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I feel like Spotify is regressing in terms of music discovery and usefulness in general. It's still nice to be able to stream (almost) any album but the radio

I feel like Spotify is regressing in terms of music discovery and usefulness in general. It's still nice to be able to stream (almost) any album but the radio and shuffle have _always_ been terrible and the removal of useful music discovery (which is also terrible on Spotify...Rdio & LastFM both destroy Spotify in this realm) applications in a recent past updates only made it worse. Now, they are adding these 'features' that have little to do with music and more to do with marketing and corporate relationships. I'll most likely continue to be a subscriber because as I mentioned the ability to stream (almost) any album is great but it would be nice to see some progress related to music or music discovery rather than these gimmicks. Stop trying to be a universal storefront for everyone's media consumption (video clips from ABC, who wants that in a music app) and do one thing right... In the meantime, I'll continue to subsidize Spotify with useful music discovery services (and self made hacks) and just use Spotify as my "I know exactly what album I want to hear and don't need shuffle" music application.

mjs7231 11y ago
I feel the opposite. I subscribe to Spotify specifically for music discovery in the form of listening to playlists other people (not algorithms) created. IMO these tend to be much better than anything I've seen a computer come up with. I'm also pretty excited about podcasts and news. Podcasts, because it may eliminate another app on my Phone that I always felt Spotify should have been able to do all along. News is exciting because I really don't know any other way to stream on-demand audio news into my phone (and car). Maybe there is already an app for that? I looked around lightly and never found anything. I feel the direction they are taking isn't 100% music albums, but more the audio-everything on the go. I listen to Spotify 99% of the time on my commute, and love the focus on audio-only.
- lepht 11y ago
  >News is exciting because I really don't know any other way to stream on-demand audio news into my phone (and car). Maybe there is already an app for that? I looked around lightly and never found anything. I agree with pretty much everything you said, but thought I'd point out NPR One is great for this purpose: http://www.npr.org/about/products/npr-one/ http://www.npr.org/about/products/npr-one/
- robwilliams 11y ago
  Spotify itself also has some frequently-updated curated playlists for most genres that are great for discovery.
makeitsuckless 11y ago
Mmm... I feel discovery has improved tremendously over the past six months or so. Actually quite impressed with the obscure connections they manage to make these days. LastFM used to be awesome, but nowadays the recommendations are just running around in circles. Other than that, Spotify has always been pretty useless for anything but having a large collection of music on tap. Any remaining usefulness died when they killed the apps.
GeorgeHahn 11y ago
Soundrop was the best music discovery service I've used in my life, and it shut down as a result of Spotify killing their app platform. Still searching for something even close to comparable.
richoakley 11y ago
I'd be really interested to hear what services you use to 'subsidize' Spotify discovery with? Email in my profile if you feel like taking it off HN :)

mjs7231 11y ago

I feel the opposite. I subscribe to Spotify specifically for music discovery in the form of listening to playlists other people (not algorithms) created. IMO these tend to be much better than anything I've seen a computer come up with. I'm also pretty excited about podcasts and news. Podcasts, because it may eliminate another app on my Phone that I always felt Spotify should have been able to do all along. News is exciting because I really don't know any other way to stream on-demand audio news into my phone (and car). Maybe there is already an app for that? I looked around lightly and never found anything. I feel the direction they are taking isn't 100% music albums, but more the audio-everything on the go. I listen to Spotify 99% of the time on my commute, and love the focus on audio-only.

lepht 11y ago
>News is exciting because I really don't know any other way to stream on-demand audio news into my phone (and car). Maybe there is already an app for that? I looked around lightly and never found anything. I agree with pretty much everything you said, but thought I'd point out NPR One is great for this purpose: http://www.npr.org/about/products/npr-one/ http://www.npr.org/about/products/npr-one/
robwilliams 11y ago
Spotify itself also has some frequently-updated curated playlists for most genres that are great for discovery.

makeitsuckless 11y ago

Mmm... I feel discovery has improved tremendously over the past six months or so. Actually quite impressed with the obscure connections they manage to make these days. LastFM used to be awesome, but nowadays the recommendations are just running around in circles. Other than that, Spotify has always been pretty useless for anything but having a large collection of music on tap. Any remaining usefulness died when they killed the apps.

GeorgeHahn 11y ago

Soundrop was the best music discovery service I've used in my life, and it shut down as a result of Spotify killing their app platform. Still searching for something even close to comparable.

richoakley 11y ago

I'd be really interested to hear what services you use to 'subsidize' Spotify discovery with? Email in my profile if you feel like taking it off HN :)