7 ms·

This is exactly why I have Spotify rather than bandcamp. It finds music I like, regardless of musician effort. I found more new musicians in the first year of S

by nomel 3y ago

This is exactly why I have Spotify rather than bandcamp. It finds music I like, regardless of musician effort. I found more new musicians in the first year of Spotify than decades before. It’s a loss for everyone if good music goes unheard.

comprev 3y ago
on the flip side to this, I don't have Spotify because curating music is a hobby of mine. The research from various sources - forums, FB groups, Discogs, Bandcamp mailing lists, etc. is part of the journey.
- racked 3y ago
  Is there a place you share your playlists? Would be curious to have a listen.
reactordev 3y ago
It’s a loss to musicians to have a monopoly like Spotify (who likes to recreate popular songs with their own artists and label) be the gatekeeper to what is good music. From a service perspective, it’s great. I have the worlds music at my fingertips. From a music perspective it’s horrible. I have one company dictating streaming payments and terms on an entire industry and you’re f&$ked if you don’t play nice. Ask Taylor Swift.
- winternett 3y ago
  Agreed. Spotify is a terrible alternative for the musicians. Myspace and Mp3.Com used to be the road map to how sites should be run, but venture capitalism and publicly traded companies ruined the entire ecosystem.
  - reactordev 3y ago
    I had high hopes for SoundCloud but in the end, VC’s always win.
    - dzhiurgis 3y ago
      They still pretty much same. I don't get any audio ads, some ads in my stream, but never seem to be playing. Premium offering is stuck somewhere in 2009 when offline playback was a thing. Lack of integrations with Homepod & Tesla is somewhat becoming a problem. Still no way to filter your stream or get know what bitrate you are streaming.
    - whizzter 3y ago
      (I studied with one of the founders) Soundclouds problem was always that they started out as basically a free service for a particular niche(artist to label contacts), starting to charge(pissing off people who expected free forever) and then moving out of the niche made it so they never really had a footing for something people would pay for. The problem with so many "internet unicorns" from the 2000-2010 era is that they handwaved per-customer costs as hardware/network costs and assumed that as long as they scaled then salaries would be a minor part, we as an industry are now trying to dig ourselves out of that hole with a even shittier AD experiences just as that AD market is crashing down.
      - waveBidder 3y ago
        free money for VC via low interest rates was a terrible strategy for creating innovation that would last.
    - justatdotin 3y ago
      yes, I was very hopeful for sc: such a waste.
  - nomel 3y ago
    > Spotify is a terrible alternative for the musicians. I'm not a musician. I'm a listener trying to find music that I like to listen to. Do you have a recommendation for us on the other end of the speaker wire?
    - waveBidder 3y ago
      there's this neat website/app called bandcamp, you may have heard of it somewhere. it asks you to occasionally buy albums, rather than pay a fixed fee.
      - nomel 3y ago
        > trying to find music that I like to listen to As mentioned, my problem, as a listener, is discovery, which bandcamp doesn't address.
        mattkevan 3y ago
        As a listener, Bandcamp is my favourite place for discovery bar none. Find a genre or label and start exploring the catalogue. Find other users with similar tastes and explore their lists. Follow artists, labels and users to see their activity stream. It's not as passive as just hitting play on a playlist, but I've discovered so many incredible artists and labels this way. I'd be genuinely devastated if Bandcamp goes away.
        nomel 3y ago
        This is, effectively, what the recommendation systems do. They suggest songs/artists that users with similar tastes liked, and songs with similar styles (there's deep analysis/categorization of the sound of the song). I prefer an automated process, rather than clicking about, navigating lists. It's ok that this is my preference.
        thirdsun 3y ago
        NTS Radio, Rate Your Music or Discogs should be great, deep rabbit holes that lead to new and interesting discoveries.
- code_runner 3y ago
  can you follow up on the recreating popular songs and how spotify wronged taylor swift?
  - reactordev 3y ago
    Sure, quick google searches… there’s definitely more but this gives you enough info. https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-denies-its-playlisting-fake-artists-so-why-are-all-these-fake-artists-on-its-playlists/ https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-denies-its-pl... https://kotaku.com/spotify-music-streaming-fake-artist-ai-apple-music-1850363407 https://kotaku.com/spotify-music-streaming-fake-artist-ai-ap... https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/features/fake-artists-have-billions-of-streams-on-spotify-is-sony-now-playing-the-service-at-its-own-game-834746 https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/features/fake-artists-have-... https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/dispute-resolution/dispute-resolution-with-spotify-taylor-swift-shakes-it-off/ https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/dispute-resolution/dispute... https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/9/15767986/taylor-swift-apple-music-spotify-statements-timeline https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/9/15767986/taylor-swift-appl... And honestly, for some of this stuff, I understand Spotify’s position. At the same time, their willingness to promote fake artists with copy cat songs to circumvent paying royalties to BMG or such is why musicians are eating ramen and only a handful of musicians are eating steak.
  - jlarocco 3y ago
    There's a ton of stuff like this, where the original artist isn't on Spotify, but these "covers" are: https://open.spotify.com/track/6t6VE10ixs4wyyIgAbJzvz https://open.spotify.com/track/6t6VE10ixs4wyyIgAbJzvz https://open.spotify.com/artist/6RuIbUAQK9fmBq08AbY6XE https://open.spotify.com/artist/6RuIbUAQK9fmBq08AbY6XE Honestly, I wish Spotify would stop "improving" their client and use that money to get more artists on their service.
    - reactordev 3y ago
      Ugh… that last one. 65m listens followed by 40m and so on. This is exactly my point. Who the hell is this?
nkozyra 3y ago
I'd say you're very much in the minority then. Spotify is notorious for its weak recommendation system.
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  Compared to what? Genuinely asking, because I like Spotify's recommendation system yet I always have the feeling that it can be better... even with the recent enhanced shuffle playlist and efforts to provide more contextual recs.
  - nkozyra 3y ago
    YouTube music, Pandora, I'm sure there are others. Spotify likes to feed you back stuff you liked even if it's only tangentially related to what you're asking for. It also repeats the same recommendations for things like radio over and over again.
    - brandensilva 3y ago
      I feel like it's been improving with them offering more ways to discover music that sounds like what you heard but not the same artists. But yeah I still feel more can be done. Their new Hi-Fi package is supposed to have more options too.
    - dminvs 3y ago
      I had the same experience you describe with Pandora for years, has it improved recently?
      - disposition2 3y ago
        That is borderline tragic to hear. Pandora acquired __the__ music streaming service when it came to discovery, rdio, and did absolutely nothing with it.
    - slenk 3y ago
      You describing your experience with Spotify is my same experience with Pandora. It's awful, they have like 10 songs
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
Fuck Spotify. They've played a major role in drastically reducing any chance of significant revenue flowing to musicians, in complete contrast to Bandcamp. People hearing your music is nice and all (I like it when people hear my stuff on BC), but it is orthogonal to the revenue that used to be associated with making recorded music available. There's far, far more music out there than anyone will ever be able to listen to, and I consider the possibility of even 1 paid milkshake for a musician much more important than some random number of listeners who heard the track on Spotify. I appreciate that you may see things differently, but I think that you're wrong.
- Applejinx 3y ago
  THANK you. Spotify is no Bandcamp substitute. Not even close. Not even remotely the same category of thing. Yikes.
- nomel 3y ago
  > People hearing your music is nice and all As a listener, this is my entire concern, use case, and reason for paying for a streaming site: finding new music to listen to. I don't think I'm unique. Artists should get more, which is why I pay for Spotify Premium, but the use case of a listener is important. Bandcamp doesn't address that, for me.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    There is more music on Bandcamp than you could listen to in a lifetime. More comes out in a week than you could (probably) listen to in a week. So when you sayd "finding new music to listen to", there's a hidden implication in there: you want to find new music that is on Spotify (which in turn implies things like major labels, artists seeking or expecting breakout etc. Bandcamp is an amazing resource for discovering new music, but a subset of all new music, just as Spotify is. It's fine to say you prefer what you can find on Spotify, just don't make the claim that Bandcamp somehow isn't up for this general task.
    - nomel 3y ago
tomphoolery 3y ago
> It finds music I like, regardless of musician effort. This isn't really true...musicians must put forth a ton of effort just to be part of the songs that are recommended to you. Spotify favors and rewards those who promote their music on other platforms, since it scours the web for articles mentioning your name and people posting about you on social media in order to determine how far up in the "rankings" you should be when someone asks for a similar sounding song.
- nomel 3y ago
  Is this assumed or is there public info about their algorithm? In the first song of my Discover Weekly, if I google the very unique artist name, I get exactly four hits: their bandcamp page, their website, their Spotify page, and their YouTube channel that hasn't been updated in a 9 months, with that last video having 120k views. The rest is unrelated to them. This doesn't refutes what you're saying, but I would have exactly 0 chance of finding them on my own, with the effort they're putting in.
  - aurnik 3y ago
    Discover Weekly specifically requires artists to "pitch" their songs to Spotify. If you're already following the artist, their new releases that have been pitched are supposedly guaranteed to show up on your Discover Weekly. Otherwise, I believe it's someone at Spotify who picked that song which then distributes it to "relevant" listeners.
    - nomel 3y ago
      Again, is this assumed, or do you have something public that can be linked to? The only explanation of the algorithm is what I would expect, rather than some silly humans in the loop: recommendation based on user activity and the analysis of the song style [1]. https://medium.com/the-sound-of-ai/spotifys-discover-weekly-explained-breaking-from-your-music-bubble-or-maybe-not-b506da144123 https://medium.com/the-sound-of-ai/spotifys-discover-weekly-...
JohnFen 3y ago
Can I buy music from Spotify? As in, be able to download a non-proprietary, lossless encoding of the music? If not, Spotify is worthless to me.
- mcsniff 3y ago
  If you re-frame Spotify as a way to discover music, it's not worthless. Feel free to use Spotify to find artists and give them money however you want. Also, nobody is stopping you from spending your time finding new music and giving money as directly as possible to the artist. Spotify can be seen as a way to increase your exposure to new music, and for that it might be worth the $XX/month to many people, the ability to stream/cache it is a nice addition, but you don't have to rely on it as a way to give money (a pittance) to artists you like.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > If you re-frame Spotify as a way to discover music, it's not worthless. It is to me, though. I don't need another way to discover music. I have that well-covered. And by "buy music", I wasn't referring to a way to pay artists (that would be a followup question if I didn't already know that part). I mean, can I download the music in a high-quality, open-standard, format? I thought Spotify only did streaming, and I am not interested in a streaming service.
    - nomel 3y ago
      > have that well-covered. Could you share your secrets?
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        No secrets. I get recommendations from my friends, I keep track of what musicians/producers/etc. were involved in producing music that I love, and seek out what other works they were involved in, etc. I pay attention to incidental music I come across and pursue it. I've been doing this for decades and as a result, I have a very eclectic collection that covers almost all genres. This approach may not work for everyone, but it works very well for me.
jlarocco 3y ago
That's interesting - I usually don't like Spotify's recommendations. Youtube was much better at that IMO, but I've tried to stop using it due to the Google connection. I don't really know where Bandcamp stands - I've bought music there that I found on YouTube, but haven't used it to find new stuff.
- nomel 3y ago
  > I usually don't like Spotify's recommendations It requires that you like songs, and listen, of course. I have around 1600 liked songs. It knows me well enough at this point.
  - jlarocco 3y ago
    That hasn't helped any. I have almost 1100 liked songs, several dozen liked albums, and several years of near daily listening. The recommendations are still less good (for me) than what YouTube recommended without an account, just based on my listening history.
    - nomel 3y ago
      I've been satisfied, but that's good to hear. I'll give it another try. My biggest problem with the Spotify recommendation is that it seems to be a bit "sticky", recommended recent listens more than anything.
      - jlarocco 3y ago
        I think that's what I don't like about it, also. It seems like it gives me recommendations too similar to what I'm already listening to.
matt_j 3y ago
Spotify has a catalogue that appeals to people that like pop music. Bandcamp provides an outlet for artists that aren't part of the pop music spectrum. I'm deep into electronic music and Bandcamp is the _only_ place that some artists are even listed, and it's become an amazing space for artists that want to release limited press special edition records - pre-ordered by fans to cover the manufacturing price. Prior to this I acquired a few cool records via Kickstarter, but Bandcamp is preferable. Furthermore, Spotify are well known for paying artists next to nothing. Bandcamp are well known for letting artists take the majority of the purchase price of their music. Not to mention, listening to mp3s is for chumps! Bandcamp is the best there is (for now) if you want to financially support the artists you like. I spend a lot of time in record stores (both physical and digital) but they are mostly extinct now. There's a few I still frequent: Juno, Boomkat, Hardwax among them, but the more the world turns to services like Spotify, the less room there is for real music stores. It's super annoying how the internet kills everything that was good. Bullshit for the masses over quality service for people that care.
- justatdotin 3y ago
  yep. I use both daily but find bc more valuable. bc does little to help me find new music (so I get my leads elsewhere) but once I know what I want it is more likely to be on bc than spotify. spotify does a good job of helping me follow artists I already know, but not so great identifying new ones. I'm sure that depends on what you're looking for tho.
COM2323 3y ago
It probably depends on music genre, but Bandcamp hosts a ton of music that's not available anywhere else. Spotify is great for popular music, but a lot of small/niche artists have presence only on Bandcamp, both digital and physical. Pretty much all of my vaporwave/futurefunk/synthwave vinyl records are from Bandcamp.

by nomel 3y ago

comprev 3y ago

on the flip side to this, I don't have Spotify because curating music is a hobby of mine. The research from various sources - forums, FB groups, Discogs, Bandcamp mailing lists, etc. is part of the journey.

racked 3y ago
Is there a place you share your playlists? Would be curious to have a listen.

reactordev 3y ago

It’s a loss to musicians to have a monopoly like Spotify (who likes to recreate popular songs with their own artists and label) be the gatekeeper to what is good music. From a service perspective, it’s great. I have the worlds music at my fingertips. From a music perspective it’s horrible. I have one company dictating streaming payments and terms on an entire industry and you’re f&$ked if you don’t play nice. Ask Taylor Swift.

winternett 3y ago
Agreed. Spotify is a terrible alternative for the musicians. Myspace and Mp3.Com used to be the road map to how sites should be run, but venture capitalism and publicly traded companies ruined the entire ecosystem.
- reactordev 3y ago
  I had high hopes for SoundCloud but in the end, VC’s always win.
  - dzhiurgis 3y ago
    They still pretty much same. I don't get any audio ads, some ads in my stream, but never seem to be playing. Premium offering is stuck somewhere in 2009 when offline playback was a thing. Lack of integrations with Homepod & Tesla is somewhat becoming a problem. Still no way to filter your stream or get know what bitrate you are streaming.
  - whizzter 3y ago
    (I studied with one of the founders) Soundclouds problem was always that they started out as basically a free service for a particular niche(artist to label contacts), starting to charge(pissing off people who expected free forever) and then moving out of the niche made it so they never really had a footing for something people would pay for. The problem with so many "internet unicorns" from the 2000-2010 era is that they handwaved per-customer costs as hardware/network costs and assumed that as long as they scaled then salaries would be a minor part, we as an industry are now trying to dig ourselves out of that hole with a even shittier AD experiences just as that AD market is crashing down.
    - waveBidder 3y ago
      free money for VC via low interest rates was a terrible strategy for creating innovation that would last.
  - justatdotin 3y ago
    yes, I was very hopeful for sc: such a waste.
- nomel 3y ago
  > Spotify is a terrible alternative for the musicians. I'm not a musician. I'm a listener trying to find music that I like to listen to. Do you have a recommendation for us on the other end of the speaker wire?
  - waveBidder 3y ago
    there's this neat website/app called bandcamp, you may have heard of it somewhere. it asks you to occasionally buy albums, rather than pay a fixed fee.
    - nomel 3y ago
      > trying to find music that I like to listen to As mentioned, my problem, as a listener, is discovery, which bandcamp doesn't address.
      - mattkevan 3y ago
        As a listener, Bandcamp is my favourite place for discovery bar none. Find a genre or label and start exploring the catalogue. Find other users with similar tastes and explore their lists. Follow artists, labels and users to see their activity stream. It's not as passive as just hitting play on a playlist, but I've discovered so many incredible artists and labels this way. I'd be genuinely devastated if Bandcamp goes away.
        nomel 3y ago
        This is, effectively, what the recommendation systems do. They suggest songs/artists that users with similar tastes liked, and songs with similar styles (there's deep analysis/categorization of the sound of the song). I prefer an automated process, rather than clicking about, navigating lists. It's ok that this is my preference.
      - thirdsun 3y ago
        NTS Radio, Rate Your Music or Discogs should be great, deep rabbit holes that lead to new and interesting discoveries.
code_runner 3y ago
can you follow up on the recreating popular songs and how spotify wronged taylor swift?
- reactordev 3y ago
  Sure, quick google searches… there’s definitely more but this gives you enough info. https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-denies-its-playlisting-fake-artists-so-why-are-all-these-fake-artists-on-its-playlists/ https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-denies-its-pl... https://kotaku.com/spotify-music-streaming-fake-artist-ai-apple-music-1850363407 https://kotaku.com/spotify-music-streaming-fake-artist-ai-ap... https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/features/fake-artists-have-billions-of-streams-on-spotify-is-sony-now-playing-the-service-at-its-own-game-834746 https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/features/fake-artists-have-... https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/dispute-resolution/dispute-resolution-with-spotify-taylor-swift-shakes-it-off/ https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/dispute-resolution/dispute... https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/9/15767986/taylor-swift-apple-music-spotify-statements-timeline https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/9/15767986/taylor-swift-appl... And honestly, for some of this stuff, I understand Spotify’s position. At the same time, their willingness to promote fake artists with copy cat songs to circumvent paying royalties to BMG or such is why musicians are eating ramen and only a handful of musicians are eating steak.
- jlarocco 3y ago
  There's a ton of stuff like this, where the original artist isn't on Spotify, but these "covers" are: https://open.spotify.com/track/6t6VE10ixs4wyyIgAbJzvz https://open.spotify.com/track/6t6VE10ixs4wyyIgAbJzvz https://open.spotify.com/artist/6RuIbUAQK9fmBq08AbY6XE https://open.spotify.com/artist/6RuIbUAQK9fmBq08AbY6XE Honestly, I wish Spotify would stop "improving" their client and use that money to get more artists on their service.
  - reactordev 3y ago
    Ugh… that last one. 65m listens followed by 40m and so on. This is exactly my point. Who the hell is this?

nkozyra 3y ago

I'd say you're very much in the minority then. Spotify is notorious for its weak recommendation system.

mardifoufs 3y ago
Compared to what? Genuinely asking, because I like Spotify's recommendation system yet I always have the feeling that it can be better... even with the recent enhanced shuffle playlist and efforts to provide more contextual recs.
- nkozyra 3y ago
  YouTube music, Pandora, I'm sure there are others. Spotify likes to feed you back stuff you liked even if it's only tangentially related to what you're asking for. It also repeats the same recommendations for things like radio over and over again.
  - brandensilva 3y ago
    I feel like it's been improving with them offering more ways to discover music that sounds like what you heard but not the same artists. But yeah I still feel more can be done. Their new Hi-Fi package is supposed to have more options too.
  - dminvs 3y ago
    I had the same experience you describe with Pandora for years, has it improved recently?
    - disposition2 3y ago
      That is borderline tragic to hear. Pandora acquired __the__ music streaming service when it came to discovery, rdio, and did absolutely nothing with it.
  - slenk 3y ago
    You describing your experience with Spotify is my same experience with Pandora. It's awful, they have like 10 songs

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

Fuck Spotify. They've played a major role in drastically reducing any chance of significant revenue flowing to musicians, in complete contrast to Bandcamp. People hearing your music is nice and all (I like it when people hear my stuff on BC), but it is orthogonal to the revenue that used to be associated with making recorded music available. There's far, far more music out there than anyone will ever be able to listen to, and I consider the possibility of even 1 paid milkshake for a musician much more important than some random number of listeners who heard the track on Spotify. I appreciate that you may see things differently, but I think that you're wrong.

Applejinx 3y ago
THANK you. Spotify is no Bandcamp substitute. Not even close. Not even remotely the same category of thing. Yikes.
nomel 3y ago
> People hearing your music is nice and all As a listener, this is my entire concern, use case, and reason for paying for a streaming site: finding new music to listen to. I don't think I'm unique. Artists should get more, which is why I pay for Spotify Premium, but the use case of a listener is important. Bandcamp doesn't address that, for me.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  There is more music on Bandcamp than you could listen to in a lifetime. More comes out in a week than you could (probably) listen to in a week. So when you sayd "finding new music to listen to", there's a hidden implication in there: you want to find new music that is on Spotify (which in turn implies things like major labels, artists seeking or expecting breakout etc. Bandcamp is an amazing resource for discovering new music, but a subset of all new music, just as Spotify is. It's fine to say you prefer what you can find on Spotify, just don't make the claim that Bandcamp somehow isn't up for this general task.
  - nomel 3y ago

tomphoolery 3y ago

> It finds music I like, regardless of musician effort. This isn't really true...musicians must put forth a ton of effort just to be part of the songs that are recommended to you. Spotify favors and rewards those who promote their music on other platforms, since it scours the web for articles mentioning your name and people posting about you on social media in order to determine how far up in the "rankings" you should be when someone asks for a similar sounding song.

nomel 3y ago
Is this assumed or is there public info about their algorithm? In the first song of my Discover Weekly, if I google the very unique artist name, I get exactly four hits: their bandcamp page, their website, their Spotify page, and their YouTube channel that hasn't been updated in a 9 months, with that last video having 120k views. The rest is unrelated to them. This doesn't refutes what you're saying, but I would have exactly 0 chance of finding them on my own, with the effort they're putting in.
- aurnik 3y ago
  Discover Weekly specifically requires artists to "pitch" their songs to Spotify. If you're already following the artist, their new releases that have been pitched are supposedly guaranteed to show up on your Discover Weekly. Otherwise, I believe it's someone at Spotify who picked that song which then distributes it to "relevant" listeners.
  - nomel 3y ago
    Again, is this assumed, or do you have something public that can be linked to? The only explanation of the algorithm is what I would expect, rather than some silly humans in the loop: recommendation based on user activity and the analysis of the song style [1]. https://medium.com/the-sound-of-ai/spotifys-discover-weekly-explained-breaking-from-your-music-bubble-or-maybe-not-b506da144123 https://medium.com/the-sound-of-ai/spotifys-discover-weekly-...

JohnFen 3y ago

Can I buy music from Spotify? As in, be able to download a non-proprietary, lossless encoding of the music? If not, Spotify is worthless to me.

mcsniff 3y ago
If you re-frame Spotify as a way to discover music, it's not worthless. Feel free to use Spotify to find artists and give them money however you want. Also, nobody is stopping you from spending your time finding new music and giving money as directly as possible to the artist. Spotify can be seen as a way to increase your exposure to new music, and for that it might be worth the $XX/month to many people, the ability to stream/cache it is a nice addition, but you don't have to rely on it as a way to give money (a pittance) to artists you like.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > If you re-frame Spotify as a way to discover music, it's not worthless. It is to me, though. I don't need another way to discover music. I have that well-covered. And by "buy music", I wasn't referring to a way to pay artists (that would be a followup question if I didn't already know that part). I mean, can I download the music in a high-quality, open-standard, format? I thought Spotify only did streaming, and I am not interested in a streaming service.
  - nomel 3y ago
    > have that well-covered. Could you share your secrets?
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      No secrets. I get recommendations from my friends, I keep track of what musicians/producers/etc. were involved in producing music that I love, and seek out what other works they were involved in, etc. I pay attention to incidental music I come across and pursue it. I've been doing this for decades and as a result, I have a very eclectic collection that covers almost all genres. This approach may not work for everyone, but it works very well for me.

jlarocco 3y ago

That's interesting - I usually don't like Spotify's recommendations. Youtube was much better at that IMO, but I've tried to stop using it due to the Google connection. I don't really know where Bandcamp stands - I've bought music there that I found on YouTube, but haven't used it to find new stuff.

nomel 3y ago
> I usually don't like Spotify's recommendations It requires that you like songs, and listen, of course. I have around 1600 liked songs. It knows me well enough at this point.
- jlarocco 3y ago
  That hasn't helped any. I have almost 1100 liked songs, several dozen liked albums, and several years of near daily listening. The recommendations are still less good (for me) than what YouTube recommended without an account, just based on my listening history.
  - nomel 3y ago
    I've been satisfied, but that's good to hear. I'll give it another try. My biggest problem with the Spotify recommendation is that it seems to be a bit "sticky", recommended recent listens more than anything.
    - jlarocco 3y ago
      I think that's what I don't like about it, also. It seems like it gives me recommendations too similar to what I'm already listening to.

matt_j 3y ago

Spotify has a catalogue that appeals to people that like pop music. Bandcamp provides an outlet for artists that aren't part of the pop music spectrum. I'm deep into electronic music and Bandcamp is the _only_ place that some artists are even listed, and it's become an amazing space for artists that want to release limited press special edition records - pre-ordered by fans to cover the manufacturing price. Prior to this I acquired a few cool records via Kickstarter, but Bandcamp is preferable. Furthermore, Spotify are well known for paying artists next to nothing. Bandcamp are well known for letting artists take the majority of the purchase price of their music. Not to mention, listening to mp3s is for chumps! Bandcamp is the best there is (for now) if you want to financially support the artists you like. I spend a lot of time in record stores (both physical and digital) but they are mostly extinct now. There's a few I still frequent: Juno, Boomkat, Hardwax among them, but the more the world turns to services like Spotify, the less room there is for real music stores. It's super annoying how the internet kills everything that was good. Bullshit for the masses over quality service for people that care.

justatdotin 3y ago
yep. I use both daily but find bc more valuable. bc does little to help me find new music (so I get my leads elsewhere) but once I know what I want it is more likely to be on bc than spotify. spotify does a good job of helping me follow artists I already know, but not so great identifying new ones. I'm sure that depends on what you're looking for tho.

COM2323 3y ago

It probably depends on music genre, but Bandcamp hosts a ton of music that's not available anywhere else. Spotify is great for popular music, but a lot of small/niche artists have presence only on Bandcamp, both digital and physical. Pretty much all of my vaporwave/futurefunk/synthwave vinyl records are from Bandcamp.