moved out of the city, and you could have a new "episode" every day.
- Balgair 4y ago>this article makes me think about hooking up some microphones in the woods and catching the progression of birds into frogs into rain sounds into birds that happens every night...and you could have a new "episode" every day. I absolutely would listen to that nearly every work day. Pre-pandemic, I would use 'Forrest Bathing' YT channels mixed in with my favorite music while in the office. The longer the sample of ambient sounds, the better, as I wouldn't have to pause or restart the video. I've kept this up since WFH started. After months of daily listening, I found that a lot of 'Forrest Bathing' channels would use soundboards, would loop an hour long sample for 10+ hours, would splice in other samples from other places (I could tell from the bird species' calls), etc. The authentic, 10+ hour long, sampled from a single spot, aurally interesting, no edits, no soundboards, 'Forrest Bathing' videos are very rare [0] and I wish there would be more of them. The key would be to find aurally interesting areas around you. I've found that the fauna tend to be most active crepuscularly, meaning that the middle of the video can be a bit boring, especially for night videos. Day videos can have animal husbandry to fill in the gaps during mid-day. Part of the allure of the videos is the 'romance' of the associated visual components. If you can set a video camera up along with the high quality audio, that's just golden. Even though I'm almost never looking at the video, just knowing that I am actually listening to the real sounds of the Yukon, or the Amafi Coast, or a small English hedge, etc, it really makes it for me and makes me feel like that small little box I'm in isn't so bad, that I am actually traveling the world a bit still, that my life is richer and more 'real' in some small way. [0] I've found a few channels, and even then, the 'good' videos are very few. Yes, I am super picky with this, I can't help it.
- synu 4y agoCan you share links to some of the good ones you’ve found?
- zmibes 4y agoFor my uses there is always too much additional nonsense with noise apps. Here's 5 lines of Faust that satisfies all my noise requirements (a noise generator and a lp filter with simple UI) you can export as ab android app or to various other platforms: https://faustide.grame.fr/?autorun=1&voices=0&name=exfaust0&inline=aW1wb3J0KCJzdGRmYXVzdC5saWIiKTsKY3RGcmVxID0gaHNsaWRlcigiY3V0b2ZmRnJlcXVlbmN5Iiw1MDAsNTAsMTAwMDAsMC4wMSk7CnEgPSBoc2xpZGVyKCJxIiwxLDEsMzAsMC4xKTsKZ2FpbiA9IGhzbGlkZXIoImdhaW4iLDEsMCwxLDAuMDEpOwpwcm9jZXNzID0gbm8ubm9pc2UgOiBmaS5yZXNvbmxwKGN0RnJlcSxxLGdhaW4pOw%3D%3D https://faustide.grame.fr/?autorun=1&voices=0&name=exfaust0&...
- bmitc 4y ago> For my uses there is always too much additional nonsense with noise apps. Do you have examples? I have been decently happy when I have needed to find one, even free ones. Your link doesn't play and also requests access to my microphone.
- zmibes 4y agoTry a different browser. Examples: type sleep noise into the android Play store and the top few. Waves, bird noises, rain etc. All useless to me - just want masking noise to block other stuff out.
- bmitc 4y agoI use so-called analog or mechanical sound machines like the Marpac or Yogasleep Dohm, so not much use for other noise generation stuff. But every now and then I use an app when I don't have my machines, which I sometimes travel with.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoSo basically crypto, but for audio.
- seydor 4y agoNot anymore ...
- yalogin 4y agoBy definition a white noise podcast cannot play ads. So these have to purely paid podcasts. It’s interesting to learn that there are quite a few people that want a different sound or a variety of sounds every night to sleep. That is because I am guessing that is what the podcast provides of value.
- cddotdotslash 4y agoThe article literally says that they use pre-roll ads to avoid disruption.
- agomez314 4y agoThere's something ironic in being surrounded by so much noise that you listen to "noiseless" noise.
- tenebrisalietum 4y agoWait until you discover there's a noise music genre.
- shard 4y agoThere's artists like Merzbow, but I find his music non-condusive for sleep.
- FollowingTheDao 4y agoSounds like a healthy economy!
- RGamma 4y ago"Colored noise NFTs now worth $100M"
- havblue 4y agoI had an annoying experience attempting to play white noise on an echo speaker for the kids recently: Alexa wouldn't play white noise without an Amazon music premium account. It kept prompting me to pay for the premium service. Granted I'm pretty sure I can get it to play white noise on a different music service but I think it's ridiculous that they would charge for noise.
- PenguinCoder 4y agoUnder capitalism, anything they can extract money for, they will.
- prepend 4y agoI mean, this applies under all other economic systems too. I think no system removes human or organizational greed. So your comment seems odd to me. What other economic systems would prevent app makers from extracting as much money as they possibly can?
- iaaan 4y agoSystems that don't use money? Systems with a lot of regulations? Use your imagination.
- prepend 4y agoWhat systems don’t use money? What systems regulate the types of apps on phones and PCs? I’m using my imagination but outside of Star Trek and other sci-fi, I’m drawing a blank. Are there any present day, earth economic systems that would result in a different outcome? BTW, Spotify is Swedish and they are closer to socialism than capitalism. So the comment I replied to would be as accurate it it said “humans” or something instead of capitalist.
- skinnymuch 4y agoSocial safety nets in a capitalist society don’t make a country closer to socialism. Same with decent worker rights. Neoliberalism has done a huge shift into pushing the world towards capitalism. I don’t think the state needs to own the means of production to be socialist. At the very least 50% of private companies should be co-ops to be called more socialist than capitalist.
- irthomasthomas 4y agoI wonder if there's a market for bernoulli noise generated by the quantum vacuum? https://qrng.anu.edu.au/random-bernoulli-noise/ https://qrng.anu.edu.au/random-bernoulli-noise/
- vsskanth 4y agoHas anyone figured out a free or one time payment way to get white noise on Amazon Echo ? It's such a pain that I have to make a looping playlist with white noise and program it into a routine. It mostly works but not reliable
- telesilla 4y agoA plug for my favorite noise sleep aid, Celestial Noise. A very warm noise with a special quality that I find so much nicer than noise generators, though I recommend downloading so you skip being woken up by ads. The comments are a bonus. https://youtu.be/wzjWIxXBs_s https://youtu.be/wzjWIxXBs_s
- prepend 4y agoI avoid Spotify as a podcast app because of their ad injection system. I think that any white noise apps would be super bad with loud ads stuck into random spots.
- rockbruno 4y agoWhy not just pay for it? I understand being annoyed by the free product in its regular use cases, but wanting the free version of the app to give you a flawless experience from something as specific as playing white noise during the night evokes something in me that I cannot really put a word on.
- lancesells 4y agoDoesn't Spotify put ads in premium as well? Not sure how legit this site is: https://www.pocket-lint.com/smart-home/news/spotify/144139-how-to-connect-spotify-to-alexa-or-amazon-echo https://www.pocket-lint.com/smart-home/news/spotify/144139-h... I think of Spotify as an ad company and not a music service or podcast service: https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/06/spotify-introduces-a-new-ad-format-for-podcasts-that-puts-clickable-cards-inside-shows/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/06/spotify-introduces-a-new-a... Apple Music seems to be headed this way as well because trillions just aren't enough: https://www.macworld.com/article/707588/apple-music-ads-stations-interviews-playlists.html https://www.macworld.com/article/707588/apple-music-ads-stat...
- skinnymuch 4y agoSpotify does 90% revenue through premium subscriptions. Ads could completely go away and they’d still survive. https://craft.co/spotify/revenue https://craft.co/spotify/revenue
- karaterobot 4y agoI don't listen to podcasts on Spotify, but I believe they insert ads into podcasts even if you have a premium subscription. At least they used to. https://community.spotify.com/t5/Other-Podcasts-Partners-etc/Premium-Means-No-Ads-So-WHY-Podcast-ads/td-p/5024321 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Other-Podcasts-Partners-etc...
- ineedasername 4y agoAt first I thought this was going to be some sort of scam, but was pleasantly surprised to find it was using the platform for such an unanticipated reason.
- midislack 4y agoNeat.
- chevman 4y agoWe got a Dohm when my son was born. They generate the noise mechanically and are super soothing: https://www.amazon.com/Marpac-Classic-White-Noise-Machine/dp/B00HD0ELFK https://www.amazon.com/Marpac-Classic-White-Noise-Machine/dp... Realized after we got it that it's what many of our massage therapists have used over the years in their offices. My son's is 8 years old and going strong, used every night for peaceful sleep :)
- imjared 4y agoI just bought one a week ago to deal with noisy neighbors. Can’t believe I waited so long. It’s also nice to have on a lower setting during the day to drown out general city annoyances
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- JaDogg 4y agoShameless plug If you want to run it in a desktop (console app) - https://github.com/JaDogg/noisebox https://github.com/JaDogg/noisebox
- anon25783 4y agothe infamous podcast Cum Town is making more than that with nothing but homophobia and racial slurs
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y agoI wonder if one can copyright the white noise and bash everyone else with copyright violation by means of Content ID, demanding royalty payments from them...
- MisterBastahrd 4y agoOh boy. I can't wait for the white noise copyright lawsuits that are sure to pop up over the next few years.
- SnowHill9902 4y agoLeaving a fan on in your bedroom is actually an accepted medical prescription.
- cheschire 4y agoExcept in Korea, where it's seen as life threatening. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fan-death/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fan-death/
- sfblah 4y agoPresumably this also means they're consuming massive amounts of bandwidth (for audio, anyway), since it's not compressible. Pretty funny!
- thrtythreeforty 4y agoOr, more likely, people aren't getting the high-quality, grass-fed organic noise they thought they were. It's been ruined by Big Tech! /s
- Ansil849 4y agoYes, there are some very popular white and ambient noise casts on Spotify. Just like with every other genre, however, for every one creator that's extremely profitable and successful, there are thousands who are not. So if your takeaway is 'huh, I should go throw up some generated noise on Anchor/Spotify', don't expect to make any kind of money from it. This is as true for white noise as it it for any other genre, so I genuinely don't see the newsworthiness here, other than it's treated as a revelation that people like white noise (for an array of reasons).
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y agoThe "newsworthiness" is promotion of Spotify. This is how many "tech" companies that sell advertising services promote their websites. Like a lottery. They do not have to pay out to every person who submits user-generated content,1 but if they pay out to a small number they can use those examples, "winners", to draw others in. Ideally the "tech" company only wants a limited number of "viral" pages so as to maximise the reach of advertising via those pages. Even if there are 10,000 pages serving white noise, the "tech" company may actively funnel visitors to only a small number, creating ideal conditions for maximum advertising reach.2 (And probably excluding many interesting pages as a result.3) As alluded to in the parent comment, most pages will get too little traffic to generate significant advertising reach and will not pay out "$18K a month". 1. As with lotteries, there are odds. But unlike lotteries, there is no requirement to publish them. Moreover, the "lottery" here is non-transparent. Traffic could be manipulated by the "tech" company behind-the-scenes and the public would never know the details. 2. Of course, the company can claim it does not actively manipulate traffic, e.g., through search and/or "recommendations", but rather computers do, through "algorithms", "AI", "magic" or whatever euphemism they choose for the decision-making and computer programming that their employees perform. 3. Anecdote: Some of the best YouTube and SoundCloud pages I have found, by accessing these websites without using a popular web browser, have very low view numbers. Friends are often intrigued with how I found them. It appears others are getting funneled to the viral crap.
- tangjurine 4y agoWhat do you mean by: >by accessing these websites without using a popular web browser
- swader999 4y agoThis is a symptom of the popularity of the open office concept.
- mdrzn 4y agoNon-paywalled version: https://archive.ph/WOGk7 https://archive.ph/WOGk7