Spotify - anyone heard of it?

I just read about this. Apparently some kind of streaming iTunes looking service with rights to all the majors cleared. Could be interesting? If nothing else just to see it fail miserably...

trying this now. blatant rip of itunes design-wise but looks better in many ways. all i really want to do with it is listen to whole albums easily and it seems to let you do that very well (i haven't heard the ads yet tho).

20 second xbox ad came in after 5 songs. not bad really.

needs last.fm support asap

the ads don't bother me that much either, haven't noticed if 5 songs is always the limit? in any case it's 5 songs of any length, and you can listen to "In C" for example straight through which is cool.

I love it!

I think there is progress towards spotify scrobbling happening here:

http://www.last.fm/group/Scrobble+for+Spotify

carsmile sent this link: http://code.google.com/p/scrobblify/

scrobbles perfectly

for Windows maybe!

Yeah this looks terrific, I like how easy it makes it to dip into artists with huge discographies.

Although I haven't actually listened yet, just been browsing so far.

i am so in love with this thing <3

some artist tag crapness tho

the radio is fun for discovering things totally insane and cheesy

Oh wow the quality is actually pretty good.

The radio thing is indeed cool. I'm trying to get it to find me some techno from the 50s.

the quality is good, the range not so much, but this could well prove useful.

Presumably the range will increase as they agree deals with more record companies? It seems fine for major label stuff and a quick search for eg Kompakt pulls up a lot.

does it pass the melt banana test?

the range seems identical to what's on 7digital (and therefore itunes i think). eg they have trina's first and third albums but inexplicably not her second or fourth. i dunno how much use i'll have for spotify but kudos for how well it works, the quality of the tracks etc - the tags need ironing out but i'm sure they'll do this in time.

actually it'll be most useful for stuff like the goldfrapp album this year - i didn't really expect to love it but i wanted to hear it, so obv i wouldn't buy it but couldn't be arsed blagging it. that's a ton of consumer laziness in there.

oh god i should've said i was american! fuck. could've got access to all the hip-hop and r&b which never makes it over to this godforsaken, miserable island.

Do they have a license for the US now? I don't think they did a couple of weeks ago...

Four MB albums, Deano: Teeny Shiny, Bambi's Dilemma, Charlie and Scratch or Stitch.

does not work in australia yet

Just searched for The Recession and that shows up in its entirety, and it hasn't been released here at all right?

It's really good for the one-album playback when you've no idea if you'll like it or not and can't be arsed downloading.

yeah i'm basically going through albums i've been wondering about checking out but didn't have the hd space for.

no the recession was released here, but the label didn't bother telling the pr - she only realised when she looked on amazon and found it had been there for a fortnight

"80s funk house disco" radio suggests Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers!

> Four MB albums, Deano

thanks. we don't have any, amazon.co.uk mp3 store has scratch n stitch and a couple of tracks from compilations, emusic had a lot... all these people seem to be getting their info from the same places though, they all make the same mistakes (search for broadcast on amazon - details are about duophonic / warp broadcast but the listed albums aren't)

One detail I like: when it gets to the end of what I've queued up, it just continues with the current album without me needing to ask it to. (I suppose I can see how someone might not like this, though.)

Finally got round to sorting scrobbling for this (there's a windows messenger box ticked by default in the last.fm client that somehow stops Scrobblify from working). So far I'm really liking Spotify - handy for hearng stuff you randomly think on that you haven't got in your library or for legal trying before you buy. The adverts don't annoy me in the slightest.

fails Boredoms test :(

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

anyone got a spotfiy INVITE?

If not, try the "oooh ask me please!" option on the website ("Get started" -> email in "Not invited?" field). Took about five days for me, was surprised to get it at all actually.

jordan, webmail me an email address to send an invite to.

didn't get asked for an invite here, just got straight in

This is amazing! You type in what you want to listen to, and then you are listening to it. all this needs is to work on an iphone, and then i'll buy an iphone, and then i will have achieved bliss.

Mine appears to have made it through an album without giving me any adverts. Maybe they've bumped me up to a pro account without realising it.

you can now scrobble to last.fm from within spotify (it's in 'preferences')

That's handy, saves me running that scrobblify thing at the same time.

Spotify lists 'The Prodigy' as 'Prodigy' and makes last.fm think this guy sings Smack My Bitch Up and Out of Space
http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/252/17704623.jpg

can someone please send me an invite?

thanks!!

Er....

https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/

Think there's still a waiting list though.

<3 this service btw.

Got in straight away with the link I posted.

Aha they've obviously opened it up!

Downside is loads more ads (I've heard two during the same album), but you can hear them coming after a while and tune out. Still great.

thanks Chewshabadoo but I need an invitation code.

Please!

If i hear gareth jones from cardiff reciting pi again i'll scream

(advert)

And I'm not buying that White Lies record either.

At least it doesn't scrobble the adverts

jonathan from spotify sounds remarkably like Michael Vaughan

I think it should just mean it zooms in on the artwork images in the playlist view enough to make them having been worth including there

re: things being moved, i liked this https://kylechayka.substack.com/p/essay-the-digital-death-of-collecting (which is kind of like the spotify specific version of this https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/how-social-media-redesigns-manipulate-us)

Finally, in recent years, Spotify became the single international behemoth of mainstream music, an unavoidable* iceberg of content.

*citation needed

posting to link this question crut asked me but I haven't had the chance to expand all posts on a computer since

Not only is Spotify avoidable, there are a number of alternatives. That’s why I don’t really understand why people complain about it so bitterly, why not just try another service? They all have the same stuff, more or less(?)

Don't know if anyone else got the survey? Basically the gist seemed to be would I like to pay twice as much for a bunch of things that are very much not music. I would not.

Didn't see a survey, but was one of those things hi-rez streaming?

Actually, you’re right, that was the one musical thing.

Any word on Spotify HiFi? Announcement was in February which said later this year. Thoughts there would have been an update by now.

Seems all quiet. Just searched and there's been no follow-up.

Also to morrisp's point about alternatives... I signed up for an Apple Music trial this week just to dink around with the lossless and hi-def and Atmos and stuff. Maybe it's better to use on Apple hardware but on Android and PC it's not in Spotify's league at all. I'm using a USB DAC on my phone to sample some Atmos as those fancy features aren't even implemented in Windows yet. (I'll bump the Apple Music thread to see if anyone's heard anything interesting out of the selection of Atmos material)

The issues I had, at least, with the roll-out of Spotify's new desktop client were resolved. I still think the cluttering up of artist pages above their discography is a pain. The corralling of users towards podcasts and other cheap content is a pain. Joe Rogan sucks. It is worth discussion because it's still the sleekest service of its kind. Which is pretty wild. Or maybe Tidal has gotten a lot better since I last saw it?

xps What was in this survey? Please paste if it was emailed. I've turned off as much annoyance as I could in the app so maybe it didn't pop it up at me, if it's in there.

To add to my point (such as it is) - I understand some folks have tons of saved playlists or whatever in Spotify, which has a "lock-in" effect.

True. I wouldn't let that stop me from moving (a third party converter would carry them over well enough), but there aren't as many interesting playlists on other services. Spotify's own playlist curation and what's been put there by labels/companies/artists/fans has become a selling feature.

I particularly like that you can use the Radio feature on a track, an artist, an album, a playlist. This has been very useful to me for tailoring searches for new music that matches a particular style that I want.

I think Glenn came to them from their acquisition of "Echo Nest" to do such things? Is there anything comparable? God dang it

when everything but the music keeps subscribers around, one can forgive spotify for thinking the music is not their product

I feel like these features enable me to hear a lot more music that I wouldn't otherwise encounter, which also leads me to buying that music on other platforms like bandcamp or beatport, but I know that isn't everyone's experience

I am enjoyiong the recommendations when they're not overly repetitive. Heard some new sounds that I hadn't before but do have the same things turning up in apparent rotation in that feature. & do wonder how much clicking on free etc jazz artists I would need to do to have taht become a regular feature in that cos it seems I'm getting a lot more rock & psychedelic stuff but do wonder if that is inevitable anyway. & do assume that continually clicking on whatever black artists turn up in the recommendations would colour the algorithm's recommendations and so on.

Currently got a playlist with 100+ titles in. Which I think would probably have caused it to get dumped a few weeks ago. But still apparently randomly selecting titles within that list if i go to move things around. Do wonder if there is an ASCII or similar coding that I'm missing that would make sense of that iff i did know more about how the programming involved worked. Or if it is truly random.

I've found with radio playlists that the first big chunk of tracks will mostly be ones I'm familiar with, but if I scroll down to the point where there are tracks that are new to me and start from there, I end up getting more stuff that I haven't heard before as it adds to the end of the list.

That you're familiar with the first handful just makes it sound more eerily accurate. It doesn't know exactly what you've spent years with before you used Spotify. It will probably be more useful for people now growing up on Spotify.

Anyways I think reading ilm has been even more helpful to me in hearing about good new music. So uh, go humans

the first bunch of songs on most auto-generated playlists are almost always songs that I've listened to a lot lately or very closely related to them

The “radio” playlists always throw in a lot of tracks you already know and listen to, and are clearly affected by your account’s taste profile (or whatever Spotify would call it). To get music recommendations that are similar to a given track without the suggestions being so “contaminated” with stuff you’re already familiar with, start a new playlist containing only that track, then look at the recommended tracks that appear at the bottom of that new playlist.

Another way to see what Spotify track radio would have produced without personalization is to stick a track link or URI into https://everynoise.com/research.cgi?mode=radio&name=spotify:track:1vzqcPRQ6P1Uw7NZ5M77wJ. Radio currently has a pretty strong popularity bias in addition to the personalization, though. The Fans Also Like list on artist pages has less of that.

going to give this a try. I already use your new releases page as a starting point for a lot of my searches.

Another way to see what Spotify track radio would have produced without personalization is to stick a track link or URI into https://everynoise.com/research.cgi?mode=radio&name=spotify:track:1vzqcPRQ6P1Uw7NZ5M77wJ.

This looks really useful, cheers. I'm probably missing the obvious but is there a way to turn the 100 tracks into a playlist on Spotify?

Oh, there's a way to get the list of track URIs, but it currently requires an extra step. Hang on.

OK, I added a "show track URIs" link at the bottom. Click that and you'll get a list of URIs that you can copy and paste into a blank playlist (using the desktop app).

Woah, I thought I was being dumb and missing a link - didn't expect you to go to any trouble! Thank you.

release radar is becoming useless. Each week there are fake acts or bullshit like this
https://i.imgur.com/eeuLZex.png
https://i.imgur.com/8FOyq5p.png

radar traditionally requires a more discerning human eye to determine if the blips are real. it's all part of the RADARness.

spotify will continue to throw everything with non-zero CAN and Minutemen cross-section your way. we're all on this base together.

Wow very annoying issue! When I click discography or albums on an artist page i just go straight to the last album. Can't browse albums on artist page. Anyone know a solution?

Are you on desktop? Switch the view from list to grid, it will remember your choice.

Where do i change that?

On the right of the albums page, there are two little icons for grid & list view.

Is there a way of controlling the layout of size of icons etc . Or do you just need to wait for it to fix itself automatically. I had to reinstall the app on my desktop a couple of days ago and it came in with the display larger than I wanted it and couldn't find a way to alter it. it has now corrected itself but I was wondering if it was something that the user could control since i couldn't find a way of doing so.
Like the file system on my computer has a way of choosing which size icons you used so wonder if the same is true of Spotify and i'm just not seeing where the controls are. Looked around and didn't see an easy way of doing it.

Had to reinstall cos it seemed that after the programme finally did wipe the playlist instead of transferring it to my phone, when I went to add new podcasts it seemed the queue had gone blank again. NOt sure if that is just going blank or just too dark to read what has been added. & really not something i wanted to have to work out as i was trying to go out which is why I was trying to transfer in the first place. Ho hum

On a mac you can do Cmd+ and Cmd- to make them grow and shrink. I'm guessing that on Windows Ctrl+ and Ctrl- would do the same.

Ah got it, thanks anagram!

Lots of Jackson C. Frank today. How did it know?

something going wrong today meant that a couple of queues got shortened as I highlighted things to move them . NOt sure if taht was Spotify, my computer or what but very badly timed. & I kep hoping it will finally have got over difficulty in transfering from the desktop to the phone but no, wiped teh list I'd sorted just before I was heading out. Lovely

right, just had the same thing happen again. I had several titles highlighted cos i was going to move them to the top of the queue I had ctrl pressed down and went to add another title . Instead of highlighting it started playing erasing all of the titles above it on the queue.
So not sure if that is programme or keyboard/computer malfunctioning

This is a minor annoyance but recently when playing Spotify through Bluetooth in my car it’ll display the title of the first song and won’t update the title when the next song plays. I thought it might be my car but did the same when I tried in a friend’s car.

Seems I’m not the only one with this issue https://www.reddit.com/r/spotify/comments/mmkyvu/bluetooth_issue_where_song_name_isnt_updating_on/

Using Android 10.0.1 fwiw.

I've been getting that too the last few days

Have another weird one. I've got a couple of paired Alexa speakers in most rooms which I usually play Spotify through. Have noticed now that first song plays correctly through both speakers but as soon as the next track starts it just plays through only one of the speakers.

Seems to be a weird bug where you might find single releases by a band through playlists though they're not listed under Albums nor Singles/EPs from the band's page. Just noticed this with the Casanova 70 single by Air.

I'm not sure if that's a bug as I've noticed lots like that where a track is on a compilation album that's on Spotify but the single or album it's from isn't.

That said I can see Air's Premiere Symptomes EP listed under their singles 🤷‍♂️

glenn, for that radio page that you linked, is there a way to plug in URIs for other objects like playlists/albums/artists?

xp in this case you can't even get search results for the four track single release (also listed as from 2004 rather than 1996) so the only way to it is through playlists or direct link

You can use artists or tracks in that radio thing, but the public API doesn't support albums or playlists as seeds (although obviously the app itself does).

You can use the same tool to answer these availability questions, too. E.g.:

https://everynoise.com/artistprofile.cgi?id=1P6U1dCeHxPui5pIrGmndZ#0HCq99iUU77YIMOagEgM6L

That Air EP itself is only available in the US, but the first two tracks are also available on the Premiers Symptômes EP, and the two remixes are also on The Remixes - Vol.1. Both of those are available widely. So if you're not in the US, the Casanova 70 EP isn't listed, but if you get to it anyway, all 4 tracks can be played by internal redirection to the other releases.