Spotify - anyone heard of it?

Thanks for bringing that over, I was about to do the same. Curious to why this is suddenly happening to prominent indie bands.

Useful to remember that all music is delivered to Spotify through licensors, in bulk. No artist is logging in and uploading songs, that isn't a thing (yet). So when stuff like this happens, it's not an account-security issue, it's that somebody decided to type "Moses Gunn Collective" into the "artist" field on their new release, and the artist was obscure enough that they got away with it for a few days before somebody reported it.

(It's still a real problem, mind you, and this recent spate of junk aimed at indie bands is all coming from one licensor and being investigated...)

Thanks, Glenn. Just out of curiosity, why does the obscurity of the artist matter for something like this? Why isn’t the new entry treated as a different artist (with the same name), instead of automatically linked up with an existing one?

I forgot to add: she continued to insist she was right after I started to GIS.

Thanks, Glenn. Just out of curiosity, why does the obscurity of the artist matter for something like this? Why isn’t the new entry treated as a different artist (with the same name), instead of automatically linked up with an existing one?

Of course, but what I’m saying is, why are they automatically linked up in the database? Why is it not treated as a different entity unless proven otherwise (whatever that would mean)? A lot of bands have identical names (historically, anyway).

I thought that problem had been solved when the Spotifys of the world finally stopped infecting the artist page for Unrest (the ‘80s/‘90s indie band) with albums & tracks by more recent hardcore/metal bands with the same name (there’s still one of those on YouTube Music, actually).

We get stuff from the same real bands via multiple distributors all the time, due to the fractured nature of global licensing, so "different entity unless proven otherwise" would produce the opposite problem where one band would routinely end up with many separate profile pages that would have to be manually combined. So there's a complicated bit of software that tries to use multiple cues to figure out what the right assignments are for ambiguous submissions. It usually works, and we have a team of people checking questionable cases and fixing things. This particular case is in some ways the hardest, because a new "Moses Gunn Collective" release arrives and we've only ever seen one artist by that name, so there has to be some piece of data that really clearly indicates this is not that band. For you, as a human who knows the band, it's clear when you listen. Computers can't do that nearly as well. We do use some audio analysis to flag potential mismatches, but with 50k+ releases every week, it's hard to check all the ones that might be wrong. So we tend to check in popularity order, to try to catch the cases that will affect the most listeners...

tl/dr: I hate Yo La Tengo

not sure this phenomenon hurts Yo La Tengo much. Would be more accurate to say "tldr: I hate Yo La Tengo listeners". and fair enough, spotify, fair enough.

xxp Interesting, thx glenn

honestly don't know what i've done to get jack kerouac on my discover weekly. also the pogues, other irish music, ethiopan jazz, but i can tolerate those.

honestly i've been pretty much mainlining autechre for weeks on end just to see what it throws up and it's like 'hey try some woody guthrie!'

I see the false Pavement has now been broken off and given their own artist page (guess I was one of those 168 listeners in Los Angeles).

Appears to be down

desktop app is not working.

web version search isnt working but if you have the url to the album it will play

a former uk ilxor from the very early days of ilx signed up for Spotify today and clearly broke UK spotify.

Working for me through Android.

desktop app seems to be working again

it was really laggy and unresponsive yesterday evening for me. seems fine now.

mostly an interview with Jared at Bandcamp, but still goes here. liked the Ed. note

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/19/903547253/a-tale-of-two-ecosystems-on-bandcamp-spotify-and-the-wide-open-future

[Ed. note: We've been noticing, anecdotally but with increasing frequency, that many new releases we'd like to include on our playlists don't make the jump from being posted on Bandcamp to appearing on platforms like Spotify.]

That was great, thanks!

Good article, though the introductory paragraphs are a bit like RADIOS DO THIS, RECORD SHOPS DO THAT, WHY DO PEOPLE LISTEN TO THE RADIO NOT GO TO THE RECORD SHOP?!?!

“Hide song” doesn’t sync across clients?

Just idly wondering if tags would be a possible/useful feature? I have so many bloody playlists that some days I'd like to be able to search my own library by mood, or country or feel.

I imagine anything more complex around personal tagging of tracks than the starring, at least across multiple devices, would be a big headache to implement. Would be brilliant to have, though. I'd love a notes field, or the ability to add your own accurate year info.

Yes, I imagine it's down to the complexities of management. Ah well.

Have they cut down number of daily mixes? I seem to have 4 rather than 6.

you have angered spotify, and they are being passive aggressive about it. (I have 6).

what's up with the weird unofficial albums that pop up from time to time?

i came across this one the other day:https://open.spotify.com/album/5YJnD5KqNUwbV3AnXEIYTU?si=t-HZeuSDRWqcHBrnbsty-w

and i just have to wonder who exactly is responsible for such things. and why.

Good question

it's basically unlistenable. idgi. is anyone going to the tony toni tone and getting fooled into playing it for more than thirty seconds?

reminds me of torrenting a jurassic 5 album back in the day (lol) that was industry chaff where they looped the hook for four minutes. had me thinking they got into some minimalism shit.

Rolling thread for young whippersnappers using old bands names on Spotify etc

Have they cut down number of daily mixes? I seem to have 4 rather than 6.

― Dan Worsley, Sunday, 23 August 2020 14:46 (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think it goes up and down depending on the quantity and variety of your listening. I currently have 5.

LISTEN HARDER

You can’t listen to music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough.

adopt a model of continual engagement with the algorithm

Just idly wondering if tags would be a possible/useful feature? I have so many bloody playlists that some days I'd like to be able to search my own library by mood, or country or feel.

― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Sunday, August 23, 2020 3:47 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

I imagine anything more complex around personal tagging of tracks than the starring, at least across multiple devices, would be a big headache to implement. Would be brilliant to have, though. I'd love a notes field, or the ability to add your own accurate year info.

― Alba, Sunday, August 23, 2020 3:59 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah I was thinking how much I'd like tags too, or even notes. I notice going through albums I've added to my library that I don't even remember why I added them...I heard a song and liked it? Someone recommended it to me? I saw it mentioned on xyz?

Tags would be helpful when it comes to specific tracks as well, instead I just create playlists named after the "tag" and add the songs. I wish more of last.fm's personalization features would be offered by any major streaming service...

You can write descriptions of playlists, up to 300 words I think.

Spotify are doing the free Google Nest Mini speaker offer again for anyone in the UK who doesn't already have Premium or who has Premium but hasn't already claimed a speaker.

Yeah I could add the contents of an album to a playlist, and then move that playlist to add it to a library folder, and then add a description (which I've never had the option to do on mobile afaik, which is where I do 90% of my listening/browsing)

My easier idea to do the same thing: click the Heart icon on an album and add a hashtag. Now it's tagged and in my library.

I realize Spotify isn't going to offer this kind of functionality unless they do a major pivot towards "social," and I have no leverage as a consumer because I still wouldn't give up Spotify's recommendations/custom playlists for a service with hashtags lol. Still holding out hope that some version of tagging/personal labeling will be possible in the near future...

Oh good, new desktop client has no easy way to get to local files

If you're curious what Spotify listening data reveals about the music kids like, around the world, my PopCon contribution this year is a web thing to help you find out.

The Aqueduct of Youth

(The panel it's part of is called The Platforms of Youth: Meme-ing, Marketing & Streaming, with five other explorations of "Old Town Road", Christian musicals, aging, Tiktok and VSCO Girls...)

what the @ the "classic" kids listening in Australia being the exact same 1980s Triple M FM artists as the classic adults listening, but different songs

Interesting! Checking out the South African and Dutch rankings right away. Am I correct in thinking the lists are filtered, with only “homegrown” stuff allowed in? Or is any song that doesn’t overlap with another country’s lists eligible - because there are some “international” (=by US artists) songs in the South African classic list?

(also, not your presentation, but “Brittany” Spears???)

There's no filtering, it's just driven by distinctive listening. Music can come from anywhere.

Some of those record covers tho.

Cyprus dude looks like a stand up comic. Not sure what's going on with the Serbian. Ukraine guy looks like a football hooligan/ star of a cheapo remake of 'crank'. No way does anyone under the age of fifty listen to the Ecuadorian effort. Conan Gray bosses everything by refusing to be restrained by national borders.

xp

Googling for the term “distinctive listening” just now, because I wasn’t familiar with it, I came across a 2014 article by you:
https://www.significancemagazine.com/culture/83-the-sounds-of-places-mapping-the-world-s-musical-taste

”We do, in fact, have per-country top-track charts in Spotify itself. These measure the absolute popularity of tracks among the sub-population listening in a given country. Statistically, though, these charts tend to be fairly well dominated by global hits. (...) When I say I want to hear what they're listening to in Estonia, I mean that I want to hear what they're listening to in Estonia that, proportionally speaking, nobody is listening to anywhere else. I want to hear the music that is most uniquely Estonian, or more precisely the music that is most uniquely loved by Estonians. So I've been experimenting with code to generate the kind of additional alternate chart that I mean, measuring the most distinctive listening of a country. It's not perfect, and the occasional global hit wanders in due to emotionally irrelevant factors like regional licensing contingencies. But for the most part these charts do appear to be rather effectively getting past the global to the local.”

Yeah, without knowing what % of local kids are listening to this stuff rather than “global hits,” I’m not sure what we’re supposed to take from it.