4 ms·

without any hate to the well intentioned engineers working on the thing, spotify has just exceedingly poor product taste in any number of dimensions - the goda

by swyx 2y ago

without any hate to the well intentioned engineers working on the thing, spotify has just exceedingly poor product taste in any number of dimensions - the godawful ai dj they tried to force on pple - buying gimlet media and running it into the toilet. some of the world's best and favorite podcasts, gone because some swedish billionaire decided to throw all his money into foie grasing a perfectly fine niche media company. - buying anchor and going absolutely nowhere with it. it was never good so whatever. nice try i guess. - locking up joe rogan and whoever to try to put walled gardens around podcasting (to this day when you go to a spotify page for a podcast it acts like it has never heard of "RSS" or "mp3". fucking offensive) - they habitually screw over musicians https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machine-liz-pelly-spotify-musicians/ https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machin... - reggie watts: https://www.instagram.com/p/DEhAr7lx7CI/?igsh=bXBpZ25kczMyZ3d0 https://www.instagram.com/p/DEhAr7lx7CI/?igsh=bXBpZ25kczMyZ3... - bjork: https://variety.com/2025/music/news/bjork-spotify-streaming-worst-thing-for-musicians-1236285477/ https://variety.com/2025/music/news/bjork-spotify-streaming-... - they faked spotify wrapped numbers https://x.com/hello__caitlin/status/1864367028758565216?s=46 https://x.com/hello__caitlin/status/1864367028758565216?s=46 - this is petty but they are a big step back from winamp and that is just slop https://x.com/riomadeit/status/1878556039676666024 https://x.com/riomadeit/status/1878556039676666024 i will say ONE nice thing. Gustav Soderstrom himself does make a pretty damn good podcast about spotify https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-03-11/introducing-the-new-miniseries-spotify-a-product-story/ https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-03-11/introducing-the-new-... . its a real shame his product is mostly riding the highs of early good decisions.

jsheard 2y ago
> locking up joe rogan and whoever to try to put walled gardens around podcasting Not to mention blowing >$250M of their subscription revenue to lock down one podcaster when most of their subscribers joined for not podcasts. That money could have gone towards paying music artists better rates like Apple Music and Tidal do.
- miunau 2y ago
  Spending that money was part of their strategy to go for a "bundled" rate for royalties, which 99% (their number) of the US customer base now does. In a nutshell, they can downrate the royalties for music as long as they bundle other things with it- that's why there's books on there now as well. UMG is now fighting it [0] but all the indies are basically fucked as there's no global leverage. The second part was demonetizing any songs with under 1000 streams per year- they're just taking most of the long tail for themselves now. [0] https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2025/01/26/universal-music-group-spotify-bundling-agreement/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2025/01/26/universal-music-...
- redwall_hp 2y ago
  Spotify pays on a pro rata model. Something like 70% of their operating revenue is divided amongst license holders based on the number of plays. The only way the majority of artists make more money is if Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, Drake and The Weeknd suddenly fall off the face of the earth and their record labels burst into flames. All streaming platforms realistically pay out close to the federally-set royalty rate.
swyx 2y ago
if you are a l33t h4ck3r you too can despotify your life: - get youtube premium, has youtube music with it. youtube music is basically straight superset of spotify. - https://github.com/jam3scampbell/music https://github.com/jam3scampbell/music
polishdude20 2y ago
It may be the worst thing that's happened to musicians but as a listener, I feel like it's been the best for listeners?
- swyx 2y ago
  really which part? that ui where it switches songs if your finger grazes it even slightly? and starts over completely when you try to flip it back, forgetting where you were? the loud non audio adjusted ads?
  - NoboruWataya 2y ago
    Presumably they mean the part where it gives you easy access to a huge amount of music all in one place (unlimited and ad free, if you pay for a subscription). Most of the time I'm listening to music in the background so the UI isn't really much of an issue.
  - tumsfestival 2y ago
    The part where you don't need to spend hundreds upon hundreds on CDs and can listen to any music wherever as long as you have an internet connection?
- mulitet4 2y ago
  I'd say with very few features I miss from Spotify, that yt music is simply a better platform (even more so with owning yt premium)
acka 2y ago
Not to mention axing third party API access instead of coming to a licensing agreement, forcing DJs, dance class teachers and others to jump ship to Tidal/Beatport/whatever at high cost, losing all their carefully curated playlists unless they go through the time consuming process of converting them.
cosmic_cheese 2y ago
They also deprecated their library (libspotify) which had previously been used to build alternative third-party clients and playback-capable integrations for paying Spotify users. They promised a replacement, but that never happened… the best we ever got was a set of watered down APIs that’s curiously missing what one would need to build a third party client. They couldn’t allow for users to opt out of the constant A/B testing and user herding in the ever-changing official client by using a sane third-party client that just acts like a normal music player and obeys the user’s preferences. The ability to shove the music that’s most profitable and whatever other non-relevant audio content in users’ faces by mandating official client use is too valuable to give up. Somehow even Apple is better on this front, with there being multiple alternative Apple Music clients out there that are build with official Apple SDKs and aren’t reverse engineered, which is crazy. They’ve out-Apple’d Apple.
- jsheard 2y ago
  > They also deprecated their library (libspotify) which had previously been used to build alternative third-party clients and playback-capable integrations for paying Spotify users. They promised a replacement, but that never happened… It exists... but only for employees: https://xcancel.com/rogueops/status/1656349863968112680 https://xcancel.com/rogueops/status/1656349863968112680
autoexec 2y ago
> to this day when you go to a spotify page for a podcast it acts like it has never heard of "RSS" or "mp3". fucking offensive It seems like most podcasts do everything they can to make downloading an MP3 impossible. This isn't just a spotify problem. Just about every website for every podcast I've seen does the same thing.
romanovcode 2y ago
That "DJ" is the worst because you cannot remove it from your library list.
gs17 2y ago
>they faked spotify wrapped numbers That would explain why mine were definitely wrong too. Although I wouldn't attribute it to malice since it makes little sense to tell me I used their paid service much less than I thought, at least compared to the opposite.

by swyx 2y ago

jsheard 2y ago

> locking up joe rogan and whoever to try to put walled gardens around podcasting Not to mention blowing >$250M of their subscription revenue to lock down one podcaster when most of their subscribers joined for not podcasts. That money could have gone towards paying music artists better rates like Apple Music and Tidal do.

miunau 2y ago
Spending that money was part of their strategy to go for a "bundled" rate for royalties, which 99% (their number) of the US customer base now does. In a nutshell, they can downrate the royalties for music as long as they bundle other things with it- that's why there's books on there now as well. UMG is now fighting it [0] but all the indies are basically fucked as there's no global leverage. The second part was demonetizing any songs with under 1000 streams per year- they're just taking most of the long tail for themselves now. [0] https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2025/01/26/universal-music-group-spotify-bundling-agreement/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2025/01/26/universal-music-...
redwall_hp 2y ago
Spotify pays on a pro rata model. Something like 70% of their operating revenue is divided amongst license holders based on the number of plays. The only way the majority of artists make more money is if Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, Drake and The Weeknd suddenly fall off the face of the earth and their record labels burst into flames. All streaming platforms realistically pay out close to the federally-set royalty rate.

swyx 2y ago

if you are a l33t h4ck3r you too can despotify your life: - get youtube premium, has youtube music with it. youtube music is basically straight superset of spotify. - https://github.com/jam3scampbell/music https://github.com/jam3scampbell/music

polishdude20 2y ago

It may be the worst thing that's happened to musicians but as a listener, I feel like it's been the best for listeners?

swyx 2y ago
really which part? that ui where it switches songs if your finger grazes it even slightly? and starts over completely when you try to flip it back, forgetting where you were? the loud non audio adjusted ads?
- NoboruWataya 2y ago
  Presumably they mean the part where it gives you easy access to a huge amount of music all in one place (unlimited and ad free, if you pay for a subscription). Most of the time I'm listening to music in the background so the UI isn't really much of an issue.
- tumsfestival 2y ago
  The part where you don't need to spend hundreds upon hundreds on CDs and can listen to any music wherever as long as you have an internet connection?
mulitet4 2y ago
I'd say with very few features I miss from Spotify, that yt music is simply a better platform (even more so with owning yt premium)

acka 2y ago

Not to mention axing third party API access instead of coming to a licensing agreement, forcing DJs, dance class teachers and others to jump ship to Tidal/Beatport/whatever at high cost, losing all their carefully curated playlists unless they go through the time consuming process of converting them.

cosmic_cheese 2y ago

They also deprecated their library (libspotify) which had previously been used to build alternative third-party clients and playback-capable integrations for paying Spotify users. They promised a replacement, but that never happened… the best we ever got was a set of watered down APIs that’s curiously missing what one would need to build a third party client. They couldn’t allow for users to opt out of the constant A/B testing and user herding in the ever-changing official client by using a sane third-party client that just acts like a normal music player and obeys the user’s preferences. The ability to shove the music that’s most profitable and whatever other non-relevant audio content in users’ faces by mandating official client use is too valuable to give up. Somehow even Apple is better on this front, with there being multiple alternative Apple Music clients out there that are build with official Apple SDKs and aren’t reverse engineered, which is crazy. They’ve out-Apple’d Apple.

jsheard 2y ago
> They also deprecated their library (libspotify) which had previously been used to build alternative third-party clients and playback-capable integrations for paying Spotify users. They promised a replacement, but that never happened… It exists... but only for employees: https://xcancel.com/rogueops/status/1656349863968112680 https://xcancel.com/rogueops/status/1656349863968112680

autoexec 2y ago

> to this day when you go to a spotify page for a podcast it acts like it has never heard of "RSS" or "mp3". fucking offensive It seems like most podcasts do everything they can to make downloading an MP3 impossible. This isn't just a spotify problem. Just about every website for every podcast I've seen does the same thing.

romanovcode 2y ago

That "DJ" is the worst because you cannot remove it from your library list.

gs17 2y ago

>they faked spotify wrapped numbers That would explain why mine were definitely wrong too. Although I wouldn't attribute it to malice since it makes little sense to tell me I used their paid service much less than I thought, at least compared to the opposite.