49 ms·

Spotify looked to ban white noise podcasts to become more profitable

305 points by cududa 3y ago

jncfhnb 3y ago
We do brown noise all night every night. White noise is too harsh imo.
archo 3y ago
https://archive.is/MaXIb https://archive.is/MaXIb
helsinkiandrew 3y ago
https://archive.ph/MaXIb https://archive.ph/MaXIb
malfist 3y ago
Surely this user hostile behavior will have no repercussions. Enshitification must continue. After all, removing features your customers are using too much is a recipe for profit.
PeterCorless 3y ago
Also picked up by engadget: https://www.engadget.com/spotify-almost-removed-white-noise-podcasts-to-save-money-065639545.html https://www.engadget.com/spotify-almost-removed-white-noise-...
lionkor 3y ago
...it sucks that people listen to white noise when they could be listening to the newest hits instead? Yeah, sure, but they wont? If you get rid of the white noise, they go back to youtube or whatever. If you push people to other content, they wont click or theyll skip it if what they want is white noise. Youve got a massive platform, incredibly successful, loved and used by so many, and you go "ah darn, i really hate that my users on my platform choose to spend their time on content that isnt as profitable as other content on my plaftorm"??? Jesus christ thats daft. Serve the users what they want and they will stay with you forever.
- SkyPuncher 3y ago
  Further, this seems like such a freaking simple fix. Provide first party white noise.
  - jaxelr 3y ago
    Crazy to think that iOs does and it barely gets noticed.
    - AverageDude 3y ago
      TIL
    - veave 3y ago
      It's tremendously hidden. Of course it barely gets noticed. There are so many hidden gems in accessibility settings, at this point it should be called advanced settings instead.
      - MichaelZuo 3y ago
        No it isn't, on ios 16.6 it's not even 10 clicks to get to the granular options. Are you on an older version?
        OGWhales 3y ago
        I feel as though accessibility is not a spot most people would think to check for that.
        IshKebab 3y ago
        10 clicks is tremendously hidden.
        4ec0755f5522 3y ago
        I tested right now and it's 5: Settings -> Accessibility -> Audio/Visual -> Background Sounds -> on/off/sounds/etc. It may be the number of items that are part of why people consider these settings "hidden". The "Accessiblity" menu is now 23 items long, and the main Settings menu is 53 Apple items plus over 100 application items.
hlandau 3y ago
>"It can’t be that an Ed Sheeran stream is worth exactly the same as a stream of rain falling on the roof," Warner Music Group CEO, Robert Kyncl told Music Business Worldwide earlier this year. Why not?
- branon 3y ago
  My thoughts exactly. How out of touch are these people?
- hnbad 3y ago
  Heck, this is the market doing its thing, isn't it? You can't say you want capitalism and then complain because the market demonstrates as much demand for the sound of rain falling on a roof as for a particular singer-songwriter. I think WMG is just annoyed the person who uploaded the rain noise doesn't have to pay royalties to the rain and keeps the entire cut. I'm sure WMG also thinks WMG's contribution to Ed Sheeran's music on the platform is worth the millions they get paid as middlemen. At least the rain is contributing something by making a noise.
- devit 3y ago
  I guess their issue might be that if people listen to white noise 8 hours while asleep every night and Spotify distributes their monthly fee weighted by time listened, then a lot of their fee will go to the white noise for sleep and thus the total fee distributed to their daytime music would be unexpectedly significantly reduced. The easy fix would be to cap track time weight, although that is susceptible to an attack of splitting the white noise in many parts and publishing a playlist. I guess a possibility could be to somehow compute "song variety" (i.e. entropy in a model where the decoder can generate noise/randomness) and weight by that, but not sure if the available lossy codecs are good enough to do that.
  - gregw2 3y ago
    I hate to say it but certain advertisers might pay more for ads that play while people are sleeping (ie placement during 8 hour tracks of white noise). This is not a $38m-in-costs crisis for Spotify, this is a revenue opportunity! ... 60 seconds of web seaching later... Sigh. Apparently this sort of marketer manipulation started over three years ago unfortunately: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a36719140/sleep-ads-dream-implantation/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a36719140/sleep-... and https://www.science.org/content/article/are-advertisers-coming-your-dreams https://www.science.org/content/article/are-advertisers-comi... ... things that make you say: "There oughta be a law..."
ChatGTP 3y ago
[flagged]
sbarre 3y ago
If they were smart they would just lean into this and add support for easily looping shorter tracks into some kind of "atmospheric listening" product. Surely that would bring down their bandwidth costs at the very least. There are tons of popular paid apps that do this kind of thing already, there's an obvious market for it. But I haven't found Spotify to be very smart recently, so they'll probably just keep complaining about it, or do something stupid like update their ToS to disallow this kind of thing.
- rchaud 3y ago
  They'll probably just acquire calm.com which does exactly that. Nobody at Spotify is concerned with profitability.
somat 3y ago
The technical problem is that noise compresses poorly. What is needed is a way to generate the noise as needed. Now people don't want just any noise, they want artisanal boutique noise. so all you need is a bpf style language artists can plug into your noise generator, then people can pick the superior custom noise algorithm. hashtag: only_half_joking
- john-radio 3y ago
  There are a few white noise generator apps actually and I love them. https://asoftmurmur.com/ https://asoftmurmur.com/
- jakdracula 3y ago
  Oddly enough, there already are free and paid products that do exactly this- you can even add birds, insect noise and ambient sounds. Choose light rain, heavy rain, anything else in between. You can even choose the surface the rain is hitting- concrete, tin roof, etc.
  - alvarezbjm-hn 3y ago
    Do you have a name? I am interested (insect and bird toggle, surface select)
    - jdechko 3y ago
      On iOS, Rain Rain is my favorite. It’s a free with limitations app, but I don’t find the limitations too bad. But honestly, we have a HomePod mini that does 99.999% of the work in the house. The HomePod has half-a-dozen or so background noises including rain, ocean and white noises
    - notatoad 3y ago
      if you use iPhone, you can turn on "background sounds" under accessibility settings - no app required
  - m0llusk 3y ago
    The mandible chatter market is underserved.
hnbad 3y ago
Sounds less like Spotify is annoyed than record labels are annoyed. Spotify is being paid by its users regardless of what they decide to listen to. On YouTube one of my most-watched videos in terms of watchtime for a while was brown noise overlaid on a recording of ocean waves. The video was three hours long I think and monetized. YouTube probably doesn't care if that share of my YouTube Premium subscription money goes to the guy who uploaded that video, a professionally recorded studio production or some person doing vlogs in their bedroom. Why should Spotify?
- Macha 3y ago
  It depends on if these users are paying for premium or not. Since the streams are described as having embedded ads, users probably aren't too worried about removing Spotify's own ads, and I doubt track skips or selecting specific tracks in the album are in demand by any primarily white noise users
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    I doubt anyone is listening to these from a free account with ads, that would defeat the purpose.
    - Macha 3y ago
      To me the embedded ads which the article identifies as the source of revenue for these white noise streams would also seem to defeat the point for me, but apparently that doesn't bother people so I don't see why spotify's ads would be different.
- squeaky-clean 3y ago
  My guess is that it's far more likely that major labels start their own music streaming services, mimicking the Netflix/Hulu/Disney/HBO/Peacock etc explosion in video streaming. No idea if it would be a smart business decision by the labels, but they could definitely do it and Spotify would only be left with independent artists and labels who don't join the bandwagon. YouTube has no risk of this. There's no entity, or coalition of entities, capable of pulling content from YouTube that would create a noticeable dip in traffic.
ghusto 3y ago
> ... it concluded that shifting users away from white noise programming could net the company an additional $38 million in profit I don't think that's how ... well, _anything_ works. It's like saying "If got rid of the actual program on our TV channel and filled the whole spot with adverts, we could make three times as much money from adverts". They're not there to buy your product, they're there because there's a free thing they want. When that free thing goes away, so do they.
- deleted 3y ago
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sdiupIGPWEfh 3y ago
Been listening to playlists of brown noise on Spotify lately while working, when I get tired of listening to actual music but still want some background noise. More indistinct and less distracting than other ambient sounds. The primary benefit to me of using Spotify for this is that I'm already set up to control music on my sound system from my phone.
bob1029 3y ago
It is amusing to me watching the effects of capitalism take hold over something as simple as literal noise. I used to use a website for this purpose but then they started getting super weird with popups and "please donate" click-thrus. I decided to write my own noise generator. It's not hard. If you have access to OpenAI (or a semester's worth of DSP education), you could write one in a few hours.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > capitalism take hold over something as simple as literal noise Scapegoating "capitalism" doesn't strike me as sufficiently nuanced thinking. For instance, Tidal, has playlists dedicated to things like rain sounds e.g. https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/5ed2512d-b27b-4d0c-845d-3fd517401af2 https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/5ed2512d-b27b-4d0c-845d-3f...
- parineum 3y ago
  Capitalism has literally nothing to do with it. This is just people reacting to market incentives. Capitalism requires (free) markets but markets aren't Capitalism.
- isoprophlex 3y ago
  Also the environmental aspects. Powering and provisioning hardware in CDNs to encode and stream random numbers... pretty dumb.
- bobsmooth 3y ago
  Hosting a website costs money, has nothing to do with capitalism.
mg 3y ago
Aren't there audio ads injected of the free version of Spotify? How can one sleep when those come up? Or do they only inject ads between songs, so that if the song is long enough, the user will never hear any ads?
- deleted 3y ago
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- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  Like with TV, I suspect people just blank them out, or they become part of the experience. Or it's paid subscribers.
deleted 3y ago
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alphazard 3y ago
One man's artisanal white noise is another man's encrypted offsite backup.
- inatreecrown2 3y ago
  how do you think he listens to them, is there any app that can play non audio (wav, mp3) files?
  - KMnO4 3y ago
    cat file.bin | aplay
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - klyrs 3y ago
    Back in the day, we'd just cat /dev/random > /dev/dsp which was especially fun when 'who' said that there was only one TTY session active in the computer lab at night, and you were logged in from your dorm. Or so I'm told.
- amenghra 3y ago
  That can be true of any file. One person's gif/pdf/html/whatever is another person's stegano-encrypted data...
- deleted 3y ago
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seydor 3y ago
let alone it's not compressible
grumblingdev 3y ago
I listen to so much of this stuff. It's super annoying. I just want 10hr mixes. I want an app that just does this and nothing else that is not terrible.
- lostlogin 3y ago
  If you’re on iOS, it’s baked into the OS. Setting > Background Sounds. I wish it had a few more (eg rain without bird noises). Being able to add my own would be great.
- isoprophlex 3y ago
  cat /dev/urandom | aplay
- xsmasher 3y ago
  Noisily works in a browser or they have apps https://www.noisli.com/ https://www.noisli.com/
- danjoredd 3y ago
  An app I use, at least on Android, is "Atmosphere: Relaxing Noises." Outside of a couple banner ads I don't get interrupted or anything and it has a lot of mixing options. I highly recommend it. IDK if they have an IOS version or not
Roark66 3y ago
>"It can’t be that an Ed Sheeran stream is worth exactly the same as a stream of rain falling on the roof," Warner Music Group CEO, Robert Kyncl Why not? You've already made millions in profit on Ed Sheeran's content. Once you've broke even on the cost of making the content delivering more of it costs exactly the same. Regardless if its music or sounds of rain falling on a roof.
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  If Ed Sheeran's music was removed from spotify tomorrow it would significantly decrease the amount people listened, and presumably some people would stop subscribing. If any particular white noise album went away it would have no impact on revenue, people would just listen to a different one.
  - braza 3y ago
    > it would significantly decrease the amount people listened, and presumably some people would stop subscribing. Not sure about that. The main value proposition of Spotify is that is a audio marketplace that consolidates legacy music catalog via big labels (EMI, Roadrunner, Universal, etc) plus the Podcast platform sindication and in a certain stance discoverability. Everything keeping the friction in a minimum level. Of course Ed Sheeran is a big name, but I think it’s debatable that, let’s say the top 1% of his fan base in the Spotify user base would trade the huge amount of friction due to his catalog removal.
    - sebzim4500 3y ago
      I think way more than 1% of fans would switch to Apple Music etc.
      - braza 3y ago
        Sorry to insist in this point, but as far as I know a big artist left the platform does not has a huge impact. For instance: Neil Young left the platform at Jan/22 and the user base had a constant growth. Another point that I forgot to mention: not all subscribers are equal to Spotify. A heavy user that listens Ed Sheeran is less desirable than a heavy user that listens a bunch of podcasts. On the former Spotify needs to collect and pay to the labels and for the latter the cost is marginal. If we’re talking about one artist, eventually the platform natural growth will offset the effect of a single artist leaving. Platform and network effects is something strong. If you’re talking about a “catalog removal”, for instance, Universal removes all artists in their portfolio I am more than happy to agree that Spotify will suffer. [1] - https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/26773/profitability-development-of-spotify/ https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/26773/profitability-devel...
weinzierl 3y ago
I think the idea was born with Sleepify[1] in 2014. (I love how Wikipedia classifies its genre a silence). This was kind of a stunt back then, receiving mainstream media attention and ultimately allowing the band behind it to finance a small tour. Of course, repeating this one-time creative feat is just boring and annoying and for Spotify it is just a slippery slope. If they forbid silence, people will upload white noise, if they forbid white noise people will just resort to some low effort AI generated sound. None of which is desirable for anyone. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepify https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepify
amenghra 3y ago
In case you need it, a static page which will give you an infinite amount of white/pink/waterfall noise: https://www.quaxio.com/noise.html https://www.quaxio.com/noise.html No tracking and no ads, ever. Uses WebAudio API. Based on the code from https://noisehack.com/generate-noise-web-audio-api/ https://noisehack.com/generate-noise-web-audio-api/, but for some reason, the code wasn't working as-is in today's browsers. So tweaked things for a couple minutes.
- gumby 3y ago
  Can it be used as a good source of random numbers or is the noise not truly “white”?
  - sethhochberg 3y ago
    Under the hood it’s just making calls to Math.random(), so the white noise generated is exactly as reliable a source of randomness as the system as the system could give you directly.
    - travisjungroth 3y ago
      It’s at at most as good of a source but almost certainly worse. Lots of entropy dropped and biases introduced.
      - sethhochberg 3y ago
        Very fair point. Transforming the randomness to fit it into the audible spectrum would certainly have side effects
    - yura 3y ago
      >as reliable a source of randomness as the system as the system could give you directly Not sure what you mean by this. Which system?
      - gumby 3y ago
pmontra 3y ago
> entire episodes of white noise, seemingly aimed at listeners who are asleep. > Some podcasters are making as much as $18,000 a month through ads placed in these episodes > shifting users away from white noise programming could net the company an additional $38 million in profit I wonder what does Spotify think those people could listen to while sleeping, heavy metal? /s A problem could be that ads in those stream are wasted unless we discover that sleeping people can be influenced as awake ones. Is the sum of those wasted ads that's equal to $38 M?
- MrVandemar 3y ago
  > A problem could be that ads in those stream are wasted unless we discover that sleeping people can be influenced as awake ones. "But old clothes are beastly," continued the untiring whisper. "We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending, ending is better …'
- fluidcruft 3y ago
  My guess would be the idea is to shift listeners from white noise that Spotify pays royalties for toward white noise that Spotify owns. The hidden factor is ads that don't actually play for Spotify subscribers. The general idea behind paying for an ad-free experience is that royalties and revenue are either paid by subscription fees or by advertisers. The free tier gets ads and the paid tier doesn't. If Spotify shifted users to content they don't pay royalties for, then users wouldn't notice the difference, but behind the scenes Spotify can claim the royalties and ad revenue for itself rather than pay them out to a third party. For example, if Spotify replaces the podcaster who makes $18k month in royalties with Spotify's own white noise podcast, then the immediate effect is that $18k/month doesn't leave Spotify's pockets.
  - _dain_ 3y ago
    >white noise that Spotify owns how can you have copyright on white noise???
    - Tao3300 3y ago
mysterypie 3y ago
Are there any long-term effects on hearing or health caused by listening to white noise while sleeping? Or from the hum of an air conditioner, humidifier, or dehumidifier?
- konschubert 3y ago
  No
rajnathani 3y ago
Well, people asleep listening to ads, should technically be great due to the continuous subconscious delivery of the ads.
AlbertCory 3y ago
If music is just auditory wallpaper anyway, why distinguish?
dathinab 3y ago
I think this representation is a bit misleading. They considered intervening with them, which by far doesn't mean banning them. To put it into context after their acquisition they had been pushing podcasts in general, white noise podcast accidentally profited from it, and a bit too much. Which is with what they considered intervening with. But banning them would have been the last step if others don't work. And even then you still would have white noise songs, just not podcasts. Or more likely podcast just not promoted, i.e. you need to more explicitly look for them. I.e. the chance for Spotify removing users access to white noise content was close to non-existing as far I can tell.
- constantly 3y ago
  What’s your source on all of this?
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - hobom 3y ago
    It's basically all present in the article
- lozenge 3y ago
  Well yes, they could forbid publishing noise on the platform, and just offer their own white noise content for users to access.
Animats 3y ago
I can understand listening to white noise. But listening to white noise with ads? People actually do that?
- 6510 3y ago
  Some product like an AI driven aquarium screen saver.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Like the ones we had in the 90's without the AI?
- themodelplumber 3y ago
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  - throwaw1yyy 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - themodelplumber 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - thfuran 3y ago
        No, I would guess they said said that because of the paragraph after paragraph of blathering.
      - janandonly 3y ago
        If we wanted to know what chatgpt thought we would just ask it directly. Here on HN, we share human ideas instead, wrong capitalisation and everything…
        3y ago
psychphysic 3y ago
Maybe like Netflix film grain, Spotify could generate the white noise locally and reduce bandwidth usage?
- Inityx 3y ago
  Did you read the article?
  - deleted 3y ago
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- arrowsmith 3y ago
  > Netflix film grain TIL: https://www.slashcam.com/news/single/Netflix-removes-movie-noise--saves-30--bandwidth-a-17337.html https://www.slashcam.com/news/single/Netflix-removes-movie-n...
  - newZWhoDis 3y ago
    I despise this with every fiber in my body. Intentionally adding noise back to a picture?! What in heavens name for? Is there at least a way to turn it off?
    - tux3 3y ago
      It's an intentional artistic choice, if you denoise people don't like it, because film noise is nostalgic and vinyl has a warmer sound, etc etc If you download the video file and play it back locally, you can change it or turn it off if you want, it's just a video filter You can even turn off deblocking if you want, get those crispy jpeg-like artifacts! It's all just post-processing, when it was previously hardcoded, which seems like a win, especially considering bandwidth gains
    - grotorea 3y ago
      Is it so different from adding lens flares?
andix 3y ago
Spotify has a few awesome playlists with different noise colors. Those "songs" are probably licensed by Spotify and not paid per play.
Havoc 3y ago
Just add a white noise generator and call it a day?
- dbg31415 3y ago
  Missing the point a bit I think. (= Spotify isn't geared to handle people streaming 8+ hours of ASMR audio per day. Their model doesn't support having to pay artists for audio tracks people put on random shuffle while they sleep / game / study / work. "White noise" here I think just means tracks without talking. So mic scratching, inaudible whispers, tapping on random items, mouth sounds... all the stuff ASMR folks do. These folks figured out how to get Spotify to pay, with a bunch of new tracks every week that people are actively listening to, and Spotify doesn't want people doing that.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    > Their model doesn't support having to pay artists for audio tracks people put on random shuffle while they sleep / game / study / work. ?! putting spotify on in the background of something else has to be more than 50% of their use. That's partly why the payouts are so low.
    - copperx 3y ago
      Does Spotify pay more if users stream the track in the foreground? Or what do you mean?
  - selimthegrim 3y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Walk_(TV_series) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Walk_(TV_series)
  - nolok 3y ago
    Are you saying you believe the issue is 1. that people listen to spotify 6/7/8+ hours a day, or 2. that people listen to those tracks specifically ? If it's 2 then it makes no sense Spotify needs to pay either way, and if it's 1 then it makes no sense either, people didn't start listening to music in the background while working or studying or relaxing or cooking once white-noise-like feed appeared, they've been doing that since before I was born, so if spotify business model doesn't account for that model it is simply not viable. From the article, it seems the issue is another thing entirely : people listen to that while sleeping, and that drives the value of advertisements down.
adventured 3y ago
Brown noise is the way to go. White noise is too broad - and largely unnecessary - the higher frequencies are more likely to damage your hearing over time (particularly at any elevated loudness, ie if you're trying to drown out some loud noise to sleep). Brown noise will do a far superior job at blocking out snoring, thuds, etc. I don't know how people sleep with white noise, the highs are too screeching.
mensetmanusman 3y ago
Just make a generator that plays on the device.
midnitewarrior 3y ago
Spotify needs to license https://mynoise.net https://mynoise.net and include their dozens of soundscapes into the Spotify client. The captured audio soundscapes are high quality, engineered, mixable audio from many relaxing and peaceful natural and artificial environments. Tossing a few million dollars towards the MyNoise people for something that's currently donor-ware would be amazing for the creators as well as opening up the ambient soundscapes to millions of people. Spotify gets royalty-free audio that takes up very little bandwidth.
deanc 3y ago
I can give some insight to this. If you search for white/brown etc. noise on spotify for songs you won't find longer tracks. I use these while travelling if I'm having troubles sleeping in a room where there's noise, or on a plane. Airpods in, lie back and it blocks out more noise. The problem with the albums of white noise are they fade between different kinds of noise which usually only lasts a few mins - this is enough to break the effect. I can only presume there is a limit on song length for albums, because there are white noise podcasts which are 10 hours long - which is exactly what I need for my use-case.
- squeaky-clean 3y ago
  There are bands with songs over an hour long on Spotify. Distrokid (the most popular service for independent artists to get on Spotify et al) has no maximum length for song uploads. I think the real reason is Spotify pays you per "song played" not per minute played. If I listen to Dopesmoker by Sleep, which is an hour long, then I listen to a 60 second white noise clip, both artists get paid an equal amount.
  - Loughla 3y ago
    I don't use spotify but I wondered how a length limit would work for some esoteric bands. Shpongle is another one with extremely long songs that wouldn't work if they were chopped up.
    - boredemployee 3y ago
      I never thought I'd read about Shpongle in HN.
      - Loughla 3y ago
        Hallucinogenics brought me to my current career. Synthesizing DMT got me my first full-time grant writing gig. I believe more hackers experiment with drugs than the nerd stereotype would lead you to believe. Also, the music they make is amazing. So it's always relevant to most music conversations. (Albinoblacksheep flashback is still my go to when I'm feeling nostalgic)
internet101010 3y ago
>Spotify’s challenge with white noise podcasts mirrors a similar conversation happening in the music world. Universal Music Group’s CEO Lucian Grainge and Warner Music’s CEO Robert Kyncl have both voiced their displeasure at the fact that songs filled with noise are paid out of the same royalty pool shared by their superstars. It just means that people value white noise over the music your artists are creating.
- imachine1980_ 3y ago
  not necessary, i'm not giving the same attention to rain sounds that to any other music, this type of content is design to be consume as background sound so most of the reproductions are less valuable if you equate attention = money, it was like the moment when youtube quality = time view and you have millions of multi hours low quality gameplays in the main feed, i feel this is the problem of only account time view over 30 as metric of monetization.
- deleted 3y ago
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JumpCrisscross 3y ago
Sounds like there is a niche for an ad-supported white-noise podcasting platform?
walnutclosefarm 3y ago
I get why people might want white noise in their earbuds, but why would you want to stream it? You can easily download a multi-hour recording of, say, a waterfall, and just play it from your device. And who in heck would listen to white noise with ads? Wouldn't the ads completely destroy the intended effect of the noise? This is a phenomenon I really don't understand.
- deanCommie 3y ago
  I can offer a couple of explanations. 1) UX is better through a streaming client. It'll be named cleanly, it'll have a nice thumbnail. Whereas a downloaded file would be named white_noise_128bit_v3.mp3 and would be in a Downloads folder with 10,000 screenshots and memes, and every time you try to open it you have to find it. 2) All-in integration with everything in one client: Here's my white noise in my history next to my favourite banger, next to my last podcast. Tonight, as I go to bed I decide I want to listen to....one of those. They're all there in one place. 3) Discoverability UX. Go to Streamer app. Search White Noise. Press Play. Done. vs. Go to Browser. Search White Noise. Scroll through pages of results of links about white noise, articles, listicles. Search again for White Noise Mp3 Download. Click top result. Get inundated with ads and links that LOOK like they should be a download, but actually take you to an ad network. Finally find the download link. It opens in an in- browser player instead of a download. Give up. It's honestly to the point that most of our parents or grandparents can't even get there. 4) Oh also repeat the same but for audio players. Are there good local audio players? That aren't inundated with ads? And each with worse playback UX than Spotify/etc? Most phones now come pre-loaded with Spotify or YoutubeMusic or AppleMusic. Good luck figuring out what is a good local audio player.
  - copperx 3y ago
    You do know that white noise can be generated really easily, right? Tap on white noise app, press play. You don't have to worry about having downloading the track so it's available when you hop on a plane, or having internet, or using mobile data. Plus, most white apps have an equalizer to tailor the spectrum and several noise generators. You might like brown noise more in certain situations.
javajosh 3y ago
Let me humbly suggest that people use actual files for their noise needs. The two apps that work in tandem are syncthing and vlc. Syncthing gets the file from a desktop to your phone. VLC lets you play the file on your phone. (Getting a file to your desktop is another tool, but that depends on your source. For generating noise Audacity works great! But you can also rip CDs, and so on.) It feels very wholesome about playing a simple file, rather than streaming it. This is apart from the considerable simplicity and robustness of the solution. You can be on airplane mode and it will work. You can use VLC player features to speed up, slow down, or loop it. You can build up a play list rather than using search all the time. My phone sips power compared to streaming music. It also doesn't use your network bandwidth, which is nice. Note: you could also build your own noise tracks on your phone with a mobile DAW. I like https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-mobile/ https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-mobile/ - it's $15 but quite powerful.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  ...or just downloading fron youtube with newpipe. I guess even a browser is enough using an invidious instance. Also kdeconnect works great as well to transfer files from computer to phone and vice-versa.
akeck 3y ago
We specifically use an app called White Noise for this type of thing. It has all the noise colors (I prefer pink noise), doesn't stream, and plays without ads.
forrestthewoods 3y ago
The payment model of “streams per play” has always felt wrong to me. Wouldn’t a more rational be “how does this user’s monthly fee get divided”? Let’s say someone pays $10/month for Spotify. First Spotify takes their cut, let’s call that $3 but whatever it is. There’s $7 left. If someone ONLY listens to Taylor Swift that month then she deserves the full $7. If someone listens to 50 artists for 20 hours then those 50 artists can divide the $7. You can set the pool size and divide the pool a few ways. I’ve got ideas for how I think that should be done. But in any case I’ve always thought the division should be on a per-user basis rather than entire ecosystem.
- norenh 3y ago
  100% this. As a consumer that tries to do active choices the current model breaks any kind of active choices to support or not support an artist, except nudging it somewhere in the margins. If your pot is only going to work you interact with, you can suddenly make an impact for smaller artists. The counterargument I see is that subscribers who listen to lots of different artists will have a smaller share of the pot for each artist than someone who listen to just one artist. But I see the inequality here is not as bad as the other option where almost all my subscriber fee now goes to a few mainstream artists I probably never listened to. I also bet a lot of smaller artists would benefit more with a per-user pot, instead of always getting a minuscule share from the global pot.
vvpan 3y ago
I wonder why they did not just add the feature if it is so desired? Feels like the code required and UI changes would be minimal.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mhh__ 3y ago
If I were Spotify I would include some noise generators and clever sample based waterfall noises in the subscription. People pay money for this already, it's free* market share. In fact it's actually built into the iPad. *Obviously it takes time to develop but it would take one smart guy a day so if your team struggles it's on you.
- pedalpete 3y ago
  This is what I was thinking, and they could just bundle the sound files, or generate them on the fly, so they don't have the streaming cost.
RGamma 3y ago
The curious outgrowths of consumerism never fail to surprise me.
aedocw 3y ago
On mac or linux with sox installed, this is a perfect source for brown noise: play -n synth brownnoise gain -25 Also works for whitenoise or pinknoise.
marcrosoft 3y ago
Spotify to me has been crap since they tried to ruin podcasts by making a walled garden
- IAmGraydon 3y ago
  I'm not familiar with this. What did they do that made them a walled garden?
  - ufo 3y ago
    Some spotify podcasts can only be played on the spotify app.
  - roywiggins 3y ago
    They bought out podcast producers and stopped publishing their podcasts outside of Spotify itself.
    - IAmGraydon 3y ago
      Thanks. I didn’t know that and I’m surprised that producers would agree to put all of their eggs in one basket like that. The success of their business is now directly linked to the future success of the platform.
  - u320 3y ago
    They started to pay podcasters to publish on Spotify exclusively. E.g. Joe Rogan.
galuggus 3y ago
I made white noise that plants trees (20k so far) www.mptr.ee https://www.thissongplantstrees.com/streaming#background https://www.thissongplantstrees.com/streaming#background
vunderba 3y ago
I really wish Spotify would understand the difference between white noise and actual music, using Spotify on my smart speaker when I go to bed playing a continual brown noise loop completely screws up the recommendation algorithm. YouTube has a similar issue. Viewers who watched "60 minutes of white noise" also enjoyed "8 hr tv noise loop". Yeah... thanks for the rec.
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
  My girlfriend's end of year thing was pretty funny. Showed whale songs, white noise, and other sleepy stuff as her top songs and artists.
- tiffanyg 3y ago
  Hey! 8 hours of TV static per night is the only way I can get some decent shut-eye! But then, I'm from 1950. Also, the soothing crackle makes transmissions from my home planet more distinctive, so I never miss any of the crucial orders relating to my mission: https://youtu.be/jjeUuakHsLw?t=29s https://youtu.be/jjeUuakHsLw?t=29s
- mattigames 3y ago
  Look spotify, I did it for you `if (!song.white_noise) { add_for_recommend_history_(song); }` In a more serious note YouTube has a similar problem, "Oh I looked recommendations for a drawing tablet to buy my friend", now till to the ends of time I get recommendations for drawing tablets, and if I had used the "Incognito mode" they show me ads despite me being a premium user, I want it incognito but not THAT much of incognito you geniuses at Google.
  - trts 3y ago
    it would surprise me if they didn’t try to handle this. It is similar to the Christmas music in January problem. With white noise it is so easy to generate for free that likely 1000s of people are generating hordes of static content and uploading it to try to get a payout. And it’s probably not that easy to identify every track that is intended to be listened to as ambient noise. Ambient noise itself is a music genre.
Hydraulix989 3y ago
You can just generate white noise locally, why bother with a recording?
- maest 3y ago
  It's way simpler.
its_the_future 3y ago
They're talking about bird noises, the article said, among other things. That's called ambient noise. That's not white noise.
stevebmark 3y ago
The most important thing you'll read today: Your iPhone has a white/brown noise feature under Settings > Accessibility > Audio/Visual > Toggle "background sounds". On computers, use https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/whiteNoiseGenerator.php https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/whiteNoiseGenerator.php and press "b" for brown noise.
hanniabu 3y ago
The logical move would be for Spotify to product their own, that way they don't need to pay anyone. I mean c'mon it's 2023, how hard could it be to create autogenerated white noise, Apple already does it.
LeoPanthera 3y ago
Install SoX and you can generate noise without using any data at all. Even without internet access. Imagine that. play -n synth 60:00 whitenoise play -n synth 60:00 pinknoise play -n synth 60:00 brownnoise Or make your own wav files: sox -n whitenoise.wav synth 60:00 whitenoise # Also works with pinknoise/brownnoise I wouldn't use lossy compression to compress these. There's no redundant data in noise so lossy compression will just make it less noise-y. I can only imagine that noise on streaming services sounds weird.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  Cool trick for when you're at the computer. Not practical for sleeping for most people I'd say.
  - LeoPanthera 3y ago
    If you make the wavs you can put them on any playback device you like.
  - jayknight 3y ago
    I sometimes use the "chroma doze" and generate colored noise with my phone. Playing it over the phone speaker isn't great, but if you need some noise it will do.
- jcul 3y ago
  A lot of these white noise thread are not just straight up pink / white / brown noise, some of them vary with time to create more soothing effects like wave sounds or sounding like a vacuum etc. Speaking from experience of trying anything to try get babies to sleep!
  - LeoPanthera 3y ago
    You can totally do that too. This is a nice synthetic ocean sound, with "waves": play -n synth brownnoise synth 0 0 0 10 10 40 trapezium amod 0.1 30 Or with a little more high end, it sounds like gusts of wind: play -n synth brownnoise synth pinknoise mix synth 0 0 0 10 10 40 trapezium amod 0.1 30
spoonjim 3y ago
Why don’t they just build a white noise generator into the app themselves?
willprice89 3y ago
Another good free white noise generator website: https://noises.online/ https://noises.online/
eutropia 3y ago
just use mynoise.net it’s amazing.
hoherd 3y ago
iOS, iPadOS, and macOS all have a built in noise feature that you can enable through accessibility settings, and quickly toggle on and off and configure through Control Center. I use it every day and there are times where is a lifesaver, especially combined with noise canceling headphones. https://www.theverge.com/23131327/how-to-iphone-white-noise-background-sounds-ios-15 https://www.theverge.com/23131327/how-to-iphone-white-noise-...
johnnyworker 3y ago
I think all these comments discussing white noise miss the point, which isn't white noise but "if people would listen to what is more profitable to us, instead of what they enjoy listening to, we would make X more profit". They couldn't even have gotten to the point of confusing white noise and leaves rustling with podcasts and other "content" to make a buck off, if it wasn't for that first step. And that view of users as a resource, as people who need to be told what they want, permeates so much of tech... like a giant elephant shitting all over an otherwise quite elegantly made couch.
- acters 3y ago
  Something that stuck out to me during my time in college business courses is the fact that many teachers are pushing the idea of a manager, director, or other executive roles, into how to understand and allocate resources. One of the resources is humans, either as employees or, in other moments, the users. While clients and investors are more or less seen as another team or "entity"(eg, partner company) that facilitates the use or funding of the project. Just my two cents on what I have seen being thought to the next generation. I don't know how to feel about this. I am interested in others' opinions on this.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    A previous article about management styles kinda goes in the direction you're describing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37159338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37159338 Reception wasn't great to say the least.
- gantron 3y ago
  But what’s driving people listening to white noise sometimes isn’t enjoyment, right? There have been cases of clear abuse [0] that Spotify is correct to crack down on. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2014/5/7/5690590/spotify-removes-silent-album-that-earned-indie-band-20000 https://www.theverge.com/2014/5/7/5690590/spotify-removes-si...
- drBonkers 3y ago
  > "if people would listen to what is more profitable to us, instead of what they enjoy listening to, we would make X more profit". I was ranting, immaturely, to my ML educated friend recently about how terrible modern discovery algorithms are ("if ML is so powerful why does Spotify exclusively serve up the steamiest of dog sh$t?") when he explained this to me. His response was "they aren't optimizing their discovery algorithms for your enjoyment, they optimize them for profit."
HankB99 3y ago
I wonder if I have to pay Spotify to join their podcast publishing thing. Personally I'd go with pink noise, but not if it cost money.
pluijzer 3y ago
Saves me explaining to my partner that there is no such thing as 'Scandinavian white noise', just like there in no such thing as 'Scandinavian pure white light' </s>
omnicognate 3y ago
> White noise podcasts > these podcasters, whose shows entail playing various noises like crashing waves or bird sounds on repeat These are not white noise.
kramerger 3y ago
Solution: add whitenoise generation as a base function to the app. Direct related searches to the in-app function Bonus: this will also offload your servers significantly, specially as pure noise is hard to compress.
somecommit 3y ago
Anyone has noticed also that the "instrumental" keyword becoming mainstream and even totally false? More than half "instrumental" playlists and songs are including vocal singing...
chevman 3y ago
For anyone who likes white noise, highly recommend the Dom white noise machine. https://a.co/d/gbr7cV9 https://a.co/d/gbr7cV9 It's what most biz folks use (eg therapists, massage, etc) in their office to ensure privacy. We've used one for like 9 years with my son and it helps him sleep really well too.
alfnor 3y ago
Is nobody here familiar with the notorious problem that is stream-farming? People will upload white noise to Spotify and use phone farms (no idea why VMs [potentially behind VPNs] with [prepaid] Spotify accounts wouldn't work) to scam Spotify out of thousands of dollars every month. I think every new artist account has a limit of 3000 daily streams per track before they get flagged for botting. The solution is to upload loads of shorts tracks to every artist account, since Spotify only takes streaming numbers into account, and not playtime. This also has hidden costs for Spotify, such as the unnecessary bandwidth and storage required for all this audio no human even listens to.
p00dles 3y ago
Since iOS 15 iPhones can generate “background noise” including dark noise, balanced noise, rain, ocean, etc. You can even play it at the same time as music, a podcast, etc. with its own, independent volume control. An icon appears for me when in the Control Center when I swipe down, the “Hearing tile”, and can be used to play/pause and change Background Sounds. Can also be accessed this way: 1. Open Settings and scroll down to Accessibility 2. Tap on that, then scroll to the Hearing section 3. Choose Audio/Visual 4. Tap on Background Sounds 5. Turn on Background Sounds by tapping the on/off toggle https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/07/23/how-to-use-rain-dark-noise-and-more-background-sounds-in-ios-15 https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/07/23/how-to-use-rain-d...

305 points by cududa 3y ago

jncfhnb 3y ago

We do brown noise all night every night. White noise is too harsh imo.

archo 3y ago

https://archive.is/MaXIb https://archive.is/MaXIb

helsinkiandrew 3y ago

https://archive.ph/MaXIb https://archive.ph/MaXIb

malfist 3y ago

Surely this user hostile behavior will have no repercussions. Enshitification must continue. After all, removing features your customers are using too much is a recipe for profit.

PeterCorless 3y ago

Also picked up by engadget: https://www.engadget.com/spotify-almost-removed-white-noise-podcasts-to-save-money-065639545.html https://www.engadget.com/spotify-almost-removed-white-noise-...

lionkor 3y ago

...it sucks that people listen to white noise when they could be listening to the newest hits instead? Yeah, sure, but they wont? If you get rid of the white noise, they go back to youtube or whatever. If you push people to other content, they wont click or theyll skip it if what they want is white noise. Youve got a massive platform, incredibly successful, loved and used by so many, and you go "ah darn, i really hate that my users on my platform choose to spend their time on content that isnt as profitable as other content on my plaftorm"??? Jesus christ thats daft. Serve the users what they want and they will stay with you forever.

SkyPuncher 3y ago
Further, this seems like such a freaking simple fix. Provide first party white noise.
- jaxelr 3y ago
  Crazy to think that iOs does and it barely gets noticed.
  - AverageDude 3y ago
    TIL
  - veave 3y ago
    It's tremendously hidden. Of course it barely gets noticed. There are so many hidden gems in accessibility settings, at this point it should be called advanced settings instead.
    - MichaelZuo 3y ago
      No it isn't, on ios 16.6 it's not even 10 clicks to get to the granular options. Are you on an older version?
      - OGWhales 3y ago
        I feel as though accessibility is not a spot most people would think to check for that.
      - IshKebab 3y ago
        10 clicks is tremendously hidden.
      - 4ec0755f5522 3y ago
        I tested right now and it's 5: Settings -> Accessibility -> Audio/Visual -> Background Sounds -> on/off/sounds/etc. It may be the number of items that are part of why people consider these settings "hidden". The "Accessiblity" menu is now 23 items long, and the main Settings menu is 53 Apple items plus over 100 application items.

hlandau 3y ago

>"It can’t be that an Ed Sheeran stream is worth exactly the same as a stream of rain falling on the roof," Warner Music Group CEO, Robert Kyncl told Music Business Worldwide earlier this year. Why not?

branon 3y ago
My thoughts exactly. How out of touch are these people?
hnbad 3y ago
Heck, this is the market doing its thing, isn't it? You can't say you want capitalism and then complain because the market demonstrates as much demand for the sound of rain falling on a roof as for a particular singer-songwriter. I think WMG is just annoyed the person who uploaded the rain noise doesn't have to pay royalties to the rain and keeps the entire cut. I'm sure WMG also thinks WMG's contribution to Ed Sheeran's music on the platform is worth the millions they get paid as middlemen. At least the rain is contributing something by making a noise.
devit 3y ago
I guess their issue might be that if people listen to white noise 8 hours while asleep every night and Spotify distributes their monthly fee weighted by time listened, then a lot of their fee will go to the white noise for sleep and thus the total fee distributed to their daytime music would be unexpectedly significantly reduced. The easy fix would be to cap track time weight, although that is susceptible to an attack of splitting the white noise in many parts and publishing a playlist. I guess a possibility could be to somehow compute "song variety" (i.e. entropy in a model where the decoder can generate noise/randomness) and weight by that, but not sure if the available lossy codecs are good enough to do that.
- gregw2 3y ago
  I hate to say it but certain advertisers might pay more for ads that play while people are sleeping (ie placement during 8 hour tracks of white noise). This is not a $38m-in-costs crisis for Spotify, this is a revenue opportunity! ... 60 seconds of web seaching later... Sigh. Apparently this sort of marketer manipulation started over three years ago unfortunately: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a36719140/sleep-ads-dream-implantation/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a36719140/sleep-... and https://www.science.org/content/article/are-advertisers-coming-your-dreams https://www.science.org/content/article/are-advertisers-comi... ... things that make you say: "There oughta be a law..."

ChatGTP 3y ago

[flagged]

sbarre 3y ago

If they were smart they would just lean into this and add support for easily looping shorter tracks into some kind of "atmospheric listening" product. Surely that would bring down their bandwidth costs at the very least. There are tons of popular paid apps that do this kind of thing already, there's an obvious market for it. But I haven't found Spotify to be very smart recently, so they'll probably just keep complaining about it, or do something stupid like update their ToS to disallow this kind of thing.

rchaud 3y ago
They'll probably just acquire calm.com which does exactly that. Nobody at Spotify is concerned with profitability.

somat 3y ago

The technical problem is that noise compresses poorly. What is needed is a way to generate the noise as needed. Now people don't want just any noise, they want artisanal boutique noise. so all you need is a bpf style language artists can plug into your noise generator, then people can pick the superior custom noise algorithm. hashtag: only_half_joking

john-radio 3y ago
There are a few white noise generator apps actually and I love them. https://asoftmurmur.com/ https://asoftmurmur.com/
jakdracula 3y ago
Oddly enough, there already are free and paid products that do exactly this- you can even add birds, insect noise and ambient sounds. Choose light rain, heavy rain, anything else in between. You can even choose the surface the rain is hitting- concrete, tin roof, etc.
- alvarezbjm-hn 3y ago
  Do you have a name? I am interested (insect and bird toggle, surface select)
  - jdechko 3y ago
    On iOS, Rain Rain is my favorite. It’s a free with limitations app, but I don’t find the limitations too bad. But honestly, we have a HomePod mini that does 99.999% of the work in the house. The HomePod has half-a-dozen or so background noises including rain, ocean and white noises
  - notatoad 3y ago
    if you use iPhone, you can turn on "background sounds" under accessibility settings - no app required
- m0llusk 3y ago
  The mandible chatter market is underserved.

hnbad 3y ago

Sounds less like Spotify is annoyed than record labels are annoyed. Spotify is being paid by its users regardless of what they decide to listen to. On YouTube one of my most-watched videos in terms of watchtime for a while was brown noise overlaid on a recording of ocean waves. The video was three hours long I think and monetized. YouTube probably doesn't care if that share of my YouTube Premium subscription money goes to the guy who uploaded that video, a professionally recorded studio production or some person doing vlogs in their bedroom. Why should Spotify?

Macha 3y ago
It depends on if these users are paying for premium or not. Since the streams are described as having embedded ads, users probably aren't too worried about removing Spotify's own ads, and I doubt track skips or selecting specific tracks in the album are in demand by any primarily white noise users
- prmoustache 3y ago
  I doubt anyone is listening to these from a free account with ads, that would defeat the purpose.
  - Macha 3y ago
    To me the embedded ads which the article identifies as the source of revenue for these white noise streams would also seem to defeat the point for me, but apparently that doesn't bother people so I don't see why spotify's ads would be different.
squeaky-clean 3y ago
My guess is that it's far more likely that major labels start their own music streaming services, mimicking the Netflix/Hulu/Disney/HBO/Peacock etc explosion in video streaming. No idea if it would be a smart business decision by the labels, but they could definitely do it and Spotify would only be left with independent artists and labels who don't join the bandwagon. YouTube has no risk of this. There's no entity, or coalition of entities, capable of pulling content from YouTube that would create a noticeable dip in traffic.

ghusto 3y ago

> ... it concluded that shifting users away from white noise programming could net the company an additional $38 million in profit I don't think that's how ... well, _anything_ works. It's like saying "If got rid of the actual program on our TV channel and filled the whole spot with adverts, we could make three times as much money from adverts". They're not there to buy your product, they're there because there's a free thing they want. When that free thing goes away, so do they.

deleted 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
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sdiupIGPWEfh 3y ago

Been listening to playlists of brown noise on Spotify lately while working, when I get tired of listening to actual music but still want some background noise. More indistinct and less distracting than other ambient sounds. The primary benefit to me of using Spotify for this is that I'm already set up to control music on my sound system from my phone.

bob1029 3y ago

It is amusing to me watching the effects of capitalism take hold over something as simple as literal noise. I used to use a website for this purpose but then they started getting super weird with popups and "please donate" click-thrus. I decided to write my own noise generator. It's not hard. If you have access to OpenAI (or a semester's worth of DSP education), you could write one in a few hours.

andsoitis 3y ago
> capitalism take hold over something as simple as literal noise Scapegoating "capitalism" doesn't strike me as sufficiently nuanced thinking. For instance, Tidal, has playlists dedicated to things like rain sounds e.g. https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/5ed2512d-b27b-4d0c-845d-3fd517401af2 https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/5ed2512d-b27b-4d0c-845d-3f...
parineum 3y ago
Capitalism has literally nothing to do with it. This is just people reacting to market incentives. Capitalism requires (free) markets but markets aren't Capitalism.
isoprophlex 3y ago
Also the environmental aspects. Powering and provisioning hardware in CDNs to encode and stream random numbers... pretty dumb.
bobsmooth 3y ago
Hosting a website costs money, has nothing to do with capitalism.

mg 3y ago

Aren't there audio ads injected of the free version of Spotify? How can one sleep when those come up? Or do they only inject ads between songs, so that if the song is long enough, the user will never hear any ads?

deleted 3y ago
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Cthulhu_ 3y ago
Like with TV, I suspect people just blank them out, or they become part of the experience. Or it's paid subscribers.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

alphazard 3y ago

One man's artisanal white noise is another man's encrypted offsite backup.

inatreecrown2 3y ago
how do you think he listens to them, is there any app that can play non audio (wav, mp3) files?
- KMnO4 3y ago
  cat file.bin | aplay
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- klyrs 3y ago
  Back in the day, we'd just cat /dev/random > /dev/dsp which was especially fun when 'who' said that there was only one TTY session active in the computer lab at night, and you were logged in from your dorm. Or so I'm told.
amenghra 3y ago
That can be true of any file. One person's gif/pdf/html/whatever is another person's stegano-encrypted data...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

seydor 3y ago

let alone it's not compressible

grumblingdev 3y ago

I listen to so much of this stuff. It's super annoying. I just want 10hr mixes. I want an app that just does this and nothing else that is not terrible.

lostlogin 3y ago
If you’re on iOS, it’s baked into the OS. Setting > Background Sounds. I wish it had a few more (eg rain without bird noises). Being able to add my own would be great.
isoprophlex 3y ago
cat /dev/urandom | aplay
xsmasher 3y ago
Noisily works in a browser or they have apps https://www.noisli.com/ https://www.noisli.com/
danjoredd 3y ago
An app I use, at least on Android, is "Atmosphere: Relaxing Noises." Outside of a couple banner ads I don't get interrupted or anything and it has a lot of mixing options. I highly recommend it. IDK if they have an IOS version or not

Roark66 3y ago

>"It can’t be that an Ed Sheeran stream is worth exactly the same as a stream of rain falling on the roof," Warner Music Group CEO, Robert Kyncl Why not? You've already made millions in profit on Ed Sheeran's content. Once you've broke even on the cost of making the content delivering more of it costs exactly the same. Regardless if its music or sounds of rain falling on a roof.

sebzim4500 3y ago
If Ed Sheeran's music was removed from spotify tomorrow it would significantly decrease the amount people listened, and presumably some people would stop subscribing. If any particular white noise album went away it would have no impact on revenue, people would just listen to a different one.
- braza 3y ago
  > it would significantly decrease the amount people listened, and presumably some people would stop subscribing. Not sure about that. The main value proposition of Spotify is that is a audio marketplace that consolidates legacy music catalog via big labels (EMI, Roadrunner, Universal, etc) plus the Podcast platform sindication and in a certain stance discoverability. Everything keeping the friction in a minimum level. Of course Ed Sheeran is a big name, but I think it’s debatable that, let’s say the top 1% of his fan base in the Spotify user base would trade the huge amount of friction due to his catalog removal.
  - sebzim4500 3y ago
    I think way more than 1% of fans would switch to Apple Music etc.
    - braza 3y ago
      Sorry to insist in this point, but as far as I know a big artist left the platform does not has a huge impact. For instance: Neil Young left the platform at Jan/22 and the user base had a constant growth. Another point that I forgot to mention: not all subscribers are equal to Spotify. A heavy user that listens Ed Sheeran is less desirable than a heavy user that listens a bunch of podcasts. On the former Spotify needs to collect and pay to the labels and for the latter the cost is marginal. If we’re talking about one artist, eventually the platform natural growth will offset the effect of a single artist leaving. Platform and network effects is something strong. If you’re talking about a “catalog removal”, for instance, Universal removes all artists in their portfolio I am more than happy to agree that Spotify will suffer. [1] - https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/26773/profitability-development-of-spotify/ https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/26773/profitability-devel...

weinzierl 3y ago

I think the idea was born with Sleepify[1] in 2014. (I love how Wikipedia classifies its genre a silence). This was kind of a stunt back then, receiving mainstream media attention and ultimately allowing the band behind it to finance a small tour. Of course, repeating this one-time creative feat is just boring and annoying and for Spotify it is just a slippery slope. If they forbid silence, people will upload white noise, if they forbid white noise people will just resort to some low effort AI generated sound. None of which is desirable for anyone. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepify https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepify

amenghra 3y ago

In case you need it, a static page which will give you an infinite amount of white/pink/waterfall noise: https://www.quaxio.com/noise.html https://www.quaxio.com/noise.html No tracking and no ads, ever. Uses WebAudio API. Based on the code from https://noisehack.com/generate-noise-web-audio-api/ https://noisehack.com/generate-noise-web-audio-api/, but for some reason, the code wasn't working as-is in today's browsers. So tweaked things for a couple minutes.

gumby 3y ago
Can it be used as a good source of random numbers or is the noise not truly “white”?
- sethhochberg 3y ago
  Under the hood it’s just making calls to Math.random(), so the white noise generated is exactly as reliable a source of randomness as the system as the system could give you directly.
  - travisjungroth 3y ago
    It’s at at most as good of a source but almost certainly worse. Lots of entropy dropped and biases introduced.
    - sethhochberg 3y ago
      Very fair point. Transforming the randomness to fit it into the audible spectrum would certainly have side effects
  - yura 3y ago
    >as reliable a source of randomness as the system as the system could give you directly Not sure what you mean by this. Which system?
    - gumby 3y ago

pmontra 3y ago

> entire episodes of white noise, seemingly aimed at listeners who are asleep. > Some podcasters are making as much as $18,000 a month through ads placed in these episodes > shifting users away from white noise programming could net the company an additional $38 million in profit I wonder what does Spotify think those people could listen to while sleeping, heavy metal? /s A problem could be that ads in those stream are wasted unless we discover that sleeping people can be influenced as awake ones. Is the sum of those wasted ads that's equal to $38 M?

MrVandemar 3y ago
> A problem could be that ads in those stream are wasted unless we discover that sleeping people can be influenced as awake ones. "But old clothes are beastly," continued the untiring whisper. "We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending, ending is better …'
fluidcruft 3y ago
My guess would be the idea is to shift listeners from white noise that Spotify pays royalties for toward white noise that Spotify owns. The hidden factor is ads that don't actually play for Spotify subscribers. The general idea behind paying for an ad-free experience is that royalties and revenue are either paid by subscription fees or by advertisers. The free tier gets ads and the paid tier doesn't. If Spotify shifted users to content they don't pay royalties for, then users wouldn't notice the difference, but behind the scenes Spotify can claim the royalties and ad revenue for itself rather than pay them out to a third party. For example, if Spotify replaces the podcaster who makes $18k month in royalties with Spotify's own white noise podcast, then the immediate effect is that $18k/month doesn't leave Spotify's pockets.
- _dain_ 3y ago
  >white noise that Spotify owns how can you have copyright on white noise???
  - Tao3300 3y ago

mysterypie 3y ago

Are there any long-term effects on hearing or health caused by listening to white noise while sleeping? Or from the hum of an air conditioner, humidifier, or dehumidifier?

konschubert 3y ago
No

rajnathani 3y ago

Well, people asleep listening to ads, should technically be great due to the continuous subconscious delivery of the ads.

AlbertCory 3y ago

If music is just auditory wallpaper anyway, why distinguish?

dathinab 3y ago

I think this representation is a bit misleading. They considered intervening with them, which by far doesn't mean banning them. To put it into context after their acquisition they had been pushing podcasts in general, white noise podcast accidentally profited from it, and a bit too much. Which is with what they considered intervening with. But banning them would have been the last step if others don't work. And even then you still would have white noise songs, just not podcasts. Or more likely podcast just not promoted, i.e. you need to more explicitly look for them. I.e. the chance for Spotify removing users access to white noise content was close to non-existing as far I can tell.

constantly 3y ago
What’s your source on all of this?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hobom 3y ago
  It's basically all present in the article
lozenge 3y ago
Well yes, they could forbid publishing noise on the platform, and just offer their own white noise content for users to access.

Animats 3y ago

I can understand listening to white noise. But listening to white noise with ads? People actually do that?

6510 3y ago
Some product like an AI driven aquarium screen saver.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Like the ones we had in the 90's without the AI?
themodelplumber 3y ago
[flagged]
- throwaw1yyy 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - themodelplumber 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - thfuran 3y ago
      No, I would guess they said said that because of the paragraph after paragraph of blathering.
    - janandonly 3y ago
      If we wanted to know what chatgpt thought we would just ask it directly. Here on HN, we share human ideas instead, wrong capitalisation and everything…
      - 3y ago

psychphysic 3y ago

Maybe like Netflix film grain, Spotify could generate the white noise locally and reduce bandwidth usage?

Inityx 3y ago
Did you read the article?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
arrowsmith 3y ago
> Netflix film grain TIL: https://www.slashcam.com/news/single/Netflix-removes-movie-noise--saves-30--bandwidth-a-17337.html https://www.slashcam.com/news/single/Netflix-removes-movie-n...
- newZWhoDis 3y ago
  I despise this with every fiber in my body. Intentionally adding noise back to a picture?! What in heavens name for? Is there at least a way to turn it off?
  - tux3 3y ago
    It's an intentional artistic choice, if you denoise people don't like it, because film noise is nostalgic and vinyl has a warmer sound, etc etc If you download the video file and play it back locally, you can change it or turn it off if you want, it's just a video filter You can even turn off deblocking if you want, get those crispy jpeg-like artifacts! It's all just post-processing, when it was previously hardcoded, which seems like a win, especially considering bandwidth gains
  - grotorea 3y ago
    Is it so different from adding lens flares?

andix 3y ago

Spotify has a few awesome playlists with different noise colors. Those "songs" are probably licensed by Spotify and not paid per play.

Havoc 3y ago

Just add a white noise generator and call it a day?

dbg31415 3y ago
Missing the point a bit I think. (= Spotify isn't geared to handle people streaming 8+ hours of ASMR audio per day. Their model doesn't support having to pay artists for audio tracks people put on random shuffle while they sleep / game / study / work. "White noise" here I think just means tracks without talking. So mic scratching, inaudible whispers, tapping on random items, mouth sounds... all the stuff ASMR folks do. These folks figured out how to get Spotify to pay, with a bunch of new tracks every week that people are actively listening to, and Spotify doesn't want people doing that.
- pjc50 3y ago
  > Their model doesn't support having to pay artists for audio tracks people put on random shuffle while they sleep / game / study / work. ?! putting spotify on in the background of something else has to be more than 50% of their use. That's partly why the payouts are so low.
  - copperx 3y ago
    Does Spotify pay more if users stream the track in the foreground? Or what do you mean?
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Walk_(TV_series) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Walk_(TV_series)
- nolok 3y ago
  Are you saying you believe the issue is 1. that people listen to spotify 6/7/8+ hours a day, or 2. that people listen to those tracks specifically ? If it's 2 then it makes no sense Spotify needs to pay either way, and if it's 1 then it makes no sense either, people didn't start listening to music in the background while working or studying or relaxing or cooking once white-noise-like feed appeared, they've been doing that since before I was born, so if spotify business model doesn't account for that model it is simply not viable. From the article, it seems the issue is another thing entirely : people listen to that while sleeping, and that drives the value of advertisements down.

adventured 3y ago

Brown noise is the way to go. White noise is too broad - and largely unnecessary - the higher frequencies are more likely to damage your hearing over time (particularly at any elevated loudness, ie if you're trying to drown out some loud noise to sleep). Brown noise will do a far superior job at blocking out snoring, thuds, etc. I don't know how people sleep with white noise, the highs are too screeching.

mensetmanusman 3y ago

Just make a generator that plays on the device.

midnitewarrior 3y ago

Spotify needs to license https://mynoise.net https://mynoise.net and include their dozens of soundscapes into the Spotify client. The captured audio soundscapes are high quality, engineered, mixable audio from many relaxing and peaceful natural and artificial environments. Tossing a few million dollars towards the MyNoise people for something that's currently donor-ware would be amazing for the creators as well as opening up the ambient soundscapes to millions of people. Spotify gets royalty-free audio that takes up very little bandwidth.

deanc 3y ago

I can give some insight to this. If you search for white/brown etc. noise on spotify for songs you won't find longer tracks. I use these while travelling if I'm having troubles sleeping in a room where there's noise, or on a plane. Airpods in, lie back and it blocks out more noise. The problem with the albums of white noise are they fade between different kinds of noise which usually only lasts a few mins - this is enough to break the effect. I can only presume there is a limit on song length for albums, because there are white noise podcasts which are 10 hours long - which is exactly what I need for my use-case.

squeaky-clean 3y ago
There are bands with songs over an hour long on Spotify. Distrokid (the most popular service for independent artists to get on Spotify et al) has no maximum length for song uploads. I think the real reason is Spotify pays you per "song played" not per minute played. If I listen to Dopesmoker by Sleep, which is an hour long, then I listen to a 60 second white noise clip, both artists get paid an equal amount.
- Loughla 3y ago
  I don't use spotify but I wondered how a length limit would work for some esoteric bands. Shpongle is another one with extremely long songs that wouldn't work if they were chopped up.
  - boredemployee 3y ago
    I never thought I'd read about Shpongle in HN.
    - Loughla 3y ago
      Hallucinogenics brought me to my current career. Synthesizing DMT got me my first full-time grant writing gig. I believe more hackers experiment with drugs than the nerd stereotype would lead you to believe. Also, the music they make is amazing. So it's always relevant to most music conversations. (Albinoblacksheep flashback is still my go to when I'm feeling nostalgic)

internet101010 3y ago

>Spotify’s challenge with white noise podcasts mirrors a similar conversation happening in the music world. Universal Music Group’s CEO Lucian Grainge and Warner Music’s CEO Robert Kyncl have both voiced their displeasure at the fact that songs filled with noise are paid out of the same royalty pool shared by their superstars. It just means that people value white noise over the music your artists are creating.

imachine1980_ 3y ago
not necessary, i'm not giving the same attention to rain sounds that to any other music, this type of content is design to be consume as background sound so most of the reproductions are less valuable if you equate attention = money, it was like the moment when youtube quality = time view and you have millions of multi hours low quality gameplays in the main feed, i feel this is the problem of only account time view over 30 as metric of monetization.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

Sounds like there is a niche for an ad-supported white-noise podcasting platform?

walnutclosefarm 3y ago

I get why people might want white noise in their earbuds, but why would you want to stream it? You can easily download a multi-hour recording of, say, a waterfall, and just play it from your device. And who in heck would listen to white noise with ads? Wouldn't the ads completely destroy the intended effect of the noise? This is a phenomenon I really don't understand.

deanCommie 3y ago
I can offer a couple of explanations. 1) UX is better through a streaming client. It'll be named cleanly, it'll have a nice thumbnail. Whereas a downloaded file would be named white_noise_128bit_v3.mp3 and would be in a Downloads folder with 10,000 screenshots and memes, and every time you try to open it you have to find it. 2) All-in integration with everything in one client: Here's my white noise in my history next to my favourite banger, next to my last podcast. Tonight, as I go to bed I decide I want to listen to....one of those. They're all there in one place. 3) Discoverability UX. Go to Streamer app. Search White Noise. Press Play. Done. vs. Go to Browser. Search White Noise. Scroll through pages of results of links about white noise, articles, listicles. Search again for White Noise Mp3 Download. Click top result. Get inundated with ads and links that LOOK like they should be a download, but actually take you to an ad network. Finally find the download link. It opens in an in- browser player instead of a download. Give up. It's honestly to the point that most of our parents or grandparents can't even get there. 4) Oh also repeat the same but for audio players. Are there good local audio players? That aren't inundated with ads? And each with worse playback UX than Spotify/etc? Most phones now come pre-loaded with Spotify or YoutubeMusic or AppleMusic. Good luck figuring out what is a good local audio player.
- copperx 3y ago
  You do know that white noise can be generated really easily, right? Tap on white noise app, press play. You don't have to worry about having downloading the track so it's available when you hop on a plane, or having internet, or using mobile data. Plus, most white apps have an equalizer to tailor the spectrum and several noise generators. You might like brown noise more in certain situations.

javajosh 3y ago

Let me humbly suggest that people use actual files for their noise needs. The two apps that work in tandem are syncthing and vlc. Syncthing gets the file from a desktop to your phone. VLC lets you play the file on your phone. (Getting a file to your desktop is another tool, but that depends on your source. For generating noise Audacity works great! But you can also rip CDs, and so on.) It feels very wholesome about playing a simple file, rather than streaming it. This is apart from the considerable simplicity and robustness of the solution. You can be on airplane mode and it will work. You can use VLC player features to speed up, slow down, or loop it. You can build up a play list rather than using search all the time. My phone sips power compared to streaming music. It also doesn't use your network bandwidth, which is nice. Note: you could also build your own noise tracks on your phone with a mobile DAW. I like https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-mobile/ https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-mobile/ - it's $15 but quite powerful.

prmoustache 3y ago
...or just downloading fron youtube with newpipe. I guess even a browser is enough using an invidious instance. Also kdeconnect works great as well to transfer files from computer to phone and vice-versa.

akeck 3y ago

We specifically use an app called White Noise for this type of thing. It has all the noise colors (I prefer pink noise), doesn't stream, and plays without ads.

forrestthewoods 3y ago

The payment model of “streams per play” has always felt wrong to me. Wouldn’t a more rational be “how does this user’s monthly fee get divided”? Let’s say someone pays $10/month for Spotify. First Spotify takes their cut, let’s call that $3 but whatever it is. There’s $7 left. If someone ONLY listens to Taylor Swift that month then she deserves the full $7. If someone listens to 50 artists for 20 hours then those 50 artists can divide the $7. You can set the pool size and divide the pool a few ways. I’ve got ideas for how I think that should be done. But in any case I’ve always thought the division should be on a per-user basis rather than entire ecosystem.

norenh 3y ago
100% this. As a consumer that tries to do active choices the current model breaks any kind of active choices to support or not support an artist, except nudging it somewhere in the margins. If your pot is only going to work you interact with, you can suddenly make an impact for smaller artists. The counterargument I see is that subscribers who listen to lots of different artists will have a smaller share of the pot for each artist than someone who listen to just one artist. But I see the inequality here is not as bad as the other option where almost all my subscriber fee now goes to a few mainstream artists I probably never listened to. I also bet a lot of smaller artists would benefit more with a per-user pot, instead of always getting a minuscule share from the global pot.

vvpan 3y ago

I wonder why they did not just add the feature if it is so desired? Feels like the code required and UI changes would be minimal.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mhh__ 3y ago

If I were Spotify I would include some noise generators and clever sample based waterfall noises in the subscription. People pay money for this already, it's free* market share. In fact it's actually built into the iPad. *Obviously it takes time to develop but it would take one smart guy a day so if your team struggles it's on you.

pedalpete 3y ago
This is what I was thinking, and they could just bundle the sound files, or generate them on the fly, so they don't have the streaming cost.

RGamma 3y ago

The curious outgrowths of consumerism never fail to surprise me.

aedocw 3y ago

On mac or linux with sox installed, this is a perfect source for brown noise: play -n synth brownnoise gain -25 Also works for whitenoise or pinknoise.

marcrosoft 3y ago

Spotify to me has been crap since they tried to ruin podcasts by making a walled garden

IAmGraydon 3y ago
I'm not familiar with this. What did they do that made them a walled garden?
- ufo 3y ago
  Some spotify podcasts can only be played on the spotify app.
- roywiggins 3y ago
  They bought out podcast producers and stopped publishing their podcasts outside of Spotify itself.
  - IAmGraydon 3y ago
    Thanks. I didn’t know that and I’m surprised that producers would agree to put all of their eggs in one basket like that. The success of their business is now directly linked to the future success of the platform.
- u320 3y ago
  They started to pay podcasters to publish on Spotify exclusively. E.g. Joe Rogan.

galuggus 3y ago

I made white noise that plants trees (20k so far) www.mptr.ee https://www.thissongplantstrees.com/streaming#background https://www.thissongplantstrees.com/streaming#background

vunderba 3y ago

I really wish Spotify would understand the difference between white noise and actual music, using Spotify on my smart speaker when I go to bed playing a continual brown noise loop completely screws up the recommendation algorithm. YouTube has a similar issue. Viewers who watched "60 minutes of white noise" also enjoyed "8 hr tv noise loop". Yeah... thanks for the rec.

zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
My girlfriend's end of year thing was pretty funny. Showed whale songs, white noise, and other sleepy stuff as her top songs and artists.
tiffanyg 3y ago
Hey! 8 hours of TV static per night is the only way I can get some decent shut-eye! But then, I'm from 1950. Also, the soothing crackle makes transmissions from my home planet more distinctive, so I never miss any of the crucial orders relating to my mission: https://youtu.be/jjeUuakHsLw?t=29s https://youtu.be/jjeUuakHsLw?t=29s
mattigames 3y ago
Look spotify, I did it for you `if (!song.white_noise) { add_for_recommend_history_(song); }` In a more serious note YouTube has a similar problem, "Oh I looked recommendations for a drawing tablet to buy my friend", now till to the ends of time I get recommendations for drawing tablets, and if I had used the "Incognito mode" they show me ads despite me being a premium user, I want it incognito but not THAT much of incognito you geniuses at Google.
- trts 3y ago
  it would surprise me if they didn’t try to handle this. It is similar to the Christmas music in January problem. With white noise it is so easy to generate for free that likely 1000s of people are generating hordes of static content and uploading it to try to get a payout. And it’s probably not that easy to identify every track that is intended to be listened to as ambient noise. Ambient noise itself is a music genre.

Hydraulix989 3y ago

You can just generate white noise locally, why bother with a recording?

maest 3y ago
It's way simpler.

its_the_future 3y ago

They're talking about bird noises, the article said, among other things. That's called ambient noise. That's not white noise.

stevebmark 3y ago

The most important thing you'll read today: Your iPhone has a white/brown noise feature under Settings > Accessibility > Audio/Visual > Toggle "background sounds". On computers, use https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/whiteNoiseGenerator.php https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/whiteNoiseGenerator.php and press "b" for brown noise.

hanniabu 3y ago

The logical move would be for Spotify to product their own, that way they don't need to pay anyone. I mean c'mon it's 2023, how hard could it be to create autogenerated white noise, Apple already does it.

LeoPanthera 3y ago

Install SoX and you can generate noise without using any data at all. Even without internet access. Imagine that. play -n synth 60:00 whitenoise play -n synth 60:00 pinknoise play -n synth 60:00 brownnoise Or make your own wav files: sox -n whitenoise.wav synth 60:00 whitenoise # Also works with pinknoise/brownnoise I wouldn't use lossy compression to compress these. There's no redundant data in noise so lossy compression will just make it less noise-y. I can only imagine that noise on streaming services sounds weird.

barbazoo 3y ago
Cool trick for when you're at the computer. Not practical for sleeping for most people I'd say.
- LeoPanthera 3y ago
  If you make the wavs you can put them on any playback device you like.
- jayknight 3y ago
  I sometimes use the "chroma doze" and generate colored noise with my phone. Playing it over the phone speaker isn't great, but if you need some noise it will do.
jcul 3y ago
A lot of these white noise thread are not just straight up pink / white / brown noise, some of them vary with time to create more soothing effects like wave sounds or sounding like a vacuum etc. Speaking from experience of trying anything to try get babies to sleep!
- LeoPanthera 3y ago
  You can totally do that too. This is a nice synthetic ocean sound, with "waves": play -n synth brownnoise synth 0 0 0 10 10 40 trapezium amod 0.1 30 Or with a little more high end, it sounds like gusts of wind: play -n synth brownnoise synth pinknoise mix synth 0 0 0 10 10 40 trapezium amod 0.1 30

spoonjim 3y ago

Why don’t they just build a white noise generator into the app themselves?

willprice89 3y ago

Another good free white noise generator website: https://noises.online/ https://noises.online/

eutropia 3y ago

just use mynoise.net it’s amazing.

hoherd 3y ago

iOS, iPadOS, and macOS all have a built in noise feature that you can enable through accessibility settings, and quickly toggle on and off and configure through Control Center. I use it every day and there are times where is a lifesaver, especially combined with noise canceling headphones. https://www.theverge.com/23131327/how-to-iphone-white-noise-background-sounds-ios-15 https://www.theverge.com/23131327/how-to-iphone-white-noise-...

johnnyworker 3y ago

I think all these comments discussing white noise miss the point, which isn't white noise but "if people would listen to what is more profitable to us, instead of what they enjoy listening to, we would make X more profit". They couldn't even have gotten to the point of confusing white noise and leaves rustling with podcasts and other "content" to make a buck off, if it wasn't for that first step. And that view of users as a resource, as people who need to be told what they want, permeates so much of tech... like a giant elephant shitting all over an otherwise quite elegantly made couch.

acters 3y ago
Something that stuck out to me during my time in college business courses is the fact that many teachers are pushing the idea of a manager, director, or other executive roles, into how to understand and allocate resources. One of the resources is humans, either as employees or, in other moments, the users. While clients and investors are more or less seen as another team or "entity"(eg, partner company) that facilitates the use or funding of the project. Just my two cents on what I have seen being thought to the next generation. I don't know how to feel about this. I am interested in others' opinions on this.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  A previous article about management styles kinda goes in the direction you're describing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37159338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37159338 Reception wasn't great to say the least.
gantron 3y ago
But what’s driving people listening to white noise sometimes isn’t enjoyment, right? There have been cases of clear abuse [0] that Spotify is correct to crack down on. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2014/5/7/5690590/spotify-removes-silent-album-that-earned-indie-band-20000 https://www.theverge.com/2014/5/7/5690590/spotify-removes-si...
drBonkers 3y ago
> "if people would listen to what is more profitable to us, instead of what they enjoy listening to, we would make X more profit". I was ranting, immaturely, to my ML educated friend recently about how terrible modern discovery algorithms are ("if ML is so powerful why does Spotify exclusively serve up the steamiest of dog sh$t?") when he explained this to me. His response was "they aren't optimizing their discovery algorithms for your enjoyment, they optimize them for profit."

HankB99 3y ago

I wonder if I have to pay Spotify to join their podcast publishing thing. Personally I'd go with pink noise, but not if it cost money.

pluijzer 3y ago

Saves me explaining to my partner that there is no such thing as 'Scandinavian white noise', just like there in no such thing as 'Scandinavian pure white light' </s>

omnicognate 3y ago

> White noise podcasts > these podcasters, whose shows entail playing various noises like crashing waves or bird sounds on repeat These are not white noise.

kramerger 3y ago

Solution: add whitenoise generation as a base function to the app. Direct related searches to the in-app function Bonus: this will also offload your servers significantly, specially as pure noise is hard to compress.

somecommit 3y ago

Anyone has noticed also that the "instrumental" keyword becoming mainstream and even totally false? More than half "instrumental" playlists and songs are including vocal singing...

chevman 3y ago

For anyone who likes white noise, highly recommend the Dom white noise machine. https://a.co/d/gbr7cV9 https://a.co/d/gbr7cV9 It's what most biz folks use (eg therapists, massage, etc) in their office to ensure privacy. We've used one for like 9 years with my son and it helps him sleep really well too.

alfnor 3y ago

Is nobody here familiar with the notorious problem that is stream-farming? People will upload white noise to Spotify and use phone farms (no idea why VMs [potentially behind VPNs] with [prepaid] Spotify accounts wouldn't work) to scam Spotify out of thousands of dollars every month. I think every new artist account has a limit of 3000 daily streams per track before they get flagged for botting. The solution is to upload loads of shorts tracks to every artist account, since Spotify only takes streaming numbers into account, and not playtime. This also has hidden costs for Spotify, such as the unnecessary bandwidth and storage required for all this audio no human even listens to.

p00dles 3y ago

Since iOS 15 iPhones can generate “background noise” including dark noise, balanced noise, rain, ocean, etc. You can even play it at the same time as music, a podcast, etc. with its own, independent volume control. An icon appears for me when in the Control Center when I swipe down, the “Hearing tile”, and can be used to play/pause and change Background Sounds. Can also be accessed this way: 1. Open Settings and scroll down to Accessibility 2. Tap on that, then scroll to the Hearing section 3. Choose Audio/Visual 4. Tap on Background Sounds 5. Turn on Background Sounds by tapping the on/off toggle https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/07/23/how-to-use-rain-dark-noise-and-more-background-sounds-in-ios-15 https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/07/23/how-to-use-rain-d...