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Spotify is something that I'll pay for, forever - even in my grave. The thing is it's an absolutely horrible service, with a rubbish application, amazingly acro

by cik 3y ago

Spotify is something that I'll pay for, forever - even in my grave. The thing is it's an absolutely horrible service, with a rubbish application, amazingly across all platforms. But their catalogue is incredible. I keep trying to use alternatives, and they're not even close - especially when you listen to music in multiple non English geographies and languages. Their cross-language algorithmic suggestions have also been (shockingly) on point, and improving. But lord, their applications are beyond horrible.

wombat-man 3y ago
I've been trying youtube music. It's fine. The main annoyance is everyone uses spotify so sharing playlists is just impossible. Not sure about their non-english offerings.
- stronglikedan 3y ago
  My main annoyance is the amount of music missing from YT Music, especially parts of albums, but I still use it because it comes with my YT premium account. It's like, oh cool, they have this album! Oh crap, they only have a couple of songs from it. And don't even get me started on not skipping songs that I've thumbed down in a playlist, or not being able to like artists because it mucks up my YT video subscriptions. But despite all that, it's still my primary because the recommendation engine is leaps ahead of Spotify.
xoac 3y ago
[flagged]
- fullshark 3y ago
  The attitude is mine, I"ve been a spotify subscriber for almost a decade now, and it's the corpus of music that keeps me there, not the apps/interface and certainly not the exclusive podcasts. Spotify knows this, and also knows they only license the corpus and get squeezed on it so they do these experiments to try and find some way to get users to pay for something they actually own (recommendation engine, exclusive podcasts etc) and as a user it's just endlessly annoying.
worble 3y ago
I've gone back to just buying music on bandcamp and using subsonic. I might not have every artist and album but it's nice to support smaller musicians and at least I can choose which horrible client I want to use.
- Spivak 3y ago
  But those aren't even close to what Spotify provides -- my Release Radar is 6 hours which today is 121 artists, not counting collabs, that dropped new music this week. If the only time you check in on artists today is when the drop an LP then you miss like half their stuff.
  - xoac 3y ago
    How much of this can you realistically digest? How much of this infinite stream of music do you have a real connection to?
    - Spivak 3y ago
      I listen to it every Friday religiously. I'm listening to it now. And if it's on my RR it's because I follow that artist and do have a connection to them and their music. I've seen almost all of them live. Do you not want to hear new music from artists you like? I feel like this is a holdover from an era where you had like 6 cds you listened to over and and over in the car or an ipod where you loaded music onto it once and then kept it for 10 years.
      - xoac 3y ago
        I mean I was a DJ for quite a long time so listening to new music daily was like a second job. When I talked to people DJing and going through so much music the sentiment was almost always the same: going through this much music so fast changes how you listen to things and you connect less with it. Do you do other things while listening? Like programming?
  - evanelias 3y ago
dewey 3y ago
> But their catalogue is incredible. I'm an Apple Music user but honestly there was not a single time where something was not available there. Even the tools for artists (Like https://cdbaby.com https://cdbaby.com) usually just cross-upload to all the services.
015a 3y ago
I am in the same boat, though I don't think its the catalogue for me. All the major services have practically the same catalogue. Its their recommendations and playlists. No one else is remotely close; the UI is absolutely dense with new music it thinks you might enjoy, left right and center, every button you press is like "hey here's a playlist" "hey what about this artist" "here's new music you'll like released this week". And: Its freakin good at it. Literally no one else in any industry has figured out recommending new products like Spotify has. Amazon recommendations suck. Netflix recommendations suck. I discover new artists legit daily via Spotify. Apple Music and Tidal are empty in comparison. Its better at displaying the result of `GET /library` in a default SwiftUI table, if thats what you want. Its the non-mobile experience. Apple Music is abhorrent on the web (which is necessary for AM subscribers on Linux/Windows? Maybe iTunes still works? Idk). Its better, but still pretty bad, on the Mac. Spotify has near-perfect parity across Web, Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android, in features, performance, and experience. Now; you can argue that, in an absolute sense, their UI is worse; I don't agree with this take, but its a reasonable one; at least its consistently worse across every platform. And I'll go and say it: Its the bundling of Podcasts and Audiobooks. I don't love the UI they've built to get at all these features. But, I've switched my podcasts to Spotify, because I'm constantly shuffling between listening on Mac, iOS, Windows, and Linux; there are very few podcast apps that have a comprehensive library, have an S-Tier app on every consumer operating system + web, sync listening status/history, and are free* (because I already pay for Spotify). So, yeah; I stan Spotify. I physically and deeply cannot vibe with the article. You're mad that they moved the... shuffle button? Seriously? If products don't innovate, nerds get mad. If they innovate too much, nerds get mad. The pace at which Spotify changes their product, usually for the better, is something every major company on the planet envies. Change isn't always good; but the ability to change is extremely good.
hbn 3y ago
The catalogue is actually the reason I don't use Spotify because you can't upload to your own cloud library. Apple Music and YouTube Music both let you do that. Anything missing I just upload myself. There's lot of music that isn't available on any of the streaming platforms.

by cik 3y ago

wombat-man 3y ago

I've been trying youtube music. It's fine. The main annoyance is everyone uses spotify so sharing playlists is just impossible. Not sure about their non-english offerings.

stronglikedan 3y ago
My main annoyance is the amount of music missing from YT Music, especially parts of albums, but I still use it because it comes with my YT premium account. It's like, oh cool, they have this album! Oh crap, they only have a couple of songs from it. And don't even get me started on not skipping songs that I've thumbed down in a playlist, or not being able to like artists because it mucks up my YT video subscriptions. But despite all that, it's still my primary because the recommendation engine is leaps ahead of Spotify.

xoac 3y ago

[flagged]

fullshark 3y ago
The attitude is mine, I"ve been a spotify subscriber for almost a decade now, and it's the corpus of music that keeps me there, not the apps/interface and certainly not the exclusive podcasts. Spotify knows this, and also knows they only license the corpus and get squeezed on it so they do these experiments to try and find some way to get users to pay for something they actually own (recommendation engine, exclusive podcasts etc) and as a user it's just endlessly annoying.

worble 3y ago

I've gone back to just buying music on bandcamp and using subsonic. I might not have every artist and album but it's nice to support smaller musicians and at least I can choose which horrible client I want to use.

Spivak 3y ago
But those aren't even close to what Spotify provides -- my Release Radar is 6 hours which today is 121 artists, not counting collabs, that dropped new music this week. If the only time you check in on artists today is when the drop an LP then you miss like half their stuff.
- xoac 3y ago
  How much of this can you realistically digest? How much of this infinite stream of music do you have a real connection to?
  - Spivak 3y ago
    I listen to it every Friday religiously. I'm listening to it now. And if it's on my RR it's because I follow that artist and do have a connection to them and their music. I've seen almost all of them live. Do you not want to hear new music from artists you like? I feel like this is a holdover from an era where you had like 6 cds you listened to over and and over in the car or an ipod where you loaded music onto it once and then kept it for 10 years.
    - xoac 3y ago
      I mean I was a DJ for quite a long time so listening to new music daily was like a second job. When I talked to people DJing and going through so much music the sentiment was almost always the same: going through this much music so fast changes how you listen to things and you connect less with it. Do you do other things while listening? Like programming?
- evanelias 3y ago

dewey 3y ago

> But their catalogue is incredible. I'm an Apple Music user but honestly there was not a single time where something was not available there. Even the tools for artists (Like https://cdbaby.com https://cdbaby.com) usually just cross-upload to all the services.

015a 3y ago

I am in the same boat, though I don't think its the catalogue for me. All the major services have practically the same catalogue. Its their recommendations and playlists. No one else is remotely close; the UI is absolutely dense with new music it thinks you might enjoy, left right and center, every button you press is like "hey here's a playlist" "hey what about this artist" "here's new music you'll like released this week". And: Its freakin good at it. Literally no one else in any industry has figured out recommending new products like Spotify has. Amazon recommendations suck. Netflix recommendations suck. I discover new artists legit daily via Spotify. Apple Music and Tidal are empty in comparison. Its better at displaying the result of `GET /library` in a default SwiftUI table, if thats what you want. Its the non-mobile experience. Apple Music is abhorrent on the web (which is necessary for AM subscribers on Linux/Windows? Maybe iTunes still works? Idk). Its better, but still pretty bad, on the Mac. Spotify has near-perfect parity across Web, Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android, in features, performance, and experience. Now; you can argue that, in an absolute sense, their UI is worse; I don't agree with this take, but its a reasonable one; at least its consistently worse across every platform. And I'll go and say it: Its the bundling of Podcasts and Audiobooks. I don't love the UI they've built to get at all these features. But, I've switched my podcasts to Spotify, because I'm constantly shuffling between listening on Mac, iOS, Windows, and Linux; there are very few podcast apps that have a comprehensive library, have an S-Tier app on every consumer operating system + web, sync listening status/history, and are free* (because I already pay for Spotify). So, yeah; I stan Spotify. I physically and deeply cannot vibe with the article. You're mad that they moved the... shuffle button? Seriously? If products don't innovate, nerds get mad. If they innovate too much, nerds get mad. The pace at which Spotify changes their product, usually for the better, is something every major company on the planet envies. Change isn't always good; but the ability to change is extremely good.

hbn 3y ago

The catalogue is actually the reason I don't use Spotify because you can't upload to your own cloud library. Apple Music and YouTube Music both let you do that. Anything missing I just upload myself. There's lot of music that isn't available on any of the streaming platforms.