Spotify - anyone heard of it?

fake Elder track turned up in my release radar
https://open.spotify.com/album/2LghjX6Um8mcyXkoUxJrlR?si=a_Ckj9QKQiOiniFAXt1dTg&dl_branch=1

Accounting side has caught up with software side, and I've been informed that my Unlimited account billing is going away

Same here! I'd really like to keep Unlimited as I still have little use for the phone app. And I can't really afford an upgrade. Given the Unlimited option was grandfathered a very long time ago we're clearly very loyal customers, so I guess they're betting on us sticking around regardless. (Or there's so few of us left that they don't give a shit either way.)

I'll stick with free until/unless it's too annoying. I think I'll still be able to add to my existing playlists, the main one of which I play at work from someone else's (premium) account.

lol nm just noticed the grid/list toggle is still there at the top corner

seconding unperson's thanks for nashwan's wellspotted help! I've been annoyed for days too.

Makes you wonder how well that tested. It's wild to be having to scroll down so much for those oldest releases either way. Putting the releases in a table view effectively like the playlist view so you can sort by newest/oldest and other criteria could be a winner.

Ah, I see how it could test well, especially with a younger (whatever that means etc) audience: it is actually somewhat pleasant when the discography is short.

Has anybody else experienced the thing where you highlight something from the bottom of teh queue and try to move it only to find something completely different has been moved for no apparent reason. Just bugs me badly. & I don't know why it happens.
Am I missing how you highlight things because I have had things start playing when I've just been trying to highlight them before.
There's a lot about this interface that I don't like. Not sure if the cointinualk turnover of teh last few months has actually improved things has it.

But would really like to know if that thing where highlighting one thing appears to have another thing movable. I don't think what is being moved is actually something previously highlighted or anything. But I have seen that if I scroll through th elist i can sometimes find some random seeming thing highlighted for no apparent reason separate to what I have tried to highlight. Like what gives

I am assuming that the probl;ems I am having with interface are more widespread so wanted to check if teh same activity is happening with others. I would think that if one tried to highlight something in say Word and something else completely random moved ine would find it strange. So is this happening to others in the current set up of Spotify.
Or is everybody creating playlists for listening they will only do once. Should be able to set up a queued set of podcasts without need ing to have it be a unit that is more at least semi permanent.
Whatever, process of highlighting seems to be counterintuitiuve at best. I'm expecting the set of shows I've got lit up to be recognised when I click on them to move them in the queue not something completely different. I don't know what the completel;y different show's connection to being clicked on is. I noticed yesterday that if i clicked on one specific show I got a lit up bar across another several numbers in the queueing sequence higher. I couldn't see the connection with what I was trying to do. I unclicked the show I hadn't clicked but each time I clicked the one I was trying to move thsi one would also light up. Is that a bug or a feature?

Re: the Spotify Unlimited ending thing, I got that email too, but the regular 5 bucks payment was taken out as usual a few days ago, and after checking a few things it looks like the Unlimited subscription is still active but has reverted to its original form, i.e. full functionality on the desktop app but only the free version of the mobile app. I'm kind of peeved that I'm now only getting what I paid for, but fair play I suppose.

why does the program recommend albums then have every track blacked out so it won't play? Seems a bit counterproductive. From what I remember of trying to queue a track from this it just skips. Odd behaviour but I've seen it several times now.

I feel like you have a lot of weird technical issues that I've never seen before. Is anyone else confirming this stuff?

Not so far but I'm getting them frequently.

I've had some albums turn up in the reccommendations folders and they have had one lit up track for some reason. Which makes some sense but is still frustrating since would be good to have choice of tracks. But to have things turn up and have no playable tracks makes little sense.
Is it the fact I'm using Ubuntu as my OS?
Not functioning in the way I'd like it to anyway.
& still I think there were elements of the pre mess around interface that I preferred to current.

Latest one that was all blacked out was bruce palmer The Cycle is Completed which was in my Album Picks.
Not sure how bespoke that Album Picks thing is to me or alternatively how generic. Assume its somewhat based on my play choices but can tend to be a bit repetitive. Don't think I've seen that Bruce Palmer much before. Did mean to buy it when it was around as an I think Rhino handmade, saw it compared to peter green's solo lp The End of The Game. Long improvised mainly instrumental tracks.
Not heard it in an age though.

Anyone tried this?

Whatever you do, do *not* ingenuously tap @Spotify’s new “Enhance” button on one of your carefully hand-crafted playlists. It would more accurately be labeled “Vandalize,” or perhaps “Ruin.”

— Michael Chabon (@michaelchabon) September 18, 2021

uhoh

lol You can go back! Just tap "enhanced" again and it goes back to your original playlist!! in the replies

I think it should just mean it zooms in on the artwork images in the playlist view enough to make them having been worth including there

re: things being moved, i liked this https://kylechayka.substack.com/p/essay-the-digital-death-of-collecting (which is kind of like the spotify specific version of this https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/how-social-media-redesigns-manipulate-us)

Finally, in recent years, Spotify became the single international behemoth of mainstream music, an unavoidable* iceberg of content.

*citation needed

posting to link this question crut asked me but I haven't had the chance to expand all posts on a computer since

Not only is Spotify avoidable, there are a number of alternatives. That’s why I don’t really understand why people complain about it so bitterly, why not just try another service? They all have the same stuff, more or less(?)

Don't know if anyone else got the survey? Basically the gist seemed to be would I like to pay twice as much for a bunch of things that are very much not music. I would not.

Didn't see a survey, but was one of those things hi-rez streaming?

Actually, you’re right, that was the one musical thing.

Any word on Spotify HiFi? Announcement was in February which said later this year. Thoughts there would have been an update by now.

Seems all quiet. Just searched and there's been no follow-up.

Also to morrisp's point about alternatives... I signed up for an Apple Music trial this week just to dink around with the lossless and hi-def and Atmos and stuff. Maybe it's better to use on Apple hardware but on Android and PC it's not in Spotify's league at all. I'm using a USB DAC on my phone to sample some Atmos as those fancy features aren't even implemented in Windows yet. (I'll bump the Apple Music thread to see if anyone's heard anything interesting out of the selection of Atmos material)

The issues I had, at least, with the roll-out of Spotify's new desktop client were resolved. I still think the cluttering up of artist pages above their discography is a pain. The corralling of users towards podcasts and other cheap content is a pain. Joe Rogan sucks. It is worth discussion because it's still the sleekest service of its kind. Which is pretty wild. Or maybe Tidal has gotten a lot better since I last saw it?

xps What was in this survey? Please paste if it was emailed. I've turned off as much annoyance as I could in the app so maybe it didn't pop it up at me, if it's in there.

To add to my point (such as it is) - I understand some folks have tons of saved playlists or whatever in Spotify, which has a "lock-in" effect.

True. I wouldn't let that stop me from moving (a third party converter would carry them over well enough), but there aren't as many interesting playlists on other services. Spotify's own playlist curation and what's been put there by labels/companies/artists/fans has become a selling feature.

I particularly like that you can use the Radio feature on a track, an artist, an album, a playlist. This has been very useful to me for tailoring searches for new music that matches a particular style that I want.

I think Glenn came to them from their acquisition of "Echo Nest" to do such things? Is there anything comparable? God dang it

when everything but the music keeps subscribers around, one can forgive spotify for thinking the music is not their product

I feel like these features enable me to hear a lot more music that I wouldn't otherwise encounter, which also leads me to buying that music on other platforms like bandcamp or beatport, but I know that isn't everyone's experience

I am enjoyiong the recommendations when they're not overly repetitive. Heard some new sounds that I hadn't before but do have the same things turning up in apparent rotation in that feature. & do wonder how much clicking on free etc jazz artists I would need to do to have taht become a regular feature in that cos it seems I'm getting a lot more rock & psychedelic stuff but do wonder if that is inevitable anyway. & do assume that continually clicking on whatever black artists turn up in the recommendations would colour the algorithm's recommendations and so on.

Currently got a playlist with 100+ titles in. Which I think would probably have caused it to get dumped a few weeks ago. But still apparently randomly selecting titles within that list if i go to move things around. Do wonder if there is an ASCII or similar coding that I'm missing that would make sense of that iff i did know more about how the programming involved worked. Or if it is truly random.

I've found with radio playlists that the first big chunk of tracks will mostly be ones I'm familiar with, but if I scroll down to the point where there are tracks that are new to me and start from there, I end up getting more stuff that I haven't heard before as it adds to the end of the list.

That you're familiar with the first handful just makes it sound more eerily accurate. It doesn't know exactly what you've spent years with before you used Spotify. It will probably be more useful for people now growing up on Spotify.

Anyways I think reading ilm has been even more helpful to me in hearing about good new music. So uh, go humans

the first bunch of songs on most auto-generated playlists are almost always songs that I've listened to a lot lately or very closely related to them

The “radio” playlists always throw in a lot of tracks you already know and listen to, and are clearly affected by your account’s taste profile (or whatever Spotify would call it). To get music recommendations that are similar to a given track without the suggestions being so “contaminated” with stuff you’re already familiar with, start a new playlist containing only that track, then look at the recommended tracks that appear at the bottom of that new playlist.

Another way to see what Spotify track radio would have produced without personalization is to stick a track link or URI into https://everynoise.com/research.cgi?mode=radio&name=spotify:track:1vzqcPRQ6P1Uw7NZ5M77wJ. Radio currently has a pretty strong popularity bias in addition to the personalization, though. The Fans Also Like list on artist pages has less of that.

going to give this a try. I already use your new releases page as a starting point for a lot of my searches.

Another way to see what Spotify track radio would have produced without personalization is to stick a track link or URI into https://everynoise.com/research.cgi?mode=radio&name=spotify:track:1vzqcPRQ6P1Uw7NZ5M77wJ.

This looks really useful, cheers. I'm probably missing the obvious but is there a way to turn the 100 tracks into a playlist on Spotify?

Oh, there's a way to get the list of track URIs, but it currently requires an extra step. Hang on.

OK, I added a "show track URIs" link at the bottom. Click that and you'll get a list of URIs that you can copy and paste into a blank playlist (using the desktop app).

Woah, I thought I was being dumb and missing a link - didn't expect you to go to any trouble! Thank you.

release radar is becoming useless. Each week there are fake acts or bullshit like this
https://i.imgur.com/eeuLZex.png
https://i.imgur.com/8FOyq5p.png

radar traditionally requires a more discerning human eye to determine if the blips are real. it's all part of the RADARness.

spotify will continue to throw everything with non-zero CAN and Minutemen cross-section your way. we're all on this base together.

Wow very annoying issue! When I click discography or albums on an artist page i just go straight to the last album. Can't browse albums on artist page. Anyone know a solution?

Are you on desktop? Switch the view from list to grid, it will remember your choice.