7 ms·

Goodbye Spotify

79 points by coppolaemilio 3y ago

COGlory 3y ago
Music consumption has basically never been in a better place. What Spotify pays artists, and how many employees at Bandcamp get laid off are minor, in the big picture. My music consumption goes something like this: 1) Queue up a known band on Spotify. See what else similar to them Spotify puts into a playlist 2) Listen to the new music, decide what I like or don't like 3) Head over to Bandcamp or Discogs with the stuff I really like. Buy it in vinyl and DRM-free digital. Put it in my Subsonic server. 4) If it's not available, head to P2P app of choice - they always have it. Yes, Bandcamp and Spotify might be ephemeral, but Spotify did wonders for discoverability - there are a lot of albums from tiny tiny bands I'd never have bought if it weren't for Spotify, and Bandcamp helped re-establish the market for physical, DRM-free media. Music has never been in a better place. I finally get to have my cake and eat it too. What people are complaining about (Spotify not paying enough to smaller artists) is conveniently ignoring that I'd have never even heard of those artists 25 years ago, because they couldn't have paid for distribution. Spotify didn't reduce what artists make, they redisributed what I spend across way more, but smaller, bands.
- tkgally 3y ago
  > Music has never been in a better place. I have to agree. I’m 66 years old. When I was in my late teens, I was intensely into music and doing my best to explore and learn about a variety of genres. It was hard. I couldn’t afford to buy many albums, the music played on the radio was limited, and the only way to hear obscure music that I had read about was to go to a large public or university library and hope that they might have the records in their collection. Now I can listen to nearly any music I want to with just a few clicks. There are also many great streaming channels for discovering music I didn’t know about—I particularly like BBC Sounds, especially Radio 3. My 19-year-old self never could have dreamt of such riches.
  - amanaplanacanal 3y ago
    I’m the same age, and totally agree. Sometime in the late 80s or early 90s I decided to figure out what electronic dance music was all about. This was early house and techno times. It was essentially impossible. There was no scene in my city. Now I feel like there’s an embarrassment of riches, more than I could ever listen to.
  - pixxel 3y ago
    You may like this John Peel archive to (re)discover music: https://davestrickson.blogspot.com/2020/05/john-peel-sessions.html?m=1 https://davestrickson.blogspot.com/2020/05/john-peel-session...
- cramjabsyn 3y ago
  Music has never been in a better place? Do you work for Spotify? Musicians are largely struggling while a few giant corps take all the money. Thats not a good place at all. I think you are conflating “music” with “music consumers”
  - amanaplanacanal 3y ago
    > Musicians are largely struggling while a few giant corps take all the money. But that’s the way it has always been.
  - COGlory 3y ago
    It's always been like that, just way worse because there were 100x fewer bands and artists even 30 years ago. >I think you are conflating “music” with “music consumers” I think you somehow missed the very first sentence of my comment: >Music consumption has basically never been in a better place.
  - franciscop 3y ago
    No, you are conflating "music" with "musicians", it's the same in most creative fields, we have more and better, by an order of magnitude, than we have ever had.
- dwayne_dibley 3y ago
  'head to P2P app of choice' - any recommendations?
  - ccakes 3y ago
    Soulseek is still around
r2_pilot 3y ago
I hate the podcast part of Spotify and vehemently disagree with their choice of high-paid hosts on there and would prefer that money to have gone to artists instead. That being said, I also enjoy some of their innovations and they've expanded my music tastes somewhat (and with questionable B or C artists...but that's also the point). Finally, I'd like to conclude by saying that I hate some of their defaults, wish they would make the UX 10x better and unify across platforms. P S. They do allow me to download my data from them, which I do regularly. Super cool, no hassles.
readthenotes1 3y ago
I like Pandora's music stations (playing music like an artist), and reports are apparently that it is better than others for that But they pay little to the artists. What do you use?
- hennyting 3y ago
  I've used Pandora for years but I'm switching to Spotify. Pandora's catalogue is tiny in comparison. And I don't care if they sponsor "questionable" podcasters (A.K.A Joe Rogan). In fact, that honestly makes me want to invest more in Spotify. I can listen to the latest obscure NYCHC and know that my music provider isn't being censored by CISA.
  - 1letterunixname 3y ago
    In ATX, but I don't give a shit about Joe Rogan either because he's a moron hit in the head one too many times which somehow translates into a celebrated champion of anti-intellectualism. Censorship, by customers or a platform, is cure worse than the disease. Another example: Pluto TV (run by Paramount) hosts as much hate as AM radio in the form of OAN, Blaze, Newsmax, and (previously) RT America, OTOH they have Scripps, Cheddar, and Sky News. Moral purity is the privilege of extremists appeasing their tribe through conformity to closed-mindedness and foot-stomping that they must live in a voluntary intellectual and reality apartheid. The American right and left are both guilty of this, perpetuating a division that was artificially introduced for profit reasons by grifters and widened by different flavors of mass media that promote these spheres of influence.
- baix777 3y ago
  Tidal pays more for the artist and has a higher quality streaming option if that matters to you. Qobuz is another good artist friendly stream that historically paid the most to artists but it has a bit smaller catalog than Tidal.
  - 1letterunixname 3y ago
    Tidal is great for selection and quality, but not usability like Spotify where I can control it from any device. Tidal works on my receiver and Amazon devices. Like many home/IoT services, Spotify uses mDNS to enumerate and announce its peers when they are L3 local but they are also controllable remotely by dialing-home to their API albeit with a slightly longer delay. Spotify is hilarious when playing from the Everywhere group (all devices) where desktops, tablets, phones, the thermostat, stereo receiver, and Amazon Echo devices all insist on playing out of time like a crowd of teenagers singing a song.
lxgr 3y ago
> Funny enough, the only easy way I found to buy music nowadays is vinyls. Is there really a lot of music neither available on CD, nor for MP3 download, but on vinyl?
- autarch 3y ago
  Yeah, I thought that part was weird. I have not had too much trouble finding ways to for digital downloads. For Japanese bands I like, I have to do some weird shenanigans to get Japanese sites to let me pay them, but it's not like the digital downloads don't exist at all.
- miunau 3y ago
  Vinyl and cassette are the most common right now for physical-exclusive stuff. CD sales are very mixed- you can do well or barely sell at all, even for established names, and the startup costs for a pressing are higher than with tapes. And if it's on CD it might as well be a download anyway.
  - Tao3300 3y ago
    > if it's on CD it might as well be a download anyway Unless you mean FLAC or something, CD is still higher quality than other formats, and they keep longer than vinyl or cassettes. Inb4 the "only audiophiles with high end equipment" arguments: if you were around in the days of Blade Encoder tweaking options and trying to fit mp3s onto a 32MB player the size of a cigarette box, you know what digital artifacts sound like.
    - seba_dos1 3y ago
      You don't need to be an "audiophile" or have "high end equipment" to realize that you absolutely want lossless for music archival. How would you want to, say, transcode a collection of MP3 to Opus to fit more tracks onto the same space at acceptable quality without keeping FLACs around? Although OTOH, people play lossy MP3s over lossy SBC via Bluetooth and don't care, so perhaps the bar of "acceptable quality" is much lower than it seems...
thejarren 3y ago
I have music on Spotify that I will be removing as well because of their decision not to pay out small artist streams under a certain amount. I pay a distributor (distrokid) to send out music, and do not have a direct agreement with Spotify. As far as I'm concerned, monetizing my music without my consent is theft. Their argument is that the stream amount is so low it ends up not being worth the transaction. On a moral level, I'd argue that it's their responsibility to pay out the money generated even if it costs them money to do so for a small number of streams. This is estimated to generate $40m annually for them (which they've said they will be distributing to other artists instead), which isn't deeply significant, but this is money that is only generated because of small content creators that have uploaded their content to their distributor (which they pay for) which then distributes to spotify. If I were to upload directly to Spotify for free, I'd consider the terms different, because I'd expect distribution as the exchange in the relationship. But in this case I pay a distributor, who then sends to spotify, who then decides to offer my content for free and pocket the money. Not acceptable for me. (note: I consider this relevant to the original article because it is mentioned, as well as because it is one of the variables involved in music purchasing/accessing) edit: corrected the $40m statement to show where money was going.
- DeIlliad 3y ago
  Sounds like your beef should be with Distrokid not Spotify.
  - 1_1xdev1 3y ago
    distrokid charges a flat fee to put your stuff on the distributors. they're holding up their end spotify is distributing without paying the artists
    - thejarren 3y ago
      Correct. Distrokid isn't the problem here, they've not altered any terms.
      - 3y ago
nottheengineer 3y ago
The spotify app has become so ridiculously bad I can't use it anymore. I found out about Zotify [1], which can rip my entire collection from spotify. The API rate limits anything faster than real time listening though, so it'll take a few weeks to download everything. [1] https://zotify.xyz/ https://zotify.xyz/
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  SongShift also works really well in my experience. I only use Apple Music in the car these days because its UX is safer/saner than Spotify's. SongShift makes it easy to keep them synced up.
  - brainbag 3y ago
    Does it sync tracks that you Love in Apple Music? I have liked Apple Music a lot, except for one major thing when I realized that there is no way to view tracks that I have marked with Love, and I'm trying to find a way to get that information out.
    - CamperBob2 3y ago
      That, I'm not sure about. I just use it to maintain an Apple Music copy of my "Liked Songs" via what they call a "Full Library Transfer" shift. That may be what you're talking about, since clicking on the heart icon is how songs end up in "Liked Songs" to begin with...? Note that I only use it in the Spotify -> AM direction, not vice versa.
- ccvannorman 3y ago
  Thanks for this! I'll be using it. [0] 0: "Let me just open spotify to listen to.. NO, I don't want last year's recap... NO, I don't want to follow my friend's playlist.. NO, I don't want to try browsing your recommended audiobooks.. OK, now that those popups are gone, what was I .. Ah yes! This song, here it is. Play. .... No? Play. It's not playing. Maybe close and reopen the app?" <-- this happens often. Spotify Premium, the app that consistently fails at the literal one thing it's supposed to do, play music.
pavel_lishin 3y ago
Sometimes I've felt a bit foolish, keeping my mp3's on a hard drive, as well as backed up onto another drive. But then, I hear about things like Bandcamp being sold, artists being pulled from streaming sites, etc., and it feels nice to know that in principle, all the songs I've purchased over the decades remain within my power to listen to. Some of the songs I have, and still regularly listen to, I'm honestly not sure if I could find anywhere online anymore.
jszymborski 3y ago
Very funny seeing this here as I've just bodged an internal DVD drive and SATA-to-USB connector to rip a Placebo CD I bought on eBay. My brother has been snickering about this for quite some time.
pawelduda 3y ago
If HN was Spotify client, the add comment button would randomly shift position on every visit and have one of these as the text: create, send, publish, add to thread And sometimes if you clicked it, nothing would happen
DarkmSparks 3y ago
It was only 1 CD I stole your honour, and I only listened to it once. Wasnt worth the transaction cost to buy it. Spotify, 2023.
amir734jj 3y ago
Also it's no longer possible to get Spotify student discount if you have been a student for more than 4 years. I mean, what about graduate students?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
madmountaingoat 3y ago
Listen deeper, listen more and you will help artists more than cancelling your subscription. I don't know what artists at the new cutoff were making but its not a living wage, and I doubt it's even beer money. The unknown artists will never get paid if you don't listen and find them. That's what Spotify is great at. Once you find the small artist, seek them out, buy some merch, see a show. Drive an hour further than you normally would. That's what supporting an artist looks like, not cancelling your Spotify subscription.
- cramjabsyn 3y ago
  Honestly it should be both. Support artists deeply and ditch Spotify. We shouldn't be complacent and let Spotify make earning a living even harder for artists.
  - piva00 3y ago
    Has it made earning a living even harder though? Before streaming it was much harder to discover obscure artists from places outside of your own local area, usually you'd go crate-digging vinyls at 2nd hand shops to find the true gems. I don't understand how enabling access to music from anywhere in the world has made earning a living harder to music artists, the industry was always extremely hard outside of a few lucky ones hand picked by labels to be marketed. The local scenes were (and still are) where most artists could grow their audience, sell albums and merch, it's still the same hard work but now you are able to release your music worldwide in an instant. Streaming doesn't pay enough on any platform to enable earning a living if you are a small act. And it never will, it's basic economics, there's not enough money from subscriptions and ads to support the millions and millions of artists. Support the artists, that's orthogonal to Spotify or other streaming services. Buy their albums, merch, go watch their shows.
    - derbOac 3y ago
      I guess I agree with you (and others making the same argument) but feel like it is ultimately arguing that to support artists, you need to go outside Spotify, which to me implies something is broken about it. Maybe that's the nature of things but I think part of that argument is there could be something better. Maybe it's beside the point from a practical perspective but I guess I agree with that too. I think finding and supporting small artists probably never has been better, but I'm not sure if that's because of Spotify per se, or social media and the Internet in general.
Mistletoe 3y ago
I recently said goodbye to Spotify as well. I tried Apple Music and found it sounded significantly better. The muddy quality I am used to with Spotify was gone and I’ve been enjoying music ever since. I really thought there was something wrong with me prior to this. I don’t know if it is the different codecs they use or what. I haven’t even tried the lossless audio yet on Apple Music. So it is just comparing the lossy to lossy. I’m also glad to be on an app that doesn’t try to constantly push podcasts on me.
- OccamsMirror 3y ago
  I’ve recently made the same move with a similar experience. Out of curiosity though did you try turning off volume normalization in Spotify?
  - Mistletoe 3y ago
    I’ve uninstalled the app so I can’t check, but I do remember trying it with that off and on.
LelouBil 3y ago
Even though I would like Spotify to pay artists decently, I'll keep paying for it mainly for their recommendations and discovery features. If you only listen to music you already know you like, then sure Bandcamp or whatever is amazing for the artist. But personally, I just launch my "liked" playlist and use their enrich feature to fill in titles. Or use their thematic playlist generations that use a genre but take into account what I already liked of this genre. Though if someone showed me an alternative with discovery features that work as good as this and pays artists decently I'd switch instantly.
- lucb1e 3y ago
  > I would like Spotify to pay artists decently Using which funds? Afaik they pay out quite a lot of the income, they could try to cut costs (the most meaningful thing there probably being to lay off staff) in order to maximize payouts but the only alternative pushes people to competing services that are cheaper and can't pay artists better for the same reason. One thing they could reasonably do is to offer for people to pay more for their Spotify subscription, where the surplus (anything you pay above the base subscription) goes 100% to the artists, proportionally to the ones you listen to. One can speculate how much that would help the problem. I just find it weird to see people always saying (look up any Spotify-related thread) that Spotify pays so poorly and that people should cancel their subscription altogether instead. Edit: got curious and looked it up > within the pie chart detailing the total revenue that Spotify generates through music streaming, “roughly 70% of it is going to rights holders ---https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2021-04-19/spotify-artists-royalty-rate-apple-music https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2021-...
- antoine-unity 3y ago
  It doesn’t come cheap, but I can recommend Roon[1] because it allows your music collection to blend between streaming providers (Tidal or Qobuz) and local files. Their very good recommendation algorithm can expand your horizon and you can buy the music you really like while using the same playback experience (would be nice if they allowed you to buy and download music directly though). [1] https://roon.app/en/ https://roon.app/en/
paxys 3y ago
I don't think any band out there has any excuse not to spend literally minutes to set up an online store (using Shopify or whatever else) and put their music up for sale directly. If they don't, and rely on iTunes/Spotify etc., or sign with a major label, then you as a fan aren't obligated to go out of your way to still look for avenues to support them.
lucb1e 3y ago
Motivation: "Spotify doesn’t seem to have the artist’s interest in mind anymore" citing examples of minimum number of listens (1000) before paying out (at 1k, isn't that still in the realm of micropence anyway?), and the podcast thing funding questionable people and being pushed through UI changes. Alternative: "For now, I’m just back to the weird p2p programs where I can try to find the music I bought or the ones that are just impossible to get." Result: "listening to music feels more meaningful, not a thing that happens in the background"
thefourthchime 3y ago
Funny, I finally ditched Spotify last week. I just can’t stand the pop up ads, the cluttered interface, and frankly I’m sick of the recommendations. So far I’ve been trying Apple Music, and have liked it so far. I’ve tried in the past but didn’t stick around long enough to learn how to use it. Also, I have HomePods as speakers for my living room tv and found that “streaming” to them using Apple Music isn’t streaming, it sends the channel over to the device so you can do whatever on your phone or leave the house and it still plays. Much like Sonos.
- bjord 3y ago
  I don't think it makes sense to compare free Spotify to paid Apple Music directly. Am I confused here? I've personally never seen popup ads in (paid) Spotify, either on mobile or desktop.
  - thefourthchime 3y ago
    I am comparing paid Spotify, the ads I'm talking about are house ads. It's for things like a new Spofity special thing, or some new feature.
  - averageRoyalty 3y ago
    I see ads all the time on paid Spitufy. Ads for podcasts are the most common ones. Just because the ad is for an in-house service doesn't make it not an ad.
mrangle 3y ago
Liberal Joe Rogan is "questionable"? GMAB.. I mean he's open to questions so... I find it to be socially toxic that anyone expects massive companies to tailor their content to one's narrow sensibilities. Furthermore, the complaints rarely if ever go the other way in terms of platforming middle-of-the road personalities that land on the other side of the line. Though, they could in-volume. Man, was it terrrrible when the Smartless crew had Rachel Maddow on their show. Grumble grumble...unsubscribe...grumble
- Jedd 3y ago
  This feels like a disingenuous take on TFA's in-passing reference. Spotify spending USD$100-$200 million on, say, that particular angertainment professional got a lot of people riled up because a) he's actively, demonstrably harmful, b) they had zero interest in patronising him, let along listening to him, but mostly c) their subscription costs had gone up to cover this indefensible payment. Like TFA, I get my podcasts elsewhere, partly because the spotify app is unwieldy for music, but just plain user hostile for podcasts - but I'd appreciate a multi-tiered service offering from Spotify where I don't use, and therefore don't pay for, any podcast content from them. Similar to the different package options for TV services, where live sports were expensive but you could opt out of them.
  - COGlory 3y ago
    I was more offended on the idea of buying existing podcasts and putting them behind a paywall, than I was the idea of money being spent on Joe Rogan.
  - pixxel 3y ago
    > got a lot of people riled up No it didn’t. It got a tiny minority of a certain insignificant type upset. Step out into the real world and the number one podcast is, by definition, well received.
    - Jedd 3y ago
      > It got a tiny minority of a certain insignificant type I guess how one perceived the reaction to that transaction comes down to one's own biases. If you wish to discount some people's problem with paying a misinformation-peddler hundreds of millions of dollars while, as per TFA, genuinely creative people are paid nothing because 'it's too hard to handle the transactions' - then that gives us a little more insight into you. > Step out into the real world and the number one podcast is, by definition, well received. Number one in the USA, you mean, right? Podcasts are a niche medium, with extremely poorly reported listening figures, but so far I can tell this guy has an average of 11 million listeners. That's less than 4% of the USA (around 0.1% of the real world). I get that anger and controversy are highly saleable products - crime content makes up a surprising amount of the podcast leaderboard. However, in a country where 230 million people believe angels are real, it shouldn't be surprising, nor held up as an arbiter of quality or sanity, that 11 million people think this guy is credible / worth $200m a year.
ohhnoodont 3y ago
I feel we're entering a 2nd great renaissance of media piracy and torrent sites. Fair streaming services were a great solution. But for a variety of reasons that all has slowly been corrupted and become obtrusive. I've recently cancelled my Netflix account after subscribing for over 12 years. Private torrent sites are reporting a significant increases in active users.
- rantingdemon 3y ago
  As a South African, it is ridiculous to me that I cannot even legally buy or rent some films that were produced in South Africa, and is about South Africa. I cannot recall the details now, but this has happened at least 3 times over the last couple of months. This is driving people towards piracy again.
toastercat 3y ago
I'm still torrenting music like I did in 2007. If I really enjoy a record, I buy it. When a band is in town, I go see them. I don't get hung up on the morality of piracy anymore. Truth is piracy (for me) provides a better experience than most of the alternatives (Spotify, Netflix, Hulu). Gaming is the one area where the paid alternative is usually better than piracy. (Steam, GOG, itch.io)
Quinzel 3y ago
I didn’t realise Spotify wasn’t paying less well known artists. That’s actually pretty shit. I love music. I have a deep utter obsession with music of almost every genre and I don’t think I could go without it. I used to just pirate music (because I was a kid that didn’t really fully understand that that was theft), until Spotify happened, so when I was pirating music artists still weren’t getting paid. Spotify became my default for ease of use, but I suppose they’re a middleman that decides who will get paid, and who won’t. I’ve also got SoundCloud where I listen to artists who don’t seem to be on Spotify, but SoundCloud seems to have a similar structure around paying artists. What other platforms are there for listening to music, where the artists actually get the recognition and reward they deserve?
rzz3 3y ago
I see this as a very reactionary take, and I see the alternatives to streaming as impractical. Spotify is great, honestly it’s really great, I don’t have the free time the author seems to have to make a sociopolitical statement with my choices in music streaming. For me, music is about the music, and the emotional experience thereof. If you don’t like Spotify, just go ahead and cancel it—you don’t need to write a blog about it. I’m also not one to select my products based on their “one [or two] bad thing[s]”; there are dozens of things that make Spotify excellent from my view.
- deleted 3y ago
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RiOuseR 3y ago
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p0w3n3d 3y ago
I recently started buying out CDs of bands that I value. I don't cancel Spotify now because I don't have all the music I listen to, but thanks for warning. We have to prepare for big black hole of access to our culture when it becomes no longer mainstream. At this moment shows I used to watch are removed from all the platforms too, leaving me the only option to "buy" them on Amazon. "Buy" because they will still be in a cloud, and one harsh blow of the wind can make the cloud gone. The wind of changes I mean.
- p0w3n3d 3y ago
  By the way I have an external usb CD player which I use to digitise them and have them on MP3s. But I lack a server to have it streamed to my phone. I wonder if you guys and gals have any solution to this...
renegat0x0 3y ago
While I agree we should use own data I do not believe that someone presense is enough to leave a platform. Big gateway keepers will always be full od questionable people. Politics is also full od questionable people should we not participate in it?
kristopolous 3y ago
Might as well drop what I use for my music discovery, my fairly poorly documented hacker-friendly set of tools. For instance, you can optionally navigate, sort, skip, pause and label things through MIDI controls, command line hooks, a repl, bluetooth media keys, or even over a network. https://github.com/kristopolous/music-explorer/ https://github.com/kristopolous/music-explorer/ This is a problem I've been working on since 2007(!) and this is approach #4, started in 2020
sshine 3y ago
“I gave up Spotify and didn’t replace it. Maybe you’ll like losing what Spotify provides with no obvious gain or substitute, too!”
DueDilligence 3y ago
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sotix 3y ago
I have reduced my streaming use and switched to listening primarily on vinyl and an iPod with a set collection, and I have really preferred it. It’s very nice to have interfaces that just play exactly what I want and are not constantly pushing advertisements for podcasts and audiobooks in my face. I’m spending more time listening to the music I love and the massive collection I already owned from back in the day. There’s something about not having unlimited access that helps me appreciate what I do have to a greater degree.
t0bia_s 3y ago
For backup, I recommend Spytify. Just in case... https://github.com/jwallet/spy-spotify https://github.com/jwallet/spy-spotify Offline library slowly growing.

79 points by coppolaemilio 3y ago

Music consumption has basically never been in a better place. What Spotify pays artists, and how many employees at Bandcamp get laid off are minor, in the big picture. My music consumption goes something like this: 1) Queue up a known band on Spotify. See what else similar to them Spotify puts into a playlist 2) Listen to the new music, decide what I like or don't like 3) Head over to Bandcamp or Discogs with the stuff I really like. Buy it in vinyl and DRM-free digital. Put it in my Subsonic server. 4) If it's not available, head to P2P app of choice - they always have it. Yes, Bandcamp and Spotify might be ephemeral, but Spotify did wonders for discoverability - there are a lot of albums from tiny tiny bands I'd never have bought if it weren't for Spotify, and Bandcamp helped re-establish the market for physical, DRM-free media. Music has never been in a better place. I finally get to have my cake and eat it too. What people are complaining about (Spotify not paying enough to smaller artists) is conveniently ignoring that I'd have never even heard of those artists 25 years ago, because they couldn't have paid for distribution. Spotify didn't reduce what artists make, they redisributed what I spend across way more, but smaller, bands.

tkgally 3y ago
> Music has never been in a better place. I have to agree. I’m 66 years old. When I was in my late teens, I was intensely into music and doing my best to explore and learn about a variety of genres. It was hard. I couldn’t afford to buy many albums, the music played on the radio was limited, and the only way to hear obscure music that I had read about was to go to a large public or university library and hope that they might have the records in their collection. Now I can listen to nearly any music I want to with just a few clicks. There are also many great streaming channels for discovering music I didn’t know about—I particularly like BBC Sounds, especially Radio 3. My 19-year-old self never could have dreamt of such riches.
- amanaplanacanal 3y ago
  I’m the same age, and totally agree. Sometime in the late 80s or early 90s I decided to figure out what electronic dance music was all about. This was early house and techno times. It was essentially impossible. There was no scene in my city. Now I feel like there’s an embarrassment of riches, more than I could ever listen to.
- pixxel 3y ago
  You may like this John Peel archive to (re)discover music: https://davestrickson.blogspot.com/2020/05/john-peel-sessions.html?m=1 https://davestrickson.blogspot.com/2020/05/john-peel-session...
cramjabsyn 3y ago
Music has never been in a better place? Do you work for Spotify? Musicians are largely struggling while a few giant corps take all the money. Thats not a good place at all. I think you are conflating “music” with “music consumers”
- amanaplanacanal 3y ago
  > Musicians are largely struggling while a few giant corps take all the money. But that’s the way it has always been.
- COGlory 3y ago
  It's always been like that, just way worse because there were 100x fewer bands and artists even 30 years ago. >I think you are conflating “music” with “music consumers” I think you somehow missed the very first sentence of my comment: >Music consumption has basically never been in a better place.
- franciscop 3y ago
  No, you are conflating "music" with "musicians", it's the same in most creative fields, we have more and better, by an order of magnitude, than we have ever had.
dwayne_dibley 3y ago
'head to P2P app of choice' - any recommendations?
- ccakes 3y ago
  Soulseek is still around

r2_pilot 3y ago

I hate the podcast part of Spotify and vehemently disagree with their choice of high-paid hosts on there and would prefer that money to have gone to artists instead. That being said, I also enjoy some of their innovations and they've expanded my music tastes somewhat (and with questionable B or C artists...but that's also the point). Finally, I'd like to conclude by saying that I hate some of their defaults, wish they would make the UX 10x better and unify across platforms. P S. They do allow me to download my data from them, which I do regularly. Super cool, no hassles.

readthenotes1 3y ago

I like Pandora's music stations (playing music like an artist), and reports are apparently that it is better than others for that But they pay little to the artists. What do you use?

hennyting 3y ago
I've used Pandora for years but I'm switching to Spotify. Pandora's catalogue is tiny in comparison. And I don't care if they sponsor "questionable" podcasters (A.K.A Joe Rogan). In fact, that honestly makes me want to invest more in Spotify. I can listen to the latest obscure NYCHC and know that my music provider isn't being censored by CISA.
- 1letterunixname 3y ago
  In ATX, but I don't give a shit about Joe Rogan either because he's a moron hit in the head one too many times which somehow translates into a celebrated champion of anti-intellectualism. Censorship, by customers or a platform, is cure worse than the disease. Another example: Pluto TV (run by Paramount) hosts as much hate as AM radio in the form of OAN, Blaze, Newsmax, and (previously) RT America, OTOH they have Scripps, Cheddar, and Sky News. Moral purity is the privilege of extremists appeasing their tribe through conformity to closed-mindedness and foot-stomping that they must live in a voluntary intellectual and reality apartheid. The American right and left are both guilty of this, perpetuating a division that was artificially introduced for profit reasons by grifters and widened by different flavors of mass media that promote these spheres of influence.
baix777 3y ago
Tidal pays more for the artist and has a higher quality streaming option if that matters to you. Qobuz is another good artist friendly stream that historically paid the most to artists but it has a bit smaller catalog than Tidal.
- 1letterunixname 3y ago
  Tidal is great for selection and quality, but not usability like Spotify where I can control it from any device. Tidal works on my receiver and Amazon devices. Like many home/IoT services, Spotify uses mDNS to enumerate and announce its peers when they are L3 local but they are also controllable remotely by dialing-home to their API albeit with a slightly longer delay. Spotify is hilarious when playing from the Everywhere group (all devices) where desktops, tablets, phones, the thermostat, stereo receiver, and Amazon Echo devices all insist on playing out of time like a crowd of teenagers singing a song.

lxgr 3y ago

> Funny enough, the only easy way I found to buy music nowadays is vinyls. Is there really a lot of music neither available on CD, nor for MP3 download, but on vinyl?

autarch 3y ago
Yeah, I thought that part was weird. I have not had too much trouble finding ways to for digital downloads. For Japanese bands I like, I have to do some weird shenanigans to get Japanese sites to let me pay them, but it's not like the digital downloads don't exist at all.
miunau 3y ago
Vinyl and cassette are the most common right now for physical-exclusive stuff. CD sales are very mixed- you can do well or barely sell at all, even for established names, and the startup costs for a pressing are higher than with tapes. And if it's on CD it might as well be a download anyway.
- Tao3300 3y ago
  > if it's on CD it might as well be a download anyway Unless you mean FLAC or something, CD is still higher quality than other formats, and they keep longer than vinyl or cassettes. Inb4 the "only audiophiles with high end equipment" arguments: if you were around in the days of Blade Encoder tweaking options and trying to fit mp3s onto a 32MB player the size of a cigarette box, you know what digital artifacts sound like.
  - seba_dos1 3y ago
    You don't need to be an "audiophile" or have "high end equipment" to realize that you absolutely want lossless for music archival. How would you want to, say, transcode a collection of MP3 to Opus to fit more tracks onto the same space at acceptable quality without keeping FLACs around? Although OTOH, people play lossy MP3s over lossy SBC via Bluetooth and don't care, so perhaps the bar of "acceptable quality" is much lower than it seems...

thejarren 3y ago

I have music on Spotify that I will be removing as well because of their decision not to pay out small artist streams under a certain amount. I pay a distributor (distrokid) to send out music, and do not have a direct agreement with Spotify. As far as I'm concerned, monetizing my music without my consent is theft. Their argument is that the stream amount is so low it ends up not being worth the transaction. On a moral level, I'd argue that it's their responsibility to pay out the money generated even if it costs them money to do so for a small number of streams. This is estimated to generate $40m annually for them (which they've said they will be distributing to other artists instead), which isn't deeply significant, but this is money that is only generated because of small content creators that have uploaded their content to their distributor (which they pay for) which then distributes to spotify. If I were to upload directly to Spotify for free, I'd consider the terms different, because I'd expect distribution as the exchange in the relationship. But in this case I pay a distributor, who then sends to spotify, who then decides to offer my content for free and pocket the money. Not acceptable for me. (note: I consider this relevant to the original article because it is mentioned, as well as because it is one of the variables involved in music purchasing/accessing) edit: corrected the $40m statement to show where money was going.

DeIlliad 3y ago
Sounds like your beef should be with Distrokid not Spotify.
- 1_1xdev1 3y ago
  distrokid charges a flat fee to put your stuff on the distributors. they're holding up their end spotify is distributing without paying the artists
  - thejarren 3y ago
    Correct. Distrokid isn't the problem here, they've not altered any terms.
    - 3y ago

nottheengineer 3y ago

The spotify app has become so ridiculously bad I can't use it anymore. I found out about Zotify [1], which can rip my entire collection from spotify. The API rate limits anything faster than real time listening though, so it'll take a few weeks to download everything. [1] https://zotify.xyz/ https://zotify.xyz/

CamperBob2 3y ago
SongShift also works really well in my experience. I only use Apple Music in the car these days because its UX is safer/saner than Spotify's. SongShift makes it easy to keep them synced up.
- brainbag 3y ago
  Does it sync tracks that you Love in Apple Music? I have liked Apple Music a lot, except for one major thing when I realized that there is no way to view tracks that I have marked with Love, and I'm trying to find a way to get that information out.
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    That, I'm not sure about. I just use it to maintain an Apple Music copy of my "Liked Songs" via what they call a "Full Library Transfer" shift. That may be what you're talking about, since clicking on the heart icon is how songs end up in "Liked Songs" to begin with...? Note that I only use it in the Spotify -> AM direction, not vice versa.
ccvannorman 3y ago
Thanks for this! I'll be using it. [0] 0: "Let me just open spotify to listen to.. NO, I don't want last year's recap... NO, I don't want to follow my friend's playlist.. NO, I don't want to try browsing your recommended audiobooks.. OK, now that those popups are gone, what was I .. Ah yes! This song, here it is. Play. .... No? Play. It's not playing. Maybe close and reopen the app?" <-- this happens often. Spotify Premium, the app that consistently fails at the literal one thing it's supposed to do, play music.

pavel_lishin 3y ago

Sometimes I've felt a bit foolish, keeping my mp3's on a hard drive, as well as backed up onto another drive. But then, I hear about things like Bandcamp being sold, artists being pulled from streaming sites, etc., and it feels nice to know that in principle, all the songs I've purchased over the decades remain within my power to listen to. Some of the songs I have, and still regularly listen to, I'm honestly not sure if I could find anywhere online anymore.

jszymborski 3y ago

Very funny seeing this here as I've just bodged an internal DVD drive and SATA-to-USB connector to rip a Placebo CD I bought on eBay. My brother has been snickering about this for quite some time.

pawelduda 3y ago

If HN was Spotify client, the add comment button would randomly shift position on every visit and have one of these as the text: create, send, publish, add to thread And sometimes if you clicked it, nothing would happen

DarkmSparks 3y ago

It was only 1 CD I stole your honour, and I only listened to it once. Wasnt worth the transaction cost to buy it. Spotify, 2023.

amir734jj 3y ago

Also it's no longer possible to get Spotify student discount if you have been a student for more than 4 years. I mean, what about graduate students?

deleted 3y ago

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madmountaingoat 3y ago

Listen deeper, listen more and you will help artists more than cancelling your subscription. I don't know what artists at the new cutoff were making but its not a living wage, and I doubt it's even beer money. The unknown artists will never get paid if you don't listen and find them. That's what Spotify is great at. Once you find the small artist, seek them out, buy some merch, see a show. Drive an hour further than you normally would. That's what supporting an artist looks like, not cancelling your Spotify subscription.

cramjabsyn 3y ago
Honestly it should be both. Support artists deeply and ditch Spotify. We shouldn't be complacent and let Spotify make earning a living even harder for artists.
- piva00 3y ago
  Has it made earning a living even harder though? Before streaming it was much harder to discover obscure artists from places outside of your own local area, usually you'd go crate-digging vinyls at 2nd hand shops to find the true gems. I don't understand how enabling access to music from anywhere in the world has made earning a living harder to music artists, the industry was always extremely hard outside of a few lucky ones hand picked by labels to be marketed. The local scenes were (and still are) where most artists could grow their audience, sell albums and merch, it's still the same hard work but now you are able to release your music worldwide in an instant. Streaming doesn't pay enough on any platform to enable earning a living if you are a small act. And it never will, it's basic economics, there's not enough money from subscriptions and ads to support the millions and millions of artists. Support the artists, that's orthogonal to Spotify or other streaming services. Buy their albums, merch, go watch their shows.
  - derbOac 3y ago
    I guess I agree with you (and others making the same argument) but feel like it is ultimately arguing that to support artists, you need to go outside Spotify, which to me implies something is broken about it. Maybe that's the nature of things but I think part of that argument is there could be something better. Maybe it's beside the point from a practical perspective but I guess I agree with that too. I think finding and supporting small artists probably never has been better, but I'm not sure if that's because of Spotify per se, or social media and the Internet in general.

Mistletoe 3y ago

I recently said goodbye to Spotify as well. I tried Apple Music and found it sounded significantly better. The muddy quality I am used to with Spotify was gone and I’ve been enjoying music ever since. I really thought there was something wrong with me prior to this. I don’t know if it is the different codecs they use or what. I haven’t even tried the lossless audio yet on Apple Music. So it is just comparing the lossy to lossy. I’m also glad to be on an app that doesn’t try to constantly push podcasts on me.

OccamsMirror 3y ago
I’ve recently made the same move with a similar experience. Out of curiosity though did you try turning off volume normalization in Spotify?
- Mistletoe 3y ago
  I’ve uninstalled the app so I can’t check, but I do remember trying it with that off and on.

LelouBil 3y ago

Even though I would like Spotify to pay artists decently, I'll keep paying for it mainly for their recommendations and discovery features. If you only listen to music you already know you like, then sure Bandcamp or whatever is amazing for the artist. But personally, I just launch my "liked" playlist and use their enrich feature to fill in titles. Or use their thematic playlist generations that use a genre but take into account what I already liked of this genre. Though if someone showed me an alternative with discovery features that work as good as this and pays artists decently I'd switch instantly.

lucb1e 3y ago
> I would like Spotify to pay artists decently Using which funds? Afaik they pay out quite a lot of the income, they could try to cut costs (the most meaningful thing there probably being to lay off staff) in order to maximize payouts but the only alternative pushes people to competing services that are cheaper and can't pay artists better for the same reason. One thing they could reasonably do is to offer for people to pay more for their Spotify subscription, where the surplus (anything you pay above the base subscription) goes 100% to the artists, proportionally to the ones you listen to. One can speculate how much that would help the problem. I just find it weird to see people always saying (look up any Spotify-related thread) that Spotify pays so poorly and that people should cancel their subscription altogether instead. Edit: got curious and looked it up > within the pie chart detailing the total revenue that Spotify generates through music streaming, “roughly 70% of it is going to rights holders ---https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2021-04-19/spotify-artists-royalty-rate-apple-music https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2021-...
antoine-unity 3y ago
It doesn’t come cheap, but I can recommend Roon[1] because it allows your music collection to blend between streaming providers (Tidal or Qobuz) and local files. Their very good recommendation algorithm can expand your horizon and you can buy the music you really like while using the same playback experience (would be nice if they allowed you to buy and download music directly though). [1] https://roon.app/en/ https://roon.app/en/

paxys 3y ago

I don't think any band out there has any excuse not to spend literally minutes to set up an online store (using Shopify or whatever else) and put their music up for sale directly. If they don't, and rely on iTunes/Spotify etc., or sign with a major label, then you as a fan aren't obligated to go out of your way to still look for avenues to support them.

lucb1e 3y ago

Motivation: "Spotify doesn’t seem to have the artist’s interest in mind anymore" citing examples of minimum number of listens (1000) before paying out (at 1k, isn't that still in the realm of micropence anyway?), and the podcast thing funding questionable people and being pushed through UI changes. Alternative: "For now, I’m just back to the weird p2p programs where I can try to find the music I bought or the ones that are just impossible to get." Result: "listening to music feels more meaningful, not a thing that happens in the background"

thefourthchime 3y ago

Funny, I finally ditched Spotify last week. I just can’t stand the pop up ads, the cluttered interface, and frankly I’m sick of the recommendations. So far I’ve been trying Apple Music, and have liked it so far. I’ve tried in the past but didn’t stick around long enough to learn how to use it. Also, I have HomePods as speakers for my living room tv and found that “streaming” to them using Apple Music isn’t streaming, it sends the channel over to the device so you can do whatever on your phone or leave the house and it still plays. Much like Sonos.

bjord 3y ago
I don't think it makes sense to compare free Spotify to paid Apple Music directly. Am I confused here? I've personally never seen popup ads in (paid) Spotify, either on mobile or desktop.
- thefourthchime 3y ago
  I am comparing paid Spotify, the ads I'm talking about are house ads. It's for things like a new Spofity special thing, or some new feature.
- averageRoyalty 3y ago
  I see ads all the time on paid Spitufy. Ads for podcasts are the most common ones. Just because the ad is for an in-house service doesn't make it not an ad.

mrangle 3y ago

Liberal Joe Rogan is "questionable"? GMAB.. I mean he's open to questions so... I find it to be socially toxic that anyone expects massive companies to tailor their content to one's narrow sensibilities. Furthermore, the complaints rarely if ever go the other way in terms of platforming middle-of-the road personalities that land on the other side of the line. Though, they could in-volume. Man, was it terrrrible when the Smartless crew had Rachel Maddow on their show. Grumble grumble...unsubscribe...grumble

Jedd 3y ago
This feels like a disingenuous take on TFA's in-passing reference. Spotify spending USD$100-$200 million on, say, that particular angertainment professional got a lot of people riled up because a) he's actively, demonstrably harmful, b) they had zero interest in patronising him, let along listening to him, but mostly c) their subscription costs had gone up to cover this indefensible payment. Like TFA, I get my podcasts elsewhere, partly because the spotify app is unwieldy for music, but just plain user hostile for podcasts - but I'd appreciate a multi-tiered service offering from Spotify where I don't use, and therefore don't pay for, any podcast content from them. Similar to the different package options for TV services, where live sports were expensive but you could opt out of them.
- COGlory 3y ago
  I was more offended on the idea of buying existing podcasts and putting them behind a paywall, than I was the idea of money being spent on Joe Rogan.
- pixxel 3y ago
  > got a lot of people riled up No it didn’t. It got a tiny minority of a certain insignificant type upset. Step out into the real world and the number one podcast is, by definition, well received.
  - Jedd 3y ago
    > It got a tiny minority of a certain insignificant type I guess how one perceived the reaction to that transaction comes down to one's own biases. If you wish to discount some people's problem with paying a misinformation-peddler hundreds of millions of dollars while, as per TFA, genuinely creative people are paid nothing because 'it's too hard to handle the transactions' - then that gives us a little more insight into you. > Step out into the real world and the number one podcast is, by definition, well received. Number one in the USA, you mean, right? Podcasts are a niche medium, with extremely poorly reported listening figures, but so far I can tell this guy has an average of 11 million listeners. That's less than 4% of the USA (around 0.1% of the real world). I get that anger and controversy are highly saleable products - crime content makes up a surprising amount of the podcast leaderboard. However, in a country where 230 million people believe angels are real, it shouldn't be surprising, nor held up as an arbiter of quality or sanity, that 11 million people think this guy is credible / worth $200m a year.

ohhnoodont 3y ago

I feel we're entering a 2nd great renaissance of media piracy and torrent sites. Fair streaming services were a great solution. But for a variety of reasons that all has slowly been corrupted and become obtrusive. I've recently cancelled my Netflix account after subscribing for over 12 years. Private torrent sites are reporting a significant increases in active users.

rantingdemon 3y ago
As a South African, it is ridiculous to me that I cannot even legally buy or rent some films that were produced in South Africa, and is about South Africa. I cannot recall the details now, but this has happened at least 3 times over the last couple of months. This is driving people towards piracy again.

toastercat 3y ago

I'm still torrenting music like I did in 2007. If I really enjoy a record, I buy it. When a band is in town, I go see them. I don't get hung up on the morality of piracy anymore. Truth is piracy (for me) provides a better experience than most of the alternatives (Spotify, Netflix, Hulu). Gaming is the one area where the paid alternative is usually better than piracy. (Steam, GOG, itch.io)

Quinzel 3y ago

I didn’t realise Spotify wasn’t paying less well known artists. That’s actually pretty shit. I love music. I have a deep utter obsession with music of almost every genre and I don’t think I could go without it. I used to just pirate music (because I was a kid that didn’t really fully understand that that was theft), until Spotify happened, so when I was pirating music artists still weren’t getting paid. Spotify became my default for ease of use, but I suppose they’re a middleman that decides who will get paid, and who won’t. I’ve also got SoundCloud where I listen to artists who don’t seem to be on Spotify, but SoundCloud seems to have a similar structure around paying artists. What other platforms are there for listening to music, where the artists actually get the recognition and reward they deserve?

rzz3 3y ago

I see this as a very reactionary take, and I see the alternatives to streaming as impractical. Spotify is great, honestly it’s really great, I don’t have the free time the author seems to have to make a sociopolitical statement with my choices in music streaming. For me, music is about the music, and the emotional experience thereof. If you don’t like Spotify, just go ahead and cancel it—you don’t need to write a blog about it. I’m also not one to select my products based on their “one [or two] bad thing[s]”; there are dozens of things that make Spotify excellent from my view.

deleted 3y ago
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RiOuseR 3y ago

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p0w3n3d 3y ago

I recently started buying out CDs of bands that I value. I don't cancel Spotify now because I don't have all the music I listen to, but thanks for warning. We have to prepare for big black hole of access to our culture when it becomes no longer mainstream. At this moment shows I used to watch are removed from all the platforms too, leaving me the only option to "buy" them on Amazon. "Buy" because they will still be in a cloud, and one harsh blow of the wind can make the cloud gone. The wind of changes I mean.

p0w3n3d 3y ago
By the way I have an external usb CD player which I use to digitise them and have them on MP3s. But I lack a server to have it streamed to my phone. I wonder if you guys and gals have any solution to this...

renegat0x0 3y ago

While I agree we should use own data I do not believe that someone presense is enough to leave a platform. Big gateway keepers will always be full od questionable people. Politics is also full od questionable people should we not participate in it?

kristopolous 3y ago

Might as well drop what I use for my music discovery, my fairly poorly documented hacker-friendly set of tools. For instance, you can optionally navigate, sort, skip, pause and label things through MIDI controls, command line hooks, a repl, bluetooth media keys, or even over a network. https://github.com/kristopolous/music-explorer/ https://github.com/kristopolous/music-explorer/ This is a problem I've been working on since 2007(!) and this is approach #4, started in 2020

sshine 3y ago

“I gave up Spotify and didn’t replace it. Maybe you’ll like losing what Spotify provides with no obvious gain or substitute, too!”

DueDilligence 3y ago

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sotix 3y ago

I have reduced my streaming use and switched to listening primarily on vinyl and an iPod with a set collection, and I have really preferred it. It’s very nice to have interfaces that just play exactly what I want and are not constantly pushing advertisements for podcasts and audiobooks in my face. I’m spending more time listening to the music I love and the massive collection I already owned from back in the day. There’s something about not having unlimited access that helps me appreciate what I do have to a greater degree.

t0bia_s 3y ago

For backup, I recommend Spytify. Just in case... https://github.com/jwallet/spy-spotify https://github.com/jwallet/spy-spotify Offline library slowly growing.