Spotify - anyone heard of it?

nobody feels like talkin about the mooted SoundCloud takeover?

something like this feels sort of inevitable - despite the vast amounts of money poured into human and algorithmic playlist-making, Spotify is at heart a reseller. A box store. Like Netflix. Where the playlist discovery mechanisms are Spotify's equivalents of Netflix originals. But both services are basically resellers. SoundCloud is the opposite, it's the YouTube of audio. if Spotify can sort out the rights issues (SoundCloud basically gave up on this several years ago afaict) it's not hard to imagine Spotify suddenly becoming one of the biggest indie "labels" overnight.

But if it's not that, then I'm not sure that an extra layer of artist connectivity schmear / demo areas is going to set them apart? Apple Connect has been abysmal. Maybe I'm not seeing what they're seeing tho

This was the most sensible thing I read about it: http://www.recode.net/2016/9/28/13101740/spotify-sound-cloud-deal-makes-sense

it all seems to boil down to "spotify buys a bunch of MAUs" which doesn't seem that "strategic" imo

Pop stat nerd question for Glenn: what are the artist's 'top five' songs based on? I assumed it was number of plays, but over in songs that weren't a bands biggest hit, but have gone on to be their legacy song and biggest iTunes seller , we're talking about the Pretenders... the top five seem to be ranked in order of plays, with the #5 song ("Holy Commotion") reports around 44,000 plays, but if you expand it out to the top 10, or scroll down to the albums and start mousing over stats, it becomes apparent there are many with more views, like "2000 Miles" with 6,220,016, or "middle of the Road" with 1,581,639.

So just out of curiosity - - - is the 'top five' algorithm designed to bake in some kind of variety, pushing lesser-heard songs to the fore? Recently-trending stuff? Stuff Spotify is delivering in Discover Weekly or other playlists? Countless ILM stat-nerd threads could depend on this information!

it's absurd for spotify to recommend me things i've already listened to

Maybe you didn't listen the right way

The "Popular" songs show raw play-counts in the UI, but are actually ranked based on an internal score that measures, roughly, "current" popularity...

Brimstead: where are you getting recs for things you've already played?

Glenn, thanks! That makes sense.

I moved to another country for a year and just tried to start a family account but it's not working. My geo-sniffed country and the credit card country aren't the same, and it's blocking my family members from signing up. I was so ready to give Spotify another £5 a month!

Tracer, SpotifyCares can fix that for you...

Brimstead: where are you getting recs for things you've already played?

― glenn mcdonald, Monday, October 3, 2016 11:54 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

discover tab in browse

many i haven't listened to in full, maybe its trying to tell me to be more open to new things

Looking at my Discover page at the moment, I'm not sure it's even trying to filter out things you've already heard. Certainly I have a few things I've played in full, although maybe not recently. We do more filtering in Discover Weekly and Release Radar (and even more, but in the opposite direction, in Daily Mix).

is it possible that you're mistaking having played or heard it somewhere else for having played it *in spotify*? about 25% of my discover is things I've already heard, which is infuriating until reason takes over and I realize that barring a breadth of data-aggregation that -- well, probably does go on, but not to this end -- there's really no way for it to know everything I've ever heard, from any souce

I would just like to thank Discover Weekly for leading me to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61Gw4ar2cc0

xp, yeah i thought about that. but there's albums like Tom Verlaine's "dreamtime" and the first richard lloyd album of which i'm absolutely certain i've 'previewed' on spotify. i might have 86'd em before listening to a single full track, though (don't kill me, television fanatics)

wow at that acid brasss album!

How can I navigate to the Daily Mix playlists from the Sonos app? Can't wait for direct Sonos integration on the Spotify app.

That exists already

Speaker should be under "devices available" in the usual spotify connect way

Really? They announced it but I didn't think it went live yet. I'm on the latest iOS version and I can't find the option for Sonos.

hmmmm. I am using a samsung phone, and I've updated a few times.

> wow at that acid brasss album!

Same band did a selection of Manchester anthems for Jeremy Seller's Manchester carnival a few years ago.

SpotifyCares fixed it. Absolutely fantastic service, they must spend a fortune on it

there was a second Acid Brass album in 2011 (the first was 2007) -I saw them play a Warp night at the Tate Modern in 2013, it was great

just checking that anyone who digs the acid brass album also knows acoustek and alarm will sound

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbaiUNVAzAc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2BnY-3iFSo

Opened up my Spotify app on my iPhone this morning and now see that I have 19 notifications next to the "your library" button... only I don't know what the 19 notifications are related to and there is no indication of how to see what they're about or acknowledge that I've seen them...

Just found out I've got a free Deezer subscription with my ISP, it's pretty decent really.

Only downside seems to be that as I live in (French speaking) Switzerland, they still keep feeding me French charts and curated playlists on the landing page, even though I've forced the language to English and the only French artist I've played or 'liked' so far is Éliane Radigue. Hope it learns quickly.

Does anyone know if there is a way to get to the Daily Mixes from the desktop app? Is it a mobile only thing like Running or Party?

Just came here to ask the same thing. I need the Daily Mix on Desktop and available through Sonos.

I'm a little annoyed that I'm just stuck with the same 6 mixes each day. I thought maybe it would go to other genres sometimes.

Can't access daily mixes through Alexa either...

Full desktop access is in the works, but for now if you start a Daily Mix on your phone, you can then switch devices over to your desktop and keep listening to it.

If you want other genres, there are a few at everynoise.com...

A few!

hey glenn: if you click on Birmingham, Alabama on the musical map page it shows you the playlist "The Sound of Birmingham Michigan US"

https://insights.spotify.com/us/2015/07/13/musical-map-of-the-world/

Oh, thanks! (I don't do that page myself, but I'll get it fixed...)

"mccartney ii is sick" –my Discover Weekly playlist, once a month

mine is like "we know you love farewell transmission by songs: ohia so here it is yet again"

not a complaint really

Spotify is offline for me, can't even log into the website...accordimg to twitter lots of people are having the exact same problem :(

I was having the offline problem too. Logged out and restarted a few times, logged out on my phone as well as on my laptop... but it seems to be working now.

Hey, I have joined spotify and I am making playlists for you all to enjoy. I have fantastic musical taste so I urge you all to listen and follow me.

You can listen to my first playlist here

Your username does not insoire confidence

Oh, but his spotify username does.

Cool list, kornrulez.

Spotify shuffle doesn't "really" shuffle, does it? Just uses a pre-set sequencing of songs in a playlist. Would be useful if it did "real" random shuffling, that way I could use it to explore big playlists.

Here's an old post about it: https://labs.spotify.com/2014/02/28/how-to-shuffle-songs/

well I'll be darned - must've been a misperception on my part!

Glenn, long shot but are the ppl who wrote the interfacing and voice command "skill" for Spotify and Amazon Echo & Echo Dot amenable to any suggestions?

I can definitely pass along any ideas you have to the right people. Email 'em to me: glennm at spotify...