Spotify - anyone heard of it?

Caviar the Vote!

Also a lot of tracks 10 minutes or longer are now disabled.]

Re-enabled now. That was a scary week.

Spotify stock closed today at an all-time low. The company's market value has declined by a whopping 0 billion since July 26. https://t.co/k20rCCfxLU Here's what I wrote back then, and it's all coming true. https://t.co/XbZuCj0lCk

— Ted Gioia (@tedgioia) November 1, 2018

probably not related, but i’ve just signed back up after years away, and the (ios at least) interface is so much clunkier than everything else i’ve been using (apple music, google play music, amazon music). along with the weird spotify connect issues i’ve been having, there’s no compelling reason for me to keep subscribing.

Yeah -- I qualified for a 3-month Amazon Music trial, so I've been using that instead, and I like the mobile interface a lot more. (I haven't done a deep dive into how the selection compares.)

This Spotify thing is what I expected - the labels will end up setting royalty rates low enough for the company to survive (as long as it stays on the ball tech-wise) as a competitor to the tech giants but not so low that they can ever make serious money. Good for the future of the platform, not much in it for 3rd party investors.

I don't mind the UI but if Spotify ever disables API access (for DJ apps), I'll bail.

my #1 Spotify UI complaint is that when you clear the search bar by clicking the X, it also navigates away from whatever you were just looking at and brings you to "Recently Played"

yeah that kills me on the reg. but would Spotify really be Spotify without many pointless interstitial taps?

what would people suggest instead of Spotify then? Google's music interface looks even clunkier than spotify's, Apple can go do one, Tidal is more expensive (twice?), anyone had experience with Deezer?

Apple can go do one?

I'll find it hard to forgive apple for the agony iTunes gave me when I was synching up my 20GB iPod back in the day. Is their music app not shit now?

as in, has their app moved from shit to not-shit?

I've tried both google play and deezer and neither is as good as spotify, despite spotify's flaws. Never tried apple music because I have heard it is not very good on android and doesn't support casting. I guess I should give Tidal a shot at some point.

thanks. I'm fine sticking with Spotify tbh, none of the niggles really hurt me.

Try Amazon, I’m tellin’ ya. I ordered a 2CD and somehow qualified for three months of Amazon Music; maybe you can figure out how to trigger that promotion

iTunes is incredibly powerful as a local music library manager (esp with scripts), but I’m sticking with Spotify in the browser for streaming.

The new spotify app is finally available for roku. Only problem is you have to have the latest roku OS, and the roll out for that could extend through the end of the year.

iTunes is incredibly powerful as a local music library manager (esp with scripts), but I’m sticking with Spotify in the browser for streaming.

Doug's scripts for iTunes are the ones i know - i haven't looked at the site for years but i think he keeps them updated

Amazon seems shit unless you ONLY want to listen to an act's most recent album. This is in Australia, though, where every aspect of Amazon is more expensive and less good than everywhere else in the world.

Indeed the Doug’s scripts site is a great resource but I’ve also written a few myself to scrape info like year/genre through the Discogs API and Google.

Yikes

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181105005454/en/Spotify-Announces-Stock-Repurchase-Program-1.0-Billion

I approve of this

Welcome online, Adam Rickitt! Abandoned pop's digital revival
Some of the biggest 90s and 00s pop hits are now available to stream, thanks to one dogged fan’s Twitter campaign, Pop Music Activism

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/nov/06/pop-online-forgotten-90s-00s-hits-pop-music-activism?CMP=fb_gu

https://thanksgiving.withspotify.com/

i am blown away by how terrible spotify is compared to when i stopped paying two years ago.

• discover weekly claims it's "updated every monday" but i'm still seeing a playlist from 2016 (same with release radar)
• no way to see albums in my saved artists (why would anyone design anything like this?)
• track time played/time remaining vanishes after two seconds (again, why?)
• the app claims to be offline ~30% of the times i open it and just won't let me do anything
• alexa/spotify connect integration is a train wreck, it never lists all my speaker groups and the volume does whatever the fuck it likes
• the current song keeps playing even if i pause, change tracks, kill/restart the app, etc – this happens seriously 80% of the time

and right now spotify's displaying track 2 but playing track 4 and that's only coming out of one speaker

i'm not having any of the problems you are (except the albums/saved artist thing, which is the design)

maybe try restarting your computer, or buying a new computer?

but yeah, if you were using the same computer 2 years ago and didn't have any of those problems, i can see why that would be really frustrating

believe me i've tried restarting, reinstalling, regrouping speakers, everything, makes no difference. i use apple and google (and sometimes amazon prime) music and they're all fine.

right now it's just started playing track 13 of the same album, and like three seconds in the display suddenly jumped to track 14 for no reason whatsoever, but track 13 is still playing.

with a few days in this sub month i'm almost completely uninvested in trying to fix any of these daft bugs, just entertained by how kak it is.

maybe try buying CDs?

what is this “buy” music

This 'mouse' is awful. I can barely move it with my foot and the buttons seem to be for someone with two massive toes.

i am blown away by how terrible spotify is compared to when i stopped paying two years ago.

discover weekly claims it's "updated every monday" but i'm still seeing a playlist from 2016 (same with release radar)

Maybe those playlists are premium features if they stopped at the same time you stopped paying.

I've never had any of those issues, very strange

Maybe those playlists are premium features if they stopped at the same time you stopped paying.

i’m paying now though

how long ago did you start paying again? maybe it just takes a few weeks to analyze your listening and come up with a new discovery playlist

yeah i’m guessing that’s what it is (despite me actively using it on premium for weeks), but i can’t see that written anywhere. i’ve just unfollowed it to see if that kickstarts anything.

someone posted on this thread a few months ago about the albums saved to their library would now only display in the order they were added, rather than a-z by artist

the same thing happened to me, so I guess this is an across the board thing - does anyone know if there's a way to change this?

this is on apple watches now

can people with the free version of Spotify search for playlists? i'm assuming they can, but it's been awhile. i want to share a "mix" with a friend, and the easiest way i can think of to do it is to make a spotify playlist, but he doesn't have the paid version.

If you right click on the playlist you can copy the link and send it to him via text/mail.

sweet, thanks!

canned this. got three months of amazon music unlimited for au$1 and it's already better.

amazon has less music in the US. I use it for sonos moana soundtrack kid time though

amazon is good at ops and nothing else. imo you won't be happier with it.

yeah i'm pretty sure i won't be happier with it, but for a dollar i'll get in a load of streaming until february and then just cancel. between apple and google i'm well sorted.

(off-topic, sorry)

Spotify excitingly now losing local files it has been able to play for months or years