Spotify - anyone heard of it?

It's not very hard! I don't understand this article at all.

"Oh good - a small amount of friction - I can get an article out of this"

It is hard for some. Though I find it a bit of a put-on for a staff writer "covering technology and culture on the Internet."

yeah his complaints here and on twitter makes him seem like the kind of guy who would enter “albums” in the search bar

and i’m now realizing this is the guy who wrote rhat hacky algorithm book filterworld
https://maxread.substack.com/p/are-algorithms-making-us-boring

I like Chayka's writing on design in general (like the original "AirSpace" essay), but his ideas about algorithms seem underbaked.

And yeah, I don't relate to complaints about the Spotify algorithm because that's never been how I use Spotify or what I want out of it.

Ok, wait, I just read the article, and it's not even about algorithms but about the user interface? I dunno man, I type the name of an album and it usually comes up. Sometimes, if I search for an artist, I have to click around a bit to find a particular album, but it's all intuitive enough. Not sure what his problem is.

lol vc

Yeah, I mean if you can't find an album you saved to your library what exactly are you doing? There's literally a button labelled 'Albums' at the top when you open your library

silly me, thought the revive might be about this

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/31/magazine/how-music-got-free-documentary.html

Yeah that movie sounds pretty bad, I trust the musicians who suffer not the ones who are multi-millionaires holding hands with the disruptors.

One if the taglines is like “THE CRIME WE ALL COMMITTED” and it’s like stfu

I can answer this: it’s because you’ve got Spotify auto-playing instead of you choosing which songs to listen to. pic.twitter.com/Ar9A8deJXm

— idk, my bff jo•na•than? 🐍 (@_jbradley) July 2, 2024

right, i am shocked that spotify would recommend sabrina carpenter and chappell roan to listeners who enjoy pop music

There is absolutely a paradox in the current mode of consumption that boils down to "you must spoon feed me only things that I like".

there’s a weird thing with certain more “underground” subgenres that aren’t represented super well on Spotify… like it seems with dungeon synth you don’t see very many heavy hitters really so it’s almost this shadow realm of not legendary artists coming along many years after the original high

similar effect to like, Christian alt rock bands or whatever

Or like off-brand rip off, Magnetbox Sorny

Good news, after several weeks of messing about with limiting the "Release Radar" weekly playlist (for those that follow many artists) Spotify has reverted back to 200 tracks instead of 30.

Mine is always 30, always has been. :(

I don't like that they've removed the label name from album pages on the Android app, it seems like you can only find it now by looking at the credit for an individual track

the album display on Android must've been having some glitches recently. I can see label now. Hadn't noticed it gone... but did notice seemingly random lack of running time info. So steamed i nearly posted here.

i need a streaming service that values my time!! *bangs phone on table*

I took a look and briefly saw the label info, then it disappeared from the screen. I still see running times. Must be buggy.

Noticed yesterday that the smart TV app gives you an option to play the music video when it's available. Nice touch I thought.

Did notice the desktop version had messed around with queue again. The thumbnail mini version was gone yesterday leaving the older design version where it is not in the margin but in the central column by default as main focus. The margin version doesn't show playing time which reminded me since somebody in the thread above mentioned playing time on a different version.
I guess they will just continue to mess around with design. Is that intentionally to show they're doing a job.

The mysteries of the Discover Weekly algorithm - after being caught up in the spate of short-song playlists not so long ago, this week's has a median track length of 6 minutes

Much as I like Spotify, I find it perplexing sometimes. Yesterday I received an email saying "Primal Scream made you something special". Gifts from a stranger, eh? Warmth and fuzziness and admiration for their largesse ensued. Opening up the email, there was Bawbee looking typically lithe, lank and addled. I read "As a thank you for being one of our top listeners on Spotify we are pleased to offer you the opportunity to order this Spotify exclusive limited edition Come Ahead blue and white t-shirt" and I'm like, *top* listeners? I've listened to Velocity Girl once and Loaded once in the last year and that's it!

I know they're not as popular as they used to be, but....

[rant]

they've incorporated a "featured on" listing for discographies, which makes browsing through catalogues from bands like the church impossible anymore: every budget compilation that "under the milky way" has ever appeared is now listed on their main discography. in some cases, these get mixed in with the band's proper albums out of chronological order, so slowly scrolling tediously until yoy find what you're looking for is the new normal. just go look at bob's dylan's discography; it's an embarrassing nightmare.

i've also recently noticed artists with less than ~3000 listeners are getting deprioritized in searches. in some cases, even if you search for exact terms, the thing you're searching for is a ways down in the results.

this all started about a week ago and it's made discovering and browsing in the app an exercise in frustration. especially now, when you have these superfluously inflated catalogues... you click on a release to see details, then hit back to see the rest of the catalogue, and now the whole thing has to reload and doesn't save where you were because the discography is so fucking bloated.

[/rant]

[post-rant]

also i want a "don't recommend this" option. stop telling me to listen to you think you really know me by gary wilson. he sucks, that album sucks, and both should have remained in obscurity.

[/post-rant]

Read the hype about the Unwrapped AI-generated podcast. Unfortunately mine is complete shit

https://wrappedaipodcast.spotifycdn.com/iwDVKJlb0ExVBSsbrGCeexsfFOL67eBw8LvD1j7sans.mp4

.mp4

read?

Alba skipped over the subject of the sentence, “I”, and “read” is past tense

also i want a "don't recommend this" option.

A**** M**** does have "suggest less."

Tracer correct

I sensed this within 20 minutes earlier this week, two published articles analysing the 2024 Spotify Wrapped flop:

Spotify Wrapped finally enters its flop era
https://www.creativebloq.com/design/spotify-wrapped-enters-its-flop-era

Spotify users are disappointed by an underwhelming Wrapped this year
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/04/spotify-users-are-disappointed-by-an-underwhelming-wrapped-this-year/

i think i was deeply confused in July - my "indie sleaze strut pop" season

i dunno maybe that is charli's "360" in a nutshell

Really to find out my top tracks are the ones Spotify always autoplays

My top track is always the one I listen to a million times because I can't find a place for it in the sequencing of my best-of-the-year playlist and need to figure out whether it sounds best after this song or that song.

Using Spotify to research the podcast has royally screwed my Wrapped: my most played act of 2024 were The Tremeloes, and I got a "thanks for being a fan" video message from David Guetta.🤔

Two of my students found me on Spotify during class yesterday, and when I expressed some mild horror at this they told me it was okay because I had good taste in music.

https://helsing.ai/newsroom/helsing-unveils-intelligent-strike-drone-for-mass-and-precision

Totally recognise this, Lily! I'm a college teacher now (UK) so often play music in class. Kids are adamant I only have stuff like Chappell Roan, Tems and Charli on my playlists because I'm trying to impress them. I mean, I've got two kids who are deeply into all sorts of music for one, and, well, I have ilx as my main tastemaker so...

The most New Jersey 2024 scandal ever: Rep. Josh Gottheimer, running for governor, faked his Spotify wrapped list so he appeared to be a Springsteen super fan, h/t @Taniel - https://t.co/u260MRwF18

— Reid Wilson (@PoliticsReid) December 11, 2024

he wasn’t born to run

Another Eric Adams in the making.

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machine-liz-pelly-spotify-musicians/

great reporting from liz pelly

sad state of affairs, dystopian times

reminds me of something nick cave said on the colbert show:

I think there's forces out there expressly designed to take the creative act away from us. Especially with AI as it's coming up. To create music as simply a product. The creative experience is seen as a sort of impediment on the road to the product itself.

Background playlists encourage anonymous music, which enourages anonymous musicians, which will probably and logically lead to AI music. Stock photograhy leads to anonymous imagery, which leads to anonymous imagists, which leads to AI images. Spotify can be rightfully blamed for facilitating this, but nobody has to listen to those playlists in the first place. It's neoliberally reductive to expect everybody to individual-choice us out of this collective sludge, but it's better than sitting in it.