Spotify - anyone heard of it?

(plus, there's the parallel problem -- metrics don't come out of nowhere. a skip rate means people genuinely do not want to hear a song. and just about every study corroborates what shows up in the metrics: listeners dislike unfamiliar music and will take active steps not to listen to it. (there's a parallel here with pageviews -- you can build your blog posts on your favorite artist with 50 youtube views, but they will likely not come.)

which, obviously, is very bleak if you care about this sort of thing. but it also happens consistently.

Correct, and for similar reasons this is why radio sounds so terrible now (more so than usual).

It was not uncommon 10-20 years ago for radio stations to sneak in their own local hits that music directors felt strongly about even if they weren't charting and emphasis on data-based curation leaves no room for good songs chosen by humans. The best example I can think of at the moment is <i>EMOTION</i>, which afaict is a phenomenon within my extended circle. Seems kind of unacceptable for an album like that to not generate multiple charting hits. It also makes no sense that hiphop songs hitting #1 no longer indicate whether they'll crossover to Top 40 stations.

ok, but you're making the same mistake I just mentioned. "data-based curation" is an aggregate of decisions made by humans. it was humans that decided to turn off Carly Rae Jepsen when she showed up on the radio or playlist or whatever. nor is it a simple payola thing -- clear channel, for instance, has promoted plenty of songs via "On the Verge" payola, only to find those songs basically plummet off the charts once they stop forcing them.

hip-hop songs hitting #1 is a separate, but related phenomenon -- it turns out that when you aggregate the unconscious decisions made by humans, a lot of them are racist, and then you get stations cutting the Snoop verse off "California Gurls."

https://i.imgur.com/2sLSeJW.png

lol @ that Hilary Duff song, which I'm actually listening to again right now. I never heard it when it was new, but I'm not surprised it's in my top 2017 listens.

that article is p hilarious

It all appears limitless, a function of the platform’s infinite supply, but in reality it is tightly controlled by Spotify’s staff and dictated by the interests of major labels, brands, and other cash-rich businesses who have gamed the system.
...
Spotify loves “chill” playlists: they’re the purest distillation of its ambition to turn all music into emotional wallpaper.
...
“Piano in the Background” is one of the most aptly titled; “in the background” could be added to the majority of Spotify playlists.
...
It turns out that playlists have spawned a new type of music listener, one who thinks less about the artist or album they are seeking out, and instead connects with emotions, moods and activities, where they just pick a playlist and let it roll: “Chillin’ On a Dirt Road,” “License to Chill,” “Cinematic Chill Out.” They’re all there.
...
These algorithmically designed playlists, in other words, have seized on an audience of distracted, perhaps overworked, or anxious listeners whose stress-filled clicks now generate anesthetized, algorithmically designed playlists. One independent label owner I spoke with has watched his records’ physical and digital sales decline week by week. He’s trying to play ball with the platform by pitching playlists, to varying effect. “The more vanilla the release, the better it works for Spotify. If it’s challenging music? Nah,” he says, telling me about all of the experimental, noise, and comparatively aggressive music on his label that goes unheard on the platform.
...
In the past, if a music shop ordered copies of a record, independent labels could do simple things—like send thank-you notes.
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In its quest for total power and control, Spotify has prioritized its own content, and it has made it notably more difficult to find albums rather than playlists.
...
And what will become of music criticism in a world without records? Will publications review discovery feeds and write profiles of playlists? What good will criticism be when all of music has coalesced into algorithmically preordained Muzak?

xp Yeah I agree with all of this. "Chosen by humans" was intended as "chosen by human music directors."

Some of the phrases and word choices are unnecessarily dramatic, but I kinda agree with the article although iHeartRadio is a larger threat at the moment.

One who thinks less about the artist or album they are seeking out, and instead connects with emotions, moods and activities

Pure Moods, even.

I agree with much of it, I just don't agree that if Real Humans were magically given the power to choose what they want to listen to, that they would gravitate to something other than 100 repeats of Ed Sheeran. (it's possible, for instance, to use Spotify to discover weird and unusual and experimental music -- I do it all the time. it just requires a lot of effort and false starts.)

and, for that matter, Real Humans can have genuine emotional experiences in response to "fake artists." if you plug any of the artists on whichever list is floating around now into YouTube you find people covering them, making music videos, setting poetry to them. people collect library music; this is not really that different.

I'm sad that Spotify has de-emphasized their customers' playlists. If you browse at this point, there are basically only Spotify-generated playlists. This reinforces the idea that Spotify is trying to be the only gatekeeper for labels/artists, and it's not a good look. I guess there's maybe room for other sites to try and create a more crowdsourced/social side of Spotify (witness noonpacific.com, for example), but it's lame that Spotify itself and the Spotify apps have almost completely hidden user-curated playlists and hasn't tried to leverage all of their users. I'd love to be able to seed the ML algorithms with a set of my friends' play history, for example.

I mean, sure, most people are just looking for chill wallpaper, or music to fall asleep to, but I think they have that shit covered at this point.

OTM katherine. I've spent the year exploring Iranian and Azeri classical music, most of which I can't find from any other source, save ordering directly from those countries.

pvmic i suppose but i've been keeping these up all year if you haven't noticed:
Listening to ILX Listen: 2017 Genre Thread Spotify Playlists

It turns out that playlists have spawned a new type of music listener, one who thinks less about the artist or album they are seeking out, and instead connects with emotions, moods and activities

society is in the gutter

anyway my #1 genre is Chamber Psych which maybe and #2 is Fluxwork which is maybe what Spotify calls techno* albums thread for people who are clearly doing it wrong"

I didn't realise I listened to the HAIM album so much

I've made many playlists that are based more around musical moods than being about particular artist's personalities. Don't know what's objectionable about spotify also doing this, although I'd prefer to listen to my own lists or lists by other ILXors.

It turns out that playlists have spawned a new type of music listener, one who thinks less about the artist or album they are seeking out, and instead connects with emotions, moods and activities

society is in the gutter

― Choco Blavatsky (seandalai), Tuesday, December 5, 2017 12:57 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hasnt it always been this way for a while though? Now it's just easier to throw it all on a list. I used to make mix CDs in the mid-late 90s that were for specific moods or w/e.

Yes but also moods/activities are personal individual experiences. A sad song for one person could be a happy song for another. Why do we need so many automated options that remove the experience of putting together a mix of songs?

I don't think most casual music listeners know enough songs to put together a mix of songs for a particular mood

These playlists aren't for people who post on music message boards

193,882 minutes in 2017, and Raffi was my top artist because there are still aspects of spotify that are a failure.

can we all just agree that vinyl me please is extremely fuckin corny

(it is)

Are people genuinely finding it hard to discover new, challenging music? That seems mad.

My mood in 2017 was mellow gold. Good to know.

as an apple music user i feel very left out of this fun :(

And yes, Vinyl Me please is corny as hell, though I'll admit that I've clicked on a few of their articles that pop up on my fb as sponsored posts

It makes me very happy when somebody's top genre is one I named. Mandible, fluxwork, chamber psych! Mellow gold, sorta. But the fact that it's your #1 genre (which means you listened to a bunch of artists we think belong to that cluster) is evidence for the idea that it's a thing. I do sometimes make up names, but I don't make up the music or the listening patterns.

And if you didn't notice that the genres in that thing are links, you can always find them on everynoise.com...

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/Not-enough-data-for-Wrapped-2017-playlist/td-p/3638076
^this worked btw, probably worth fixing?

68k minutes, 6360 songs, 2659 artists
top artist was apparently E.T. Mensah and the Tempos, fave song was Duane Pitre's 'Bayou Electric'... which given that the song is 48 minutes suggests it's working off total time, not plays.
so the artist i listened to most had his big hits in 50's and 60's West Africa and the song i listened to most was a new age soundscape from 2015; cutting edge there.
on the other hand, my top genres are "pop rap, rap, indie r&b, hip hop and 'escape room'" lol

one of my "resolutions" was "keep paying for spotify!"
c'mon now

one of my top genres was "escape room" as well, and after doing a couple minutes of sleuthing i figured out an ilxor was behind it:

https://festivalpeak.com/what-is-escape-room-and-why-is-it-one-of-my-top-genres-on-spotify-a886372f003f

oh yeah, i think we cracked that one last year on this same thread! Glenn is creative.

my top genre was called "indie rock". I'll have what glenn's having!

Listening to the mandible playlist of 400-odd songs definitely confirms it is my thing, I was just startled by the name

Not that I have listened to all 400, but you know what I mean

I see the ones that got away (ugh) but where are you seeing Top Genres. Website? Email?

Guess it’s an email but don’t see it yet. Did notice a two-week old email from Spotify Research I had previously overlooked and clicked on the link which had expired.

Go to 2017wrapped.com

My phone provider gave me free Apple Music with free data this year so I've only logged 12k minutes of spotify listening. Can't quite remember my reason for continuing to pay for it.
Seems I still favour Alternative Rock and the new JAMC album not being shit was a big factor in my most listened artists/songs.

If Spotify mentions some genre that I've never heard of, that sounds made up, I just assume Glenn came up with it.

Unless he comes in here and says that he didn't come up with the term Metropopolis.

Metropopolis was the beginning...

Mondeopopolis

Popyourdopolis

george popotimismopoulos

i think the article does an impressive job of laying bare the incentives powering the industry along at the moment and suggesting how that could accelerate some not-always-great changes. and it doesn't just breathlessly imply idiotic stuff like "streaming gives the music industry data for the first time!!" as some other articles lately have come dangerously close to doing.

Some of the phrases and word choices are unnecessarily dramatic, but I kinda agree with the article although iHeartRadio is a larger threat at the moment.

i have seen some articles in the past few months saying that iheartmedia is in trouble financially and may not be able to operate anymore within a few years? does anyone who knows anything about business/corporate blahblah know if this would have any serious implications as to how radio operates if true?

2017wrapped.com, fun but inaccurate. It had Voivod as my #1 artist, but I never even played them on Spotify! I bought the reissue CDs and played those. Also, I probably ran Spotify 14 hours since yesterday, but the # minutes never changed.

The Wrapped list seemed not to take into account some (or all?) of the listening I did to music that had been saved to my phone. I've noticed that when I look at my queue/history on my laptop it tends to only reflect bits of what I've streamed on the phone, too.

Fastnbulbous, the Wrapped thing doesn't involve any guessing, so if it says Voivod, then your Spotify account definitely played them during 2017. Whether you were listening when it did, we can't tell!

The data for it is a static snapshot as of a little while ago, sadly, so it won't update with your listening from the rest of the year. I wish it did, but that would make the project much harder.

The queue-sharing issues are independent of the underlying listening history, which as far as I *know* has no systemic issues. I think the only way we wouldn't know about something you played offline is if you wiped the app or the phone after listening but before going back online again.

I'm puzzled at its insistence that 'indie Rock' is my most listened-to genre when very little in my top 100 would qualify save for maybe a handful of songs. I listened to Future Islands a bit, and a Camera Obscura song I like a few times but mostly it's other styles.
Was also consistently bamboozled at the Discover Weekly telling me I had to listen to things like Grizzly Bear and the National and other indie rock fare which I really dislike, and never any trap or afrobeat or dancehall or even house and techno which make a big part of my listening these days. What have I been doing wrong?