Spotify - anyone heard of 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.

Where do i change that?

On the right of the albums page, there are two little icons for grid & list view.

Is there a way of controlling the layout of size of icons etc . Or do you just need to wait for it to fix itself automatically. I had to reinstall the app on my desktop a couple of days ago and it came in with the display larger than I wanted it and couldn't find a way to alter it. it has now corrected itself but I was wondering if it was something that the user could control since i couldn't find a way of doing so.
Like the file system on my computer has a way of choosing which size icons you used so wonder if the same is true of Spotify and i'm just not seeing where the controls are. Looked around and didn't see an easy way of doing it.

Had to reinstall cos it seemed that after the programme finally did wipe the playlist instead of transferring it to my phone, when I went to add new podcasts it seemed the queue had gone blank again. NOt sure if that is just going blank or just too dark to read what has been added. & really not something i wanted to have to work out as i was trying to go out which is why I was trying to transfer in the first place. Ho hum

On a mac you can do Cmd+ and Cmd- to make them grow and shrink. I'm guessing that on Windows Ctrl+ and Ctrl- would do the same.

Ah got it, thanks anagram!

Lots of Jackson C. Frank today. How did it know?

something going wrong today meant that a couple of queues got shortened as I highlighted things to move them . NOt sure if taht was Spotify, my computer or what but very badly timed. & I kep hoping it will finally have got over difficulty in transfering from the desktop to the phone but no, wiped teh list I'd sorted just before I was heading out. Lovely

right, just had the same thing happen again. I had several titles highlighted cos i was going to move them to the top of the queue I had ctrl pressed down and went to add another title . Instead of highlighting it started playing erasing all of the titles above it on the queue.
So not sure if that is programme or keyboard/computer malfunctioning

This is a minor annoyance but recently when playing Spotify through Bluetooth in my car it’ll display the title of the first song and won’t update the title when the next song plays. I thought it might be my car but did the same when I tried in a friend’s car.

Seems I’m not the only one with this issue https://www.reddit.com/r/spotify/comments/mmkyvu/bluetooth_issue_where_song_name_isnt_updating_on/

Using Android 10.0.1 fwiw.

I've been getting that too the last few days

Have another weird one. I've got a couple of paired Alexa speakers in most rooms which I usually play Spotify through. Have noticed now that first song plays correctly through both speakers but as soon as the next track starts it just plays through only one of the speakers.

Seems to be a weird bug where you might find single releases by a band through playlists though they're not listed under Albums nor Singles/EPs from the band's page. Just noticed this with the Casanova 70 single by Air.

I'm not sure if that's a bug as I've noticed lots like that where a track is on a compilation album that's on Spotify but the single or album it's from isn't.

That said I can see Air's Premiere Symptomes EP listed under their singles 🤷‍♂️

glenn, for that radio page that you linked, is there a way to plug in URIs for other objects like playlists/albums/artists?

xp in this case you can't even get search results for the four track single release (also listed as from 2004 rather than 1996) so the only way to it is through playlists or direct link

You can use artists or tracks in that radio thing, but the public API doesn't support albums or playlists as seeds (although obviously the app itself does).

You can use the same tool to answer these availability questions, too. E.g.:

https://everynoise.com/artistprofile.cgi?id=1P6U1dCeHxPui5pIrGmndZ#0HCq99iUU77YIMOagEgM6L

That Air EP itself is only available in the US, but the first two tracks are also available on the Premiers Symptômes EP, and the two remixes are also on The Remixes - Vol.1. Both of those are available widely. So if you're not in the US, the Casanova 70 EP isn't listed, but if you get to it anyway, all 4 tracks can be played by internal redirection to the other releases.

why am I hearing commercials on my paid account for the first time ever?

Did you have Unlimited instead of Premium?

yes. did they change it?

Yeah, they eliminated Unlimited a couple of years ago on the functionality side and (I think) everyone who had it got bumped up to Premium, meaning you could use the mobile app, but the $5 price stayed the same. The business side caught up this year and eliminated Unlimited as a billing option and bumped everyone who had it back down to the free tier with ads.

wow, OK fuck that, bye

My new releases list on the app is absolutely flooded with cat spam featuring the artist RelaxMyCat - "Piano For Cats", "Cat Music Dreams", "Sleepy Cats (Cheerful)", etc. I'm impressed by the algorithmic shithousery more than anything, I don't even have a cat.

Wait, which list do you mean?

The "What's New" notifications that you get when you click on the bell at the top of the Android app, not the Release Radar. Maybe a cat song came on the radio once when I was playing calming background working music, I clicked on the artist out of curiosity, and now I'm in the pet zone.

Ah, right. I tend to forget about that one, because the format really doesn't work for me at all. I think it observes artists-bans, though, so you ought to be able to get rid of this particular impurrfection.

Did they get rid of Car Mode on the Android app?