Spotify - anyone heard of it?

I used to have their app, glad to hear they’re streaming!

well it depends on what the artists want to be streamable, but yeah

i actually use the bandcamp app. it’s nice. sort of a “here’s the music i care about enough to actually pay for” all in one place.

Top comment on r/indieheads:

extremely telling that they waited for election eve so that they could try to slip this through the cracks. they know how shitty and terrible they are being here and are terrified about how much blowback this rightfully deserves.

I agree this is a despicable thing to do.

https://gizmodo.com/spotify-finds-a-pay-for-play-workaround-1845554656

Guardian reporting on it too

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/nov/03/spotify-artists-promote-music-exchange-cut-royalty-rates-payola-algorithm

"payolgarithm"

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55c6866ae4b05dcc99ee3b4a/t/56352661e4b0270138b3707f/1602669505958/

I mean the problem is that artists already got paid cents with Spotify, and this model makes it so that they get paid to even be invited to the playground. If they're not game, they don't get featured in the top - or not featured at all - of new music releases, spotify playlists, recommendations, radio, etc... so now you have to be paid even shittier amounts if you want in.

It's plain evil and will not only affect artists for the worst but its audience too.

it's always been a shit business model

I feel like it is every tech company’s model: hollow out an existing industry or industries and hoover up all the money while passing along marginal savings. No wonder inequality is at Robber Baron levels.

Ok, nice customer service story:

I’ve subscribed to Spotify Premium pretty much since the beginning. I’ve held off upgrading to Family bc the Hulu deal goes away if you have Family. At any rate, my older daughter uses my account on their iOS – and tells me last week: “I signed up for Duo.” And of course, two days later comes and tells me, “What’s our Hulu password? It isn’t working.”

Anyway I chatted online w customer service and asked if they could undo it and was told they couldn’t bc that the deal was no longer available in their computer system. I said I was a little disappointed bc I was a longtime and happy customer. Before the chat ended, I told the person I understood it was out of their hands but asked if there was poss. a supervisor who could manually do it. They said they’d ask – and an hour later I got an email from a supervisor restoring the deal.

I wasn’t expecting Spotify to even have customer service as a digital company so this was surprising to say the least. Good stuff.

i'm laughing as i type this, but the play button keeps fucking up on my spotify, just does nothing, i keep clicking it

nb. laughing as i type this

Great news! Every penny of value that musicians have earned for Spotify has been paid back to them, so Spotify can drop another another $235 million on a loss-making podcast advert company35 million on a loss-making podcast advert company, in order to onsell their own data-mining services to the creators of podcasts that use that company.

spotify:album:47frms8fSk3Cp9ZCA80tfx
is very much NOT tr/st, but someone called Trust

anybody heard of it?

Why Is The Obscure B-Side “Harness Your Hopes” Pavement’s Top Song On Spotify? It’s Complicated.

https://www.stereogum.com/2105993/pavement-harness-your-hopes-spotify/columns/sounding-board/

It's becoming really erratic recently. I keep getting multiple duplicates of one podcast turning up in the queue or having the queue and recent searches disappear.
I reinstalled it last night and it was still doing the multiple podcast thing afterwards.

Also ads turning up when I'm being charged for premium.

Oh yeah for some reason it's decided to play back silently for the last few days.
May have something to do with webinars I've been at but other sound on the desktop work.youtube,audacious etc.
& trying to swap etween other sound outlets does nothing.

Ubuntu updated recently not sure if it's anything to do with that.annoying though.

Think it was mentioned upthread but are the ads when you're listening to podcasts as think some have ads embedded in them?

yeah most podcasts have baked-in ads

I keep losing my place in podcasts across devices. If go tablet > phone > tablet it forgets everything I've listened to on the phone in between.

That Stereogum/Pavement article is interesting. There's an upside in that guys like Malkmus presumably make a bit more money than they would otherwise have seen and I like the idea of a deep cut rising to prominence and popularity but something seems a bit off.

Like in the same way your daily mixes all end up sounding like they never change, are the impersonal algorithms driving us towards the platonic ideal of lo fi indie rock at the exclusion of anything that doesn't quite fit the unpublished criteria?

(not sure I'm expressing that very well, sorry)

ads I was referring to seem to be ore localised on US or UK podcasts I'm listening to in Ireland. So can't see how an ad relevant to Ireland would be embedded n a foreign show which is what i seem o keep hearing at least. Also ads creeping in between shows

i was about to comment on the targeted podcast ads. I get ads for Canadian banks when i download, like, Reply All in Pocketcasts. But in Spotify I just noticed that the episode runtimes are a few minutes shorter, and i couldn't find ads in the episode i just fast forwarded through. Interesting.

People on the Gimlet subreddit just seem to be annoyed that the hosts aren't reading the ads anymore.

i've heard of spotify

Have heard hosts reading ads. POd Save crew still seem to pretty regularly at least for their sponsors etc.
I think others do too still. Daily Beans crew too.

I should've said that Spotify owns Gimlet. Have they bought any other "networks" or just some single show deals?

https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/10/spotify-buying-podcast-hosting-and-ad-company-megaphone-for-235m/?

Ah i guess this has something to do with their podcast ad experimenting. Bleh.... sticking to my podcast app.

I get pretty frustrated by Spotify trying to overguess what I'm searching for. Like if I search for the band Come and look in the artist results why isn't that band one of the first results rather than result number 116 (literally)? And after artists named Corey Taylor, Honeycomebear and Friggen Comedy Network?

Searching for classical pieces is a big pain.

https://i.imgur.com/YkJwJSF.jpg

...or 7,400 new paying members in a month

they could save $7k by getting rid of the turntable and bluetoothing Spotify streams to that setup

New tech support / complaint while on my iPhone: I have a lot of folders for all my playlists and it used to be that if I was inside a folder and wanted to create a new playlist, that’s where the playlist would show up. Now if I create a new playlist it automatically appears in the main menu, meaning I can’t move it to the folder I want until I’m using Spotify in a desktop. (Which brings up a second irritation - as far as I can tell I can’t move things around within the mobile app, only on desktop.)

you can but it's complicated

Ah i guess this has something to do with their podcast ad experimenting. Bleh.... sticking to my podcast app.

Of all these acquisitions, Parcast might be the one you could most reasonably think of as a content farm for audio. Its scripts are at least in part written by freelance “content writers” and read by voiceover actors; one recent job listing solicited freelancers to write scripts for ten cents per word. Their recently unionized staff call working there “unsustainable“ and “unforgiving,” and report not being allowed to pitch stories. And, of course, this studio’s cheaply made offerings are getting prime placement all over the platform now that they’re owned by Spotify.

Over the past year, Spotify transformed its stated aspirations as a company. It used to see itself as the go-to platform providing “music for every mood and moment”—not just a music streaming service but one that knows your taste better than you know it yourself. That changed in February 2019, when Spotify announced its acquisitions of Gimlet and Anchor in a letter declaring itself “Audio First,” where CEO Daniel Ek wrote that Spotify’s goals were expanding beyond music in a bid to become “the world’s number one audio platform.” The letter was standard PR fodder, with promises of increased capacities for “discovery, data, and monetization to creators” and “enhancing the Spotify brand.” But in interviews throughout the year, Spotify execs have made different types of claims about what’s also motivated the move into podcasts: advertising profits!

From the new Liz Pelly vs Spotify joint:
https://thebaffler.com/downstream/podcast-overlords-pelly

Interesting suggestion that Spotify is aiming to create a substitute for mixed-format radio:

Along with “Daily Wellness” and “Your Daily Drive,” Spotify has rolled out a number of other podcast playlist related announcements in recent months. There’s already additional personalized music-and-podcasts playlists, like “Mixto” (Latin music and podcasts) and “Film & TV Favorites” (interviews with music supervisors).

When Spotify encourages listeners to create a “habit” around coming to its platform for its playlists instead of for specific artists or podcasters, it does a few things. One, it diminishes the relationships that listeners have with what they’re listening to—watering down the experience of being a music fan, or now a podcast fan, because they’re listening to lots of different media but not forging deep relationships with specific artists and shows. It also strips agency and power from the people who make the work that sustains the platform: if users are coming to the platform for a playlist instead of a specific artist or podcaster, whether or not Spotify is able to retain those artists or podcasters on its platform matters very little to their bottom line. If they screw over the independent food podcasters and they all decide to leave the platform, what difference does that make to the listener who is just used to hitting play on the “Chill Dinner Time Talk” podcast playlist and won’t know the difference anyway? Spotify will find another podcaster to add to a playlist, or even better, get some new stuff going in Spotify Studios.

Not to undermine the shittiness of a lot of what Spotify does, but if people are going to consume like mindless drones with no thought or taste, the problem is not just Spotify.

Yeah but can't I consume like an ethical thoughtless tasteless mindless drone?

One might contend that using billions in venture capital to intentionally train a mass audience away from making their own decisions and away from paying for audio, attempting to deliberately leave musicians and narrowcasters with fewer viable options and to eradicate both physical and digital music retail, is on the "Spotify's fault" side of the ledger.

I mean, I don't use it, but I'm happy to take a few billion $ off a consortium of investors and buy some CDs at independent record shops if that helps. Could run a venue or three if there's any dosh left over.

Personally, I haven't the slightest interest in sacrificing any of my music-listening time to have blogs read aloud to me.

But trying to attract an audience to the "platform" is what all media companies do and have always done. A radio station or newspaper or magazine is trying to create a "habit" around its packaging of whatever. Spotify programming accounts for only 10-20% of the average listener's Spotify time, so the idea of mindless indiscriminate manipulated consumption is a dystopian fantasy meant to attract readers to blog posts...

I've enjoyed the kind of programming you've done on the platform, Glenn, to point me to music I might like. That's mindless on my end. It's been cute that it has made accidental hit songs, but the payola getting involved with this is turning me off of listening to the suggestions at all.

You can't deny the company is working on making the whole experience more and more effortless for users. As you successfully attract more users who sign up for background noise, it's going to alienate the music nerds who joined up first. That's apparent from moves like making artist discographies less and less prominent. Anyway, hope API access persists.

I still feel superserved as a music nerd: like I get access to so much more than the average user needs, for the same price.

The one change that's bummed me out is removing the part of the API that allows pitch control in apps like DJay. I don't know Spotify did that, unless it has some DJing product of its own up its sleeve.

don't know why Spotify did that, that's should read

Tidal can do it now, I guess? Probably they or someone else will become the dork platform of choice as Spotify tries to go wider and wider. I'm just here trying to sample lots of music without going broke.

Since there's no more Spotify in djay, what were you pitch shifting with?

I'm not a DJ but just did it for fun sometimes. I haven't done it since Spotify pulled the plug in July. I guess I can pay for a month of Tidal if I want to do it in Djay again.

Same here. Was just wondering if there was some kind of DJ app still working.

"More effortless" is not the same as "more passive". I spend most of my own time exploring music, as I have for most of my life. The amount of effort is more or less constant, but streaming allows me to apply that effort mostly to listening, instead of mostly to shopping. This is qualitatively more effective and interesting.

Discographies are 1 tap deep on mobile and 0 clicks away on desktop where there's more screen space. That's not "less and less", and barely even one "less"...

This is qualitatively more effective and interesting.

Crate diggers might not agree on this point!

I’m back to spinning vinyl. All the latest obnoxious moves by Spotify suck. The special low tier where they pay you less and might actually (no guarantees though!) place your songs on an editorial playlist is pretty gross.

On the non-dance-music side, I’m also just bummed out by everything becoming singles-focused. I would love a “new albums” section in the UI. I’d also love more promotion of user playlists and user tastemakers. I feel that would generate more engagement without making it all seem like you are gently being herded into Spotify’s endgame of total vertical control of every link in the music supply chain.

effort