I used to really enjoy spending one afternoon a month spending my absurd grandfathered-in emusic quota on weird new folk and adjacent stuff.
Then they changed the deal and I switched to streaming. It’s just not the same.
Imo music discovery on Spotify is best done by pursuing playlists posted by musicians you like or just hopping by related artists/album features.
The article hits the nail on the head when they say to listen to human curated content - whether it be curated by yourself or someone else, it’s the best way to find something new/good.
I don’t use Spotify. It feels kind of soulless.
Bandcamp was the best, I think. They’re still around, but their future is uncertain after being bought and sold. They have human written posts about like “the best doom in Texas” or “what’s new in punk”.
Whenever I talk to people that say they like music, and I suggest they buy albums instead of renting them from Spotify, they look at me like I’m crazy. They’d rather sell their soul for a little convenience. (And these aren’t poor people or teenagers with no money. I worked in tech and all my peers were six figure salary. They can afford to buy three albums a month for $18. Which frankly isn’t much more than a subscription, but then you get to keep something and eventually have a huge library)
the artist’s website (or actual indy label), bandcamp then piracy in that order for me. if i can pay the artist, i’ll pay the artist. then it goes on my jellyfin server. bandcamp and the brooklynvegan have had some great lists. my kid has recently discovered music is more than background noise in video games and thinks vinyl is cool though. he’s hooked hard on rise aginst so i’ve had to add the local record shop then ebay into the mix. my bank account isnt happy and i will likely buy badtimerecords entire vinyl catalog for myself now. dont let your kids get into vinyl folks its a fucking trap!
Adding to your list I still buy CDs and rip them too, although rarely nowadays. The independent music shop I went to as a teenager still exists (Schoolkids Records), although in a different location and they’re down to only 1 store.
Without reading the article:
Spotify is shit. I’m paying for a family plan for other while I find good songs everywhere else. I haven’t found a good song in 3 months using Spotify’s playlists. Even the weekly mix is shit. everything sounds the same. I want a mix of hard, heavy, slow and steady. Give me a Disney Song back to back with Black Sabbath.
I’m back to pirating and purchasing music, depending which is easier for a specific track. My songs are on an android device I only use for music.
Yes, I feel like Spotify’s algorithms have become good at giving more of the same but worse for discovery. I don’t find as many new artists as I used to. And some songs just come up again and again, which I guess are paid promotions. I’ve mostly switched to Qobuz, which doesn’t have as many auto-generated playlists as Spotify, but can auto-play similar music once your selection has played. Qobuz’s emphasis is more on listing albums you might be interested in and having you choose which ones to listen to. I’m discovering more new music this way than through Spotify.
Spotify’s algorithms have become good at giving more of the same but worse for discovery.
To be fair, I use it for new drops and almost nothing else. New artists have to get to me through the word of mouth first, for people like me it’s alright. I don’t pay for it though so I can’t complain that much.
Honestly I used Pandora since it was Beta and I still think it’s algorithm is one of the best I’ve seen. Even if you don’t pay for their service, just get a free account and explore. Then if you want to use some other program to build a playlist, at least you’ve got something working for you.
This is exactly how I’ve been feeling about it recently. Use it to discover new music but now it just repeats all the same things over and over. Playlist of over 1000 songs in it? What if we just played 32 of them. Smart shuffle? Good in theory but Plexamp does this so much better. I wish the smart shuffle worked like the Plexamp DJ tools.
But don’t worry, they’ll increase the price (again) to “better the experience”… The lie detector determined that was a lie.
Frank Zappa put it this way [paraphrased]
In the 1960s the music execs were into Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington. They had no idea what was going on, so they just threw money at any band that came along. You had a wide variety of music.
The first set of execs hired young guys who ‘knew what the kids want.’ Those guys played it safe, so in the 1970s you had stadium rock and disco.
Now AI ‘knows’ exactly what people want.
The story of how Zappa and the Mothers got a contract is amazing. Basically a label guy walked into a gig as they played Trouble Every Day, their only song ever with conventional commercial potential, and signed them on the spot.
Once they got to the studio and started playing some tremendously weird stuff it was too late to stop them.
exactly like yes Spotify is bad but are they thinking we had some natural occurring perfect system for music before?
The bigger issue is are artists being compensated, no they’re not.
fuxk spotify
Yeah Spotify sucks, I just recently deleted my account entirely. The only thing I liked about it was making playlists. Then one day I had a Fuck This Shit moment and decided I was done.
I have a collection of digital albums that is far better than anything I could get at Spotify, lol
Podcasts and playlists on mine. Been a spotify user for 15 years.
Playlist are usually genre specific. With a GrabBag playlist and “comedy” playlist. Spotify is good at throwing me new songs on a solid genre playlist. Pretty easy for my house/techno, rock, and my wayback (pre-2000s) playlist.
A mix of songs kind of throws it off, like too many different types of music and it doesn’t really get “taste”.
If you use spotify, make playlists separated by genres. That’s the best I’ve seen for music discovery with spotify.
Isn’t that how Lil Nas X broke out? He figured out how to game the algorithm.
Switched to deezer some years ago. I tested all music streaming services beforehand and found that Deezer an Applemusic have the most relevant music recommendations for me.
Both deezer and apple have all the spotify features my family wants plus lossless audio if youre into that kind of thing (like me). Since distribution is handled by tunecore etc the catalog is the same anyway. Decided on deezer because I use android. Also a neat little backdoor in their servers Ü.
I’m the opposite of everyone here. Spotify is so good for discovery. My discover weekly consistently finds me awesome little bands I never would have found anywhere else. The mixes and playlist generation are terrible. The service is good. Offline mode is terrible.
I still send music I think is cool to my friends and vice versa. Being able to see what your friends are listening to is also great.
I’m still switching to my own music library using listenbrainz for discovery. Hopefully i can still find good music.
Yep, same here. The difference is, you need to use Spotify for some time so it learns what to show you. I consistently find amazing obscure bands out there.
If this is a topic folks are interested in, I’d highly recommend Liz Pelly’s new book Mood Machine. She did a lot of research in this area and really lays out how Spotify is destroying discovery and music community in the name of profits. Honestly it’s horrifying, way worse than most people would assume.
An excerpt was published in Harper’s too.
She Also did an interview with Anthony Fantano, but I haven’t watched it.
I feel like the oldest man in the thread with about 100gigs of self-ripped music to which I still own the CD’s… Also with the signature look of superiority, of course.
Right there with you…I still rock one of these.
I have that same CD player. Like having my own streaming server. LOL
Tidal is better
The only good thing about Spotify is that you can control the algorhythm with a bit of work instead of the other way around.
I’m feeding off the weekly recommendations that are filled with the 6-8 genres I like. I don’t get any mainstream garbage in my recommendations, and am finding New Songs every week.
I bet those articles come from the 3 big Labels
I used to like some of the old bittorrent clients seeing what other users were seeding. You would see someone with a lot of known killer music and something you had never heard of. It was a great way of finding new music.
For me the recommendations have been circling the drain for a while. It’s just the same songs over and over again, and it seems to have decided that I only like ambient electronic music and indie pop, both of which I actually find quite boring. No matter what I do, and no matter how much I like songs in other genres, that’s what it serves me, along with the occasional '80s hit because it has figured out I’m old. It was good for a few years but then seemed to get stuck in a rut.
So you have
Discover Weekly
and
Release Radar
and
daylist which generates vibe based playlists every 4 hours
and
An endless search of all songs and artists and playlists matching any number of random playlists featuring random songs across all genres
limited to your imagination
and going back to the beginning of recorded music
and then at the bottom of those playlists you have recommended songs based on the playlist
then if you click on any of those songs you get more songs by that artist
then if you click smart shuffle it’ll inject songs related into the playlist
It’s kinda hard for me to sympathise but I have heard this complaint a few times now
For me the biggest complaint against spotify I have is payola
More or less same, or random bands with the same name, I mostly use bandcamp for discovery these days, for now it’s still great being able to follow small labels, bands and user tags.
I’ve been very cautious over all the years that ive been using it. My rule is to only like what I wouldn’t mind listening daily to, and do playlists for all the other stuff that I don’t want to get bombarded with.
It has worked out for me.
I use Spotify to conveniently stream an album to decide whether or not to download it into my ipod. Imo offline devices are, were and will keep being the best option (while on an airplane, on a road trip with no signal) and I get the feeling to own my music and to know the context of the artist I am listening to.
