Spotify - anyone heard of it?

We do attempt to deduplicate recordings, not tracks, so you aren't supposed to get literally the same audio more than once. But stuff doesn't always works right, especially over time...

I had no idea until today that my Spotify library had a maximum capacity but according to the Android app it does and I've just hit it.

― Matt DC, Thursday, April 14, 2016 6:41 AM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's not just an offline limit - even if you don't have a saved album available offline it still counts toward your Your Music 10k limit

well if that's the case it's pretty ridiculous. on ios it doesn't even tell you about any limit, it just stops downloading, and then you leave the house to find half an album/playlist is not there.

― Autumn Almanac, Friday, April 15, 2016 12:37 AM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have an iphone and got the message...tho I got it when i was just saving something (a notification popped up), I wasn't toggling the save offline switch on something I had already saved.

Anyway I can see some reason why they'd decide to cap music saved offline but music that's saved online only is basically a collection of shortcuts, idg why that's capped. Especially since that cap doesn't extend to playlists; so all the functionality did was make me unsave a bunch of albums, then add them back as playlists. Not sure what the point of that is...

― musically, Friday, April 15, 2016 12:56 AM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

caps might have made sense a few years ago when streaming services weren't the centre of the music industry. now that it's ~the way~ so many people use music, the limit is just an archaic pain in the arse, and i'm surprised spotify still has it. i've mentioned this itt before but i'm pretty sure no other major service limits to ~3,300 offline songs.

― Autumn Almanac, Friday, April 15, 2016 1:31 AM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Been a premium (family) Spotify user since the beginning and just reached my 10k max yesterday. Since they got rid of stars I found a way to use the plus sign in a similar fashion. I have no desire to change how I go about using Spotify again and re-organizing all the work I've already put into it. Sure I can delete some songs, maybe even 1,000+ of them, but that wont solve the problem long term as I will fill it up again soon enough. Very frustrated and now I'm looking into alternatives.

Spent a bunch of time on the spotify forums on this topic and this is their response to the uproar:

Updated: 2016-09-17

Hello everyone. Staff here.

At the moment we don’t have plans to extend the Your Music limit. The reason is because less than 1% of users reach it. The current limit ensures a great experience for 99% of users instead of an "OK" experience for 100%.

We are keeping a close eye on the votes and comments. Please continue to post your feedback.

That's maybe the worst response I can imagine, outside of a "lol f u, morons"

hmmm it does make sense that a feature interesting for >1% of users isn't top priority but I wonder how losing the cap would affect general service (perhaps it's that it would require lots of development for the app to handle larger libraries?)

Uhm that's supposed to be a less sign

im sure that number is growing as more and more people will be reaching the max

it would be nice if there were a tier where you could get a higher cap, but I'm not really upset about it since that 10,000 song limit has been pretty clear from the start

was it?

It's definitely something I knew about when I initially signed up, which was when the app first became available in the US.

I had no clue til the above posts a year ago and even then i just figured it was so dumb it would be done away with soon enough.

At the moment we don’t have plans to extend the Your Music limit. The reason is because less than 1% of users reach it. The current limit ensures a great experience for 99% of users instead of an "OK" experience for 100%.

haha wow. that "less than 1% of users" (i.e. half a million people) would be the hardcore ones spotify would rather keep, no?

i defected to apple music because of this idiotic limit and i've since almost forgotten spotify is a thing.

i mean "it's only half a million people" is basically the reason we still don't have marriage equality here. as excuses for arbitrary restrictions go, it's dumb.

spotify presumably would prefer non-hardcore listeners since the 1% listens to the most music (and forces spotify to pay out the most royalties) whereas the casual listener pays the same amount every month and costs significantly less

true, but imposing a limit the user isn't even told about isn't the best way of going about that. currently people are downloading albums/playlists, going out and discovering their songs were never downloaded. the app doesn't tell you the limit was breached or even how close you are to the limit.

Also I'd be willing to pay more and I bet plenty of the hardcores would be willing as well.

even then it seems dumb to ask people to pay more just to do what every other service does. it's not even a cost issue, it's just a local cache. i'm guessing it's a licensing issue they never got sorted.

^^^ ding ding ding

(my guess as well)

Possibly so.

It's not a licensing issue.

glenn! do you know more?

I know just enough more to be frustrated that I'm not allowed to explain the technical details, but not enough that my explanation would be coherent or complete. It's not due to legality or laziness, though, it's really a technical issue.

Fair. But can you say if it's something they are trying to change and/or discussing or should I move on?

It's not going to change any time soon.

That's a bummer.

thx glenn

Is there something glitchy going on for anyone else with the mobile device connections? Spotify will just randomly switch from playing on my desktop to my phone even when I don't have the app up on the phone. It's starting to get really annoying, especially in the office.

that has always been a bit hard to control. Sonos fixed the family plan issue if you want to listen to two different accounts on different speakers, but still does not work if you want to mix sonos, headphones, or car, etc. Still need offline mode for that.

I guess you used to be able to view playlists by album, but no longer?

my favorite thing about spottily currently is the commercial where the lady groans "THE EMAILS"

Getting IA with this more and more. Downloaded a 200 song playlist at home through wifi, so it'd be available for me on the road. Accidentally tapped the 'download' button when on said road, ticking it from green (on) to grey (off). When I ticked it on again it started to try to download the whole bloody playlist again, it had been erased. Sigh

This week's Discover Weekly has five tracks from last week's Discover Weekly. Perhaps I'm listening to too much DW and it's eating its own tail?

Yeah I have the same problem, a lot of the same tracks three weeks in a row now

Same here.

This video suggest that including older songs on the Discover Weekly playlist started out as a bug, but has become a feature

https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/528831/what-makes-things-cool/

Haven't checked this week's (left earbuds at home and I like it to be a surprise as I listen!), but week of May 29 overlapped with week of May 22 to the tune of 6-7 common tracks. Both weeks started with Joy Div's "Decades"!

DW was so good for 8-9 weeks at the start of the year, but it's stuck inside itself now.

That Atlantic thing was interesting, re: drop in DW engagement (measured as skip vs play?) when it got too heavy on the new stuff. My reaction was the opposite (sorry, Gang Of Four/Jonathan Richman/Gorky's/etc, you're getting skipped; hello thing I've never heard before, I will hear you out). I guess late-2016 DW was frightening the horses.

Why isn't Trout Mask Replica on Spotify when p much every other Beefheart alb is there?

This week's spotify weekly is at least 50% same artists as last week. In some cases it's just a different song off the same album as the last week, mostly it's just exactly the same songs. Discover weekly was one of the main things differentiating spotify from it's competitors for me.

Anyway, I signed up for a 4 month free trial of google play. I'm gonna try it out this summer and drop spotify for a while at least. Google's android client much better than spotify's, maybe not so much from a UI standpoint, but much more responsive and bug-free.

I'm just coming to the end of my 4-month Google Play Music trial. Everything is broadly fine, but there's nothing that would make me contemplate the upheaval of a shift from Spotify. The best aspect is the upload - which is part of the free package anyway.

Spotify loves to recommend me Chris Spedding for some reason. I really don't know why. (But I don't mind.)

― Animal Bitrate (Raw Patrick), Thursday, 11 August 2016 21:10 (nine months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My Discover Weekly had five or six songs from last week in as well.

And I think "Video Life" by Chris Spedding has appeared six or seven times overall now. He must have made nearly a penny from me.

My Release Radar playlist has grown to 56 songs as of last week!? Does the length depend on how many artists I follow have new releases?

I've seen a few other people reporting repeated tracks in DW. If you got dupes, is yours still 30 tracks, or is it longer this week?

Release Radar is allowed to grow longer if more artists you follow or like have releases this week, so that one is normal and good!

I had 7 or 8 repeats this week also, out of a normal 30.

Release Radar playlist has been better for me for a while than DW, except there was a song I really liked a couple of weeks ago, forgot to save and it disappeared and now I'll never find it again

Just 30 tracks for me, Glenn

I've also been getting lots of repeats (30 song list) and it def makes it a less useful playlist (I'd do daily mix if I wanted to hear stuff I know) and it's somewhat annoying to hear some semi obscure cut for the third week in a row...

Same here, maybe it's what people want but then it's hardly 'discover' weekly anymore. At least mine has finally stopped trying to make Ariel Pink happen.

mine has not

congrats, glenn

https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2016/01/14/meet-the-man-classifying-every-genre-of-music-on-spotify-all-1387-of-them.html?curator=MusicREDEF

On the internet everyone can be famous from the same old piece every 15 months.

new to me...a friend sent it to me and i was like, hmm.

what can you do? (besides check the date of the article)