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

“should I just switch to Apple Music?”

The people who don't care that much are the passive consumers, and a minority of people are actively seeking/curating, and I think that's fine? Most people over 25 don't care that much about music.

Yeah, in the past most people just listened to the radio, how much has really changed? (On the consumption side, as opposed to the remuneration side, of course).

They did finally add the thing to tell you what playlist(s) a song is already in at least.

That's been a big improvement for me. It also makes it much easier to remove an entire album from a playlist when I'm using the mobile app.

keep having thumbnails for shows I listen to a lot not connecting. being told oops can't find that page. rotten set up.

this isn't even the first time that Kyle Chayka had vern

muscle memory that builds up when you use a piece of software every day, like your thumb going directly to the Instagram app button on your phone screen. Spotify had updated its interface and suddenly I was lost. I couldn’t put on the jazz record by Yusef Lateef that I play every morning when I start writing and I couldn’t figure out where to find the songs I had saved by pressing the heart-shaped like button. The sudden lack of spatial logic was like a form of aphasia, as if someone had moved around all the furniture in my living room and I was still trying to navigate it as I always had. Spotify’s new “Your Library” tab, which implied everything I was looking for, opened up a window of automatically generated playlists that I didn’t recognize. The next tab over offered podcasts, which I never listened to on the app. Nothing made sense.

oops...posted too soon

this isn't even the first time that Kyle Chayka has been disoriented by Spotify.

an excerpt from his book:
https://kylechayka.substack.com/p/essay-the-digital-death-of-collecting


"I opened the Spotify app on my laptop a few weeks ago and found that everything I had saved was in disarray. The albums weren’t where I thought they were. I couldn’t flip through them with my usual clicks, the kind of subconscious muscle memory that builds up when you use a piece of software every day, like your thumb going directly to the Instagram app button on your phone screen. Spotify had updated its interface and suddenly I was lost. I couldn’t put on the jazz record by Yusef Lateef that I play every morning when I start writing and I couldn’t figure out where to find the songs I had saved by pressing the heart-shaped like button. The sudden lack of spatial logic was like a form of aphasia, as if someone had moved around all the furniture in my living room and I was still trying to navigate it as I always had. Spotify’s new “Your Library” tab, which implied everything I was looking for, opened up a window of automatically generated playlists that I didn’t recognize. The next tab over offered podcasts, which I never listened to on the app. Nothing made sense."

I like Chayka generally, though I think he's overstating the degree of bewilderment here to make his broader point about how algorithms shape our experience. The book is unfortunately kind of lazy in its argumentation, even as his contentions *feel* right if you are, like him, a longtime internet user who's become recently disenchanted with it.

I really don't understand his thing about these services turning us into passive consumers if even a small app update throws him into an existential crisis. It's like someone throwing themself on the floor at Tower Records because they have to walk past the magazine section to get to the CDs.

I do get that Spotify emphasizing playlists might make some people less likely to play full albums, but to complain so hard about app feng shui is weird.

Looks like they’re reducing royalties by classifying their regular Premium service as an audiobook bundle (after introducing a standalone audiobook tier): https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/spotify-music-audiobook-bundle-lower-royalty-for-songwriters-1235974942/

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek surprised by how much laying off 1,500 employees negatively affected the streaming giant’s operations

Fortune headline

https://fortune.com/europe/2024/04/23/spotify-earnings-q1-ceo-daniel-eklaying-off-1500-spotify-employees-negatively-affected-streaming-giants-operations/

But he says they’re back on track now on a path to long term profitability.

Ugh

what a piece of shit that guy is. it's amazing to me he's even willing to show his face in public!

more amazing that anyone still admits to and / or rationalizes subscribing to this service

It's a go-kart powered by my own sense of self satisfaction.

Anyone explored the 'Daylist' feature? It analyses what you tend to listen to at any given time of the day and serves up a playlist accordingly. This changes 3 or 4 times during the day. It does give the playlist a dumb name. Eg, my current one is called 'healing abstract tuesday (sic) morning'.

The key difference so far is that mine have actually been pretty good?

happy saxophone trumpet tuesday morning from here......

I pulled up Daylist and it offered a bunch of Drake songs wtf

in the days of pandora I remember flipping around trying to find some new age music I liked until the “algorithm” just gave up and started playing Jaheim, which totally hit the he spot somehow

he spot? the spot

Seems relevant to post here:
Spotify's Former Data Guru Tells All: A Conversation with Glenn McDonald

nice! look forward to the book

Long-time readers of this thread, where I've been before, during and after my long time at Spotify, will probably recognize many of the themes and sentiments in the book, but hopefully I did a better job of organizing them into a coherent whole than came across in individual comments here...

i'm very excited to purchase the book

I haven't popped in here to say "fuck these capitalist pigs" for a while, this is also relevant:

https://www.nme.com/news/music/music-fans-and-artists-hit-back-as-spotify-ceo-claims-the-cost-of-creating-content-is-close-to-zero-3761004

this guy is such a piece of shit

I use YouTube Music now. Tried a couple of scrobblers on my phone but they don't work :/

so they're still messing around with the interface while not improving it.

It’s basically become worse in every way in the last year

My book, mentioned above, is now out. It contains a lot of stuff about streaming, and a fair amount of stuff about Spotify as an example of streaming, but nothing at all about Daniel Ek.

Congrats on getting the book out Glenn!

link?

https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/you-have-not-yet-heard-your-favourite-song-how-streaming-changes-music-glenn-mcdonald/7590219

My copy just arrived! Exciting

awesome Glenn, just bought my copy

I'm in the middle of reading You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song: How Streaming Changes Music. Quite interesting.

I just read the part of how the Recommended feature to add songs to your playlist causes problems and specifically caused Martina McBride anguish because it took 136 recommendations before her empty playlist named "Country Music" came up with a song not by a man. The book does a good job discussing the implications of that.

I never create empty playlists so never noticed this feature before but I'm not sure if it still works or not.

When I create a playlist "American Classical Music" on Windows anyway, the recommendations are mostly tracks I play from other genres - Led Zeppelin, Bardo Pond, obscure recorder music etc. It does include Terry Jennings, who was arguably an American Classical composer. And it has a song by Stereolab, John Cage Bubblegum, which is at least a reference to my somewhat obscure genre.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6H4wMlqU40uDKQTmjDAhFV?si=60643bd5b20f40d0

I’ve just started the book. Glenn you write beautifully. I love this!

Thanks!

And yes, I can't totally tell whether they've disabled the title-matching feature on empty playlists entirely (it still says "Based on the title of this playlist" at the top, but that doesn't guarantee they haven't), or cranked up the personalization so far that the keyword results are crowded out. I just tried a blank playlist called "Reggae", which my own listening contains very little of, and no amount of Refreshing gets me anything other than lots of random selections from my existing favorites.

Coincidentally, I just wrote about over-personalization in another nearby context: https://www.furia.com/log/488

the search function seems broken

or maybe it's broken as a feature, the same way youtube search is broken these days

few real results and then down the algorithm hole

"When I create a playlist "American Classical Music" on Windows anyway, the recommendations are mostly tracks I play from other genres - Led Zeppelin, Bardo Pond, obscure recorder music etc. It does include Terry Jennings, who was arguably an American Classical composer. And it has a song by Stereolab, John Cage Bubblegum, which is at least a reference to my somewhat obscure genre."

Spotify and YouTube Music seem puzzled by classical music and as if it would really rather you dont go there. "Can we just get back to some Zeppelin please?"

I'm enjoying the book as well, very fun to read as a dev who loves music. You describe the challenges very well. Recently I requested Spotify send my full listening history so I could figure out every full album I had ever listened to, which required some data manipulation and wasn't as easy as I thought. It felt like a very simple version of what you describe in the book

Spotify and YouTube Music seem puzzled by classical music and as if it would really rather you dont go there. "Can we just get back to some Zeppelin please?"

they've now added a dynamic margin for the queue which triggers when you go to add items to the queue. are they doing this intentionally badly.

Stupid dumbarse spotify bot going through and carefully deleting any uploaded album covers for local files that feature a hint of nipple.

i asked my friend the other day (she is a well-known local musician in L.A. w/a decent fanbase in Europe) if Spotify had any noticeable effect on her career, and she said it had completely wrecked a lot of her supporting income. she said a lot of what made touring tenable was the ability to sell records and CDs at various stops, just to give her something extra every show, and that has absolutely cratered for her. fans will come see her, her albums had still received the same acclaim and attention, but the sales of physical media just aren't there anymore. she receives hardly anything from streaming.

is queue now intentionally unmanageable. you can't easily move items up queue any more. keep triggering menu which stops item from being movable or the track will start playing erasing everything above it in the queue. I'm not sure if this is just being exacerbated by the queue now giving far less space to pick up an item . does seem wilful.

i asked my friend the other day (she is a well-known local musician in L.A. w/a decent fanbase in Europe) if Spotify had any noticeable effect on her career, and she said it had completely wrecked a lot of her supporting income. she said a lot of what made touring tenable was the ability to sell records and CDs at various stops, just to give her something extra every show, and that has absolutely cratered for her. fans will come see her, her albums had still received the same acclaim and attention, but the sales of physical media just aren't there anymore. she receives hardly anything from streaming.

― omar little, Monday, July 22, 2024 9:10 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I will never understand why people are still shocked when they hear stories like this

she said that streaming services gaslight the hell out of musicians with respect to it, they came in as disrupters and made their billions and the musicians are left to eat shit. she did say it was something that started as far back as napster, the beginning of music being seen as without value.