8 ms·

As a user, I'm pretty irritated by Spotify's "Let's shove podcasts down your throat, whether you like it or not" approach. I can't turn them off. I just want mu

As a user, I'm pretty irritated by Spotify's "Let's shove podcasts down your throat, whether you like it or not" approach. I can't turn them off. I just want music. It is actively harmful to spam podcasts to those with AD(H)D-like tendencies.

MuffinFlavored 4y ago
> "Let's shove podcasts down your throat, whether you like it or not" approach Unless I have incorrect data, they have to pay like 70% of their revenue to record labels because they hold the rights. Knowing that, it feels like podcasts was their "big bet" to "own" some content of their own and be able to receive a bigger share? Just an educated guess really on my end.
- yreg 4y ago
  Not that I want to give them ideas, but what's so fundamentally different about music? How come services can produce exclusive games, podcasts, tv shows and even movies, but not music or books?
  - lmm 4y ago
    It may just be culture. Tidal tried to be a music app with exclusives, and got a couple of big names, but people are used to being able to listen to everything on their preferred platform and get annoyed at artists who go for an exclusive. I think games have the same thing to some extent. I would note that there have been some "artists" showing up on Spotify's recommended playlists who haven't been heard of anywhere else, which are suspected of being their "store brand" (where Spotify have presumably paid some session musicians to record the song but keep all the rights).
  - hutattedonmyarm 4y ago
    There are plenty of books which are released exclusively on Amazon and/or Audible. For music: Well they tried. Apple Music and Spotify had a little exclusives war in the beginning, but I think neither managed to grab enough that it mattered
- criddell 4y ago
  It's a similar to Apple's app store model. 70% gets passed on to whomever owns the rights and it is often a record company, but not always. As I understand it, some artists (like Paul Simon) own the rights to their music. Sony Music owns 2.5% of Spotify and Universal Music owns 3.5%. I sometimes wonder if those publishers have made more money on the stock or on royalty payments? It also creates a bit of a conflict of interest for the companies in that they benefit in more than one way when by getting their artists on Spotify.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    I do not think anyone has earned much money on Spotify stock except the earliest investors: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-technology/market-cap https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-techn...
    - criddell 4y ago
      The record companies were early investors. As I understand it, Spotify gave the big record companies pre-IPO stock in exchange for putting their catalogs on the service.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        That makes sense. I can see record companies wanting Spotify to exist just to have an additional customer to help negotiate with Apple/Amazon/Google.
- aeturnum 4y ago
  I totally get why they wanted to do it - but I also found their integration into the UI off-putting. The patterns of listening to podcasts and songs are just so different and they offered little support on mixing the two (no separate queues, etc). It felt very half-baked from a UI / UX perspective.
- DrJokepu 4y ago
  I'm an executive in the music industry and I'm familiar with the details of the situation. I can't talk about the specifics, but I can tell you that your guess is very close to the reality. There is one additional twist, but you really have to understand how the music industry works to guess it.
  - distances 4y ago
    How an industry works is not such a secret that you can't talk about it anonymously in a forum.
nraf 4y ago
I had the same issue with Shorts on YouTube. I'd spend hours mindlessly scrolling through shorts because they shove it in your face and can't be turned on. In the end I've resorted to a modified binary called uYou+ on ios to turn it off (turns out it has some other nice features such as ad blocking, sponsor skip and 3x speed support).
- pas 4y ago
  Distraction Free YT extension, very much recommended! https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/df-tube-distraction-free/mjdepdfccjgcndkmemponafgioodelna?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/df-tube-distractio... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/df-youtube/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/df-youtube/
nickthegreek 4y ago
What is the reason for not jumping ship to one of their competitors?
- juliand 4y ago
  Playlists. I can migrate them to Apple Music but the order in which I added each of these songs is important to me and the last time I tried to export them, such an order was lost. I know I might be the minority but that's what happened to me the last time I wanted to try something different from Spotify.
  - criddell 4y ago
    If it's only the order that matters, I wonder if you could write a script to add the playlists to Apple Music one song at a time?
    - yunwal 4y ago
      Apple requires you to sign up for their developer program ($99/yr) to use the Apple Music API, so you'd either have to pony up some money or do something fancy.
      - criddell 4y ago
        If you can get your data out of Spotify and into a CSV file, I think you could use Shortcuts to create the playlists and populate them.
  - dirtybird04 4y ago
    Look up SongShift app, might be of some use. I was able to successfully migrate my playlists out of Spotify and into AppleMusic seamlessly.
    - n8cpdx 4y ago
      It gets the order but there’s no way to preserve date information. I like having the dates because I can use my playlists as a sort of sonic journal.
geodel 4y ago
I think it is same with Amazon Music. All I want to do is play some songs while driving without these fucking podcast shows in my face every single time. It somehow tries to block me discovering/ searching any music and keep nudging me to podcasts.
mr90210 4y ago
> Let's shove podcasts down your throat The podcast: Joe Rogan Experience
kesslern 4y ago
I worked around this by using uBlock Origin to hide the podcasts section.
achairapart 4y ago
At least on desktop you can tweak the Spotify electron-based app with Spicetify[1]. There is already an extension to completely hide podcasts[2]. [1]: https://spicetify.app/ https://spicetify.app/ [2]: https://github.com/theRealPadster/spicetify-hide-podcasts https://github.com/theRealPadster/spicetify-hide-podcasts
thiht 4y ago
I never listen to podcasts and when I launch Spotify on my phone, half the screen is filled with podcasts. One day I was on autoplay and it even thought it was a good idea to play a random podcast instead of music. I tried Apple Music for the last few months, and while it's very bad on so many points, I like that they made a separate Podcasts app. I'm still not decided on whether I'll stick with Spotify or Apple music mainly because of the podcasts thing.

MuffinFlavored 4y ago

> "Let's shove podcasts down your throat, whether you like it or not" approach Unless I have incorrect data, they have to pay like 70% of their revenue to record labels because they hold the rights. Knowing that, it feels like podcasts was their "big bet" to "own" some content of their own and be able to receive a bigger share? Just an educated guess really on my end.

yreg 4y ago
Not that I want to give them ideas, but what's so fundamentally different about music? How come services can produce exclusive games, podcasts, tv shows and even movies, but not music or books?
- lmm 4y ago
  It may just be culture. Tidal tried to be a music app with exclusives, and got a couple of big names, but people are used to being able to listen to everything on their preferred platform and get annoyed at artists who go for an exclusive. I think games have the same thing to some extent. I would note that there have been some "artists" showing up on Spotify's recommended playlists who haven't been heard of anywhere else, which are suspected of being their "store brand" (where Spotify have presumably paid some session musicians to record the song but keep all the rights).
- hutattedonmyarm 4y ago
  There are plenty of books which are released exclusively on Amazon and/or Audible. For music: Well they tried. Apple Music and Spotify had a little exclusives war in the beginning, but I think neither managed to grab enough that it mattered
criddell 4y ago
It's a similar to Apple's app store model. 70% gets passed on to whomever owns the rights and it is often a record company, but not always. As I understand it, some artists (like Paul Simon) own the rights to their music. Sony Music owns 2.5% of Spotify and Universal Music owns 3.5%. I sometimes wonder if those publishers have made more money on the stock or on royalty payments? It also creates a bit of a conflict of interest for the companies in that they benefit in more than one way when by getting their artists on Spotify.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I do not think anyone has earned much money on Spotify stock except the earliest investors: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-technology/market-cap https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-techn...
  - criddell 4y ago
    The record companies were early investors. As I understand it, Spotify gave the big record companies pre-IPO stock in exchange for putting their catalogs on the service.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      That makes sense. I can see record companies wanting Spotify to exist just to have an additional customer to help negotiate with Apple/Amazon/Google.
aeturnum 4y ago
I totally get why they wanted to do it - but I also found their integration into the UI off-putting. The patterns of listening to podcasts and songs are just so different and they offered little support on mixing the two (no separate queues, etc). It felt very half-baked from a UI / UX perspective.
DrJokepu 4y ago
I'm an executive in the music industry and I'm familiar with the details of the situation. I can't talk about the specifics, but I can tell you that your guess is very close to the reality. There is one additional twist, but you really have to understand how the music industry works to guess it.
- distances 4y ago
  How an industry works is not such a secret that you can't talk about it anonymously in a forum.

nraf 4y ago

I had the same issue with Shorts on YouTube. I'd spend hours mindlessly scrolling through shorts because they shove it in your face and can't be turned on. In the end I've resorted to a modified binary called uYou+ on ios to turn it off (turns out it has some other nice features such as ad blocking, sponsor skip and 3x speed support).

pas 4y ago
Distraction Free YT extension, very much recommended! https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/df-tube-distraction-free/mjdepdfccjgcndkmemponafgioodelna?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/df-tube-distractio... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/df-youtube/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/df-youtube/

nickthegreek 4y ago

What is the reason for not jumping ship to one of their competitors?

juliand 4y ago
Playlists. I can migrate them to Apple Music but the order in which I added each of these songs is important to me and the last time I tried to export them, such an order was lost. I know I might be the minority but that's what happened to me the last time I wanted to try something different from Spotify.
- criddell 4y ago
  If it's only the order that matters, I wonder if you could write a script to add the playlists to Apple Music one song at a time?
  - yunwal 4y ago
    Apple requires you to sign up for their developer program ($99/yr) to use the Apple Music API, so you'd either have to pony up some money or do something fancy.
    - criddell 4y ago
      If you can get your data out of Spotify and into a CSV file, I think you could use Shortcuts to create the playlists and populate them.
- dirtybird04 4y ago
  Look up SongShift app, might be of some use. I was able to successfully migrate my playlists out of Spotify and into AppleMusic seamlessly.
  - n8cpdx 4y ago
    It gets the order but there’s no way to preserve date information. I like having the dates because I can use my playlists as a sort of sonic journal.

geodel 4y ago

I think it is same with Amazon Music. All I want to do is play some songs while driving without these fucking podcast shows in my face every single time. It somehow tries to block me discovering/ searching any music and keep nudging me to podcasts.

mr90210 4y ago

> Let's shove podcasts down your throat The podcast: Joe Rogan Experience

kesslern 4y ago

I worked around this by using uBlock Origin to hide the podcasts section.

achairapart 4y ago

At least on desktop you can tweak the Spotify electron-based app with Spicetify[1]. There is already an extension to completely hide podcasts[2]. [1]: https://spicetify.app/ https://spicetify.app/ [2]: https://github.com/theRealPadster/spicetify-hide-podcasts https://github.com/theRealPadster/spicetify-hide-podcasts

thiht 4y ago

I never listen to podcasts and when I launch Spotify on my phone, half the screen is filled with podcasts. One day I was on autoplay and it even thought it was a good idea to play a random podcast instead of music. I tried Apple Music for the last few months, and while it's very bad on so many points, I like that they made a separate Podcasts app. I'm still not decided on whether I'll stick with Spotify or Apple music mainly because of the podcasts thing.