Spotify - anyone heard of it?

Not as popular as "their version" (i.e. rip and upload) of My Chemical Romance's "Dead", which has 139m plays. "Verified artist" too!

The algorithm is recognising that it's the same track - if you look on the My Chemical Romance page the play count is also 139m for Dead. So who knows how much Urbxnd has actually made off the scam, but not as much as that!

Leopantforte is another one of these. A rip of Case of You.

If you go to the Spotify Artists page for Joni Mitchell, it shows "covers" by these artists. Leopantforte does a mean Nancy & Lee too.

Not entirely sure what's happened here - like a sort of cybersquatting. I assume this is nothing new, and Spotify are on the case.
I've had tracks with <100 plays pushed to my Release Radar before by artists called "Beck" or "Gas", but nothing quite like this.

Just the other day, on a different service, I came across several random tracks titled "Mariah the Scientist," which come up when you search that artist's stuff (she seems to be a particular target for "spoofing," not sure why)

Leopanforte, sorry.

And... also I notice that Circle Game, Coyote, Big Yellow Taxi, Both Sides Now and Case of You are about the only JM tracks that are actually available from their parent albums (everything else greyed out), and those are the songs that are being re-appropriated under these dummy artist accounts. So they are there for real, just also under a fake name.

No, it's worse than that: the bootleg uploads are why they show up as available on their parent albums. I've reported these internally. People suck.

Oh wow. So is the scam that the bootlegger gets the stream count if people search for BYT by Joni and then play it?

If someone were to upload a bootleg of an album that has never been on Spotify, are there any automatic checks on the file to stop it? Like, I know Shazam's database covers more than Spotify's catalogue but is there some industry-standard rights management system that identifies copyrighted work?

Glenn I was wondering... could one say something about what the most albumey album on Spotify is by looking at what albums have songs with the most even distribution of plays (which would indicate they are listened to back-to-back)? Or maybe albums with the closest relation between plays of first and final track?

Looking at Dark Side of the Moon (an albumey album if ever there was one) it seems like the album was started 78 million times (although some of those Speak To Me plays could obv come from playlists/shuffle) but only 22 million made it to the grand finale of "Eclipse" ;_;

Yeah, it's a sensible idea about albums that get played all the way through. It gets messy to calculate, in some cases, due to Deluxe Editions adding bonus tracks that aren't always easy to identify as non-original from the metadata (but the fans know). I do a variant on that kind of idea for my yearly Album Populism chart, which is underway for 2023 here:

https://everynoise.com/tview.cgi?source=album_populism_2023

I basically try to weight an album's popularity by how far through it listeners tend to get...

so sorry to be like a jocky guy but there was this nfl football fan meme a few years back where they telling the teams to RUN THE DAMN BALL and i wanted to start a music one that was PLAY THE DAMN ALBUM.

a real thing that i've wondered about— how does it figure which album it directs the listener to from the artist's top 5? like on bob dylan, for example. one his top 5 is "like a rolling stone" and it directs you to highway 61 revisited. but what about all the people who listen to that song from bob dylan's greatest hits? do those count towards the overall total or do does that song have two sets of data, one for each release? i've also noticed that sometimes it will direct to a compilation from the top 5, even when the proper album (including that song) is available. the answers to these questions are quite tedious so i understand if.. well, you know.

congratulations you've entered the first circle of the hell that is pop music metadata. i think glenn has probably visited all of them.

lol

used to live there, then made a deal with the devil to ferry other people across
(I swear I don't intend that as mean as it sounds)

those count towards the overall total or do does that song have two sets of data, one for each release?

xp thanks glenn, that's cool!

One thing really bugging me still is in the Friend Activity panel if you see they're listening to their 'Your Top Songs 2022' playlist if you click on that you get yours rather than theirs. I actually kinda hope that's a bug because surely people wanna see each others versions of this playlist?

I imagine that's a privacy thing

Alba's explanation of aggregation by recording is correct. Liked Songs ought to do the same thing, in principle, but didn't originally and it apparently hasn't been a high enough priority to fix yet.

The single magic link to everybody's own Your Top Songs playlist is partly a feature, partly a technical shortcut. It turns out to be way easier to have just one link than one for each person...

Time for me to turn off auto app updates, I think

Spotify is redesigning its app to create a TikTok-like feed.

Here’s why it will go down as one the biggest new product announcements this year:

— Turner Novak 🍌🧢 (@TurnerNovak) February 24, 2023

"Rudy Van Gelder Edition / 2007 DIGITAL REMASTER" appearing at the end of every song title: c/d?

xp further evidence if it were needed that they are not a music company.

Well this sounds like hell

Terrible, no thank you

There better be some way to turn this shit off.

Not sure it will make any difference to me. Don't think I've ever scrolled down my home page before and the top part looks like it'll be the same as it is now

This is my Home screen now: pic.twitter.com/MQvGiEApKg

— Charles Osborne (@charlieosborne) February 26, 2023

And its spent the past few years expanding beyond music into podcasts, audiobooks, live streams, and even video on some podcasts.

Spotify is now a full-on media platform.

Yeah, they expanded into a shittier version of each of those things than previously existed, while making the app more of a hassle to use to listen to music.

Not sure it will make any difference to me. Don't think I've ever scrolled down my home page before and the top part looks like it'll be the same as it is now

Been having a new problem during the past week. I'll be listening to a full album and then the app jumps to a song that's not in the album, but maybe Spotify thinks is similar.

For instance, last night I was listening to Dua Lipa's Future Nostalgia. After the song Pretty Please, it segued into Miley Cyrus (feat. Dua Lipa) song Prisoner. This song is featured on an expanded edition of Future Nostalgia (not the version I was listening to), but the one I got had the art for the Miley Cyrus album.

Then this morning, I put on Pink Floyd's Animals. After Pigs on the Wing (Part One), Spotify shifted to Strange Brew by Cream, a song that I can guarantee I've never listened to on the app.

This has happened one or two other times in the past week. Has anyone else experienced it? I'm wondering if there's a setting or something that I need to toggle.

― peace, man, Thursday, January 19, 2023 7:30 AM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

Just turned on a Ladysmith Black Mambazo album and after the first song it took me to the Rolling Stones' You Gotta Move off Sticky Fingers!

Autoplay is not on, but I did listen to about 50% of Sway a few hours ago. Still, not what I wantes at the moment, Spotify!

algorithm pea brain probably went Ladysmith Black whatever >> Brown Sugar >> other Sticky Fingers track

Could you maybe have stuff in your queue?

^^

I haven't ever had that happen to me unless I had tracks queued

I don't even know what a queue is, in spotify terms.

Like, I get the concept, but I've never used it before. Maybe if I managed to somehow pocket-queue the song? Seems like a reach though, because I've never pocket-activated any of the other features on that menu "i.e. Hide This Song, Add to Playlist, Sleep Timer, etc"

the "random song playing" glitch happened to me a few times several weeks back, but only when listening on my smartphone. seems like whatever was in the next update a few days later fixed it.

i otoh am a queue obsessive and have many suggestions on how to make it a lot better☺

(seriously, you guys don't use it?! it's rad! you drop in whatever you want then you're good for a few hours.)

Use queue all the time. Definitely one of the features I couldn't live without.

well, yeah

I don’t know how you could not use the queue.

I basically use playlists instead of the queue...

me too, use the queue mostly when hanging out with people who all want to play songs

I often will put a huge playlist on shuffle then scroll through the queue and bump up anything I'm particularly excited about to next up.

Hey hey hey you're listening to HITLER RADIO [sound effect of a sieg heil, stuka dive, air raid siren, and explosion] where we're playing ALL the Reich's favorite hits ALL DAY LOOOOOOONG

[Imagine Dragons - Radioactive starts playing] https://t.co/wExe0JTQ2Y

— the prince with a thousand enemies ♂️ (@jaketropolis) March 2, 2023

(It wasn't actually a playlist, it was just the automatic artist-radio for an "artist" that was some historical albums of WWII music...)

Das Führer Weekly

Finally, a change I can get behind: the new improved Add to Playlist.

Ooh, what's this?

update on discovery mode, which lets artists accept a lower royalty rate for an algorithmic push. joe says in the first month, listeners save songs 50% more often and follow an artist 37% more often when the mode is used

— Ashley Carman (@ashleyrcarman) March 8, 2023

excellent news for consumers

Sad lol. Maybe I'll actually try it, since Spotify royalties are effectively $0 anyway.

can you switch back once you get those listeners locked in?