Spotify - anyone heard of it?

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

The crate is now the whole world. I spent decades flipping through bins. I don't miss cardboard.

(I don't like the promotional-rate idea, either, personally, but it's only for algorithmic radio/autoplay, not editorial playlists.)

for some reason its decided to keep switching off play today I was wondering if it was my mobile phone but its doing the same thing on my desktop.
Wonder if its the actual podcast

My wife and I have both had Spotify just not play things over the past few days. Like, you hit the play button, it changes to a pause button, but the transport control doesn't advance and no music comes out. Hit what's now the pause button and it turns back into a play button. Repeat several times, turn off phone and put on a record.

(Yes, our internet connection is fine.)

I am familiar with that

I generally have a fairly bug-free Spotify experience compared with others on this thread, but yes, I get the play doesn't play thing on desktop (Mac) quite often these days, usually when playing after a pause. A'Spotify cannot play the current song' tends to then come up and I have to relaunch the app for it to work again.

Need to find a way to add a 'force stop spotify' shortcut to my homescreen.

My wife and I have both had Spotify just not play things over the past few days

Have you tried logging a call and getting your wife to log a separate call? You can then each go through as many combinations as there are of enabling and disabling playback devices, apps, WiFi, 4G and Bluetooth before someone links it to a previously unresolved bug and marks it as resolved.

sounds like a blast!

I thought that turned out to only be one podcast that was glitching yesterday. Now found the same cutting out thing happening on another podcast from the same production team and then cos taht was happenning skipped over to a different one done by othger people and its carrying on,. Will play for like a minute and a half or something then cut out so it needs play pressed again, which I guess is pausing but it's not me doing it.
I thought at first there was some glitch causing my doing anything else on teh computer triggered the sound to go off. THis is really annoying.

Spotify now has Stories and can this please stop

Maybe if I search for 'ka' it could show me an artist called 'Ka', instead of 100+ (I stopped scrolling) artists whose name begins with 'Ka', or in some cases doesn't begin with 'Ka' or even contain 'ka'?

Yes, I love that under some search engine logic users who search for the letters "Ka" are more likely to be looking for Sizzla or K.K. or Anri than an artist with the actual name Ka.

The problem with automatically ranking exact matches first is that people will game it and create crappy pretend artists called Be just to hoover up search for Beyoncé. Because it works on an autosuggestion basis, right - there's no point at which you hit a button that finalizes your search query.

I guess Spotify could change that, though – and have return (or the search button on the mobile keyboard) actually have some effect.

Spotify should support regular expression searching. (only half kidding)

So... Top Songs time!

Enjoying looking through mine, although there seem to be a few tunes I don't really recognise, along with some puzzling ommissions. Glad to see my gaming of the system made "Fuck Tha Police" number one on my list https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1EM7dZXzJKyE9n?si=JfkWpTcZTzOyNO9C-EM5jg

Ha! Thanks to the ilxor poll I was in the Top 0.005% of Underworld listeners this year

I apparently 'discovered' 2,474 new artists this year. I suspect this is about 2,000 more than last year. wfh ftw!

(Tom Ewing's Twitter world cups will also have been a big factor in this, both directly and indirectly as I undertake a long term project of my best ofs for every year since 1950)

The podcast part did not at all line up with podcasts I actually listened to, very odd.

my top artist was Dee Dee Bridgewater, who i have never listened to. i asked my wife (who has her own account) if she’d played it on my computer or something and she has no memory of that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

if I listen to something a bunch in December will it impact the 2020 chart

Dee Dee Bridgewater's first lp was reissued by Mr BOngo 2 or 3 months ago. Wouldn't have anything to do with taht would it?
Also i think BGO put out a 2cd of about 4 of her later lps a little earlier

It's mystifying. She's huge in France, and my wife's French, so I feel like it's got to be her fault somehow. Dunno!

Stolen Spotify logins get shared/sold on the black market so it's possible someone else is using your account, Tracer.

https://support.spotify.com/us/article/someone-has-gained-access-to-my-account/
https://www.techradar.com/news/thousands-of-spotify-accounts-hacked-heres-what-you-need-to-know

If you want to be sure, you have to use the 'sign out everywhere' option as I think already-logged-in devices don't get kicked off just by you changing the password.

whoa

Dee Dee Bridgewater bots are ruining my life

Another year, another random artist I fall asleep to ends up on my Spotify Unwrapped :P In 2020 the honor goes to the Sandpipers (Guantanamera is a very nice album to fall asleep to, highly recommend).

ha

As is usually the case, all my top tracks and artists are stuff my wife or kids listen to. I'm a top 1% listener of a band I don't particularly care for.

my #1 was something I listened to on repeat for one day last February that I like well enough but is not particularly representative.

My top tracks are... yes, the tracks I listened to a lot. That was very exciting to see, thank you.

my top track that I actually listen to (Andy Stott - Dismantle) is one that is an auto-play track after almost everything I listen to, which accounts for its placing way more than the amount of times I actually decided to listen to it.

shockingly, I spent most of 2020 listening to clipping.

who could have seen that coming besides anyone within earshot of me during 2020

This is the first full year I've had Spotify, so I took a look at the wrapped thing even though the idea of Spotify packaging up all this data on me and presenting it to me creeps me out. It was kind of an interesting index to the pandemic, actually. No big surprises in the favorite artists category, but some songs showed up that made me go, "whaaa?" and then I realized this was something I'd listened to a lot in the very beginning of lockdown.