Continuing with Spotify?

I'm also trying to shift more of my spending/listening to Bandcamp, but I'm too hooked on streaming at this point to abandon it completely.

that app comprises at least 35% of my listening (all bought stuff, but it's a mega convenient app and easy to use)

(and you can listen to not bought stuff too)

iirc Criterion Channel has extras ported from discs, and is not generating dozens of hours of new content to accompany each feature film acquisition?

*iiuc

Bandcamp’s app is getting better. They just released an update that supports queuing. Playlists seem like a logical next step and would be cool.

It’s just buying physical media from Bandcamp gets expensive

Then don’t buy it - just pay for the music if the medium is unreasonably priced. I’m in Australia so it’s always $22 with $29 shipping etc.

Am I the only person who bemoans the loss of making-of featurettes, bonus content, deleted scenes, director commentary and the like?

There are boutique labels still making these!

just seen Daily beans has just left the platform.
Not been keeping up with the exodus so is that one of many.

Bandcamp or a new player should set an artist-friendly ethical standard of 2 cents a stream royalty rate. i wonder how many artists would jump ship from Spotify if they did that.

With pay as you go "top up your account" type options vs. "heavy streaming", "lite streaming", "unlimited streaming" monthly plan options

i'm starting to feel like Bandcamp + NTS + BBC Sounds + Rinse is more than enough music for 5 lifetimes and if i really need to hear a specific track i can just google it tbh

Bandcamp doesn't pay anything to the artist if you stream without paying, right?

right but it’s not convenient. i pay in order to add it to my “library” of stuff in the app, which is very nice to use.

I guess what I figured was it was just an experiment they were trying, to see if smaller labels or artists who were having trouble getting exposure but really really believed in their latest song, if they wanted to sort of put their money where their mouth was and offer their song at a discount for a while in the service, and that signal was a sort of convincing way to say, "yes, this actually is a really great song." And that maybe you might get some interesting suggestions coming from the labels/artists that way. I dunno, it could actually be quite interesting to let people take that chance.

Even if it doesn't impact the "quality" of songs in a playlist, you dont see how this incentivizes a race to the bottom that in the end only serves to undermine artists bottom lines and boost Spotify's profits?

There was also the thing a number of years ago, it may be linked on this thread, where iirc some journalist went down the rabbithole & discovered what appeared to be "fake" artists filling out a number of playlists, with spotify apparently commissioning royalty-free playlist filler from freelancers for a flat fee. It obviously wasnt happening on Rap Caviar et al, but on some of the utilitarian playlists favored by less-engaged listeners like "rainy day jazz" or w/e. They may not even still be doing that bc it seems like it could be more trouble than its worth, but just another example of how Spotify is constantly exploring to innovative new ways to self-deal.

iirc Criterion Channel has extras ported from discs

queue has gone dark again, is that tied in with anything else. I just can't see what i have cued up following the podcast I am listening to.
Figuring taht since I'm on it I might as well stick with it until I find something else. That is play through at least the play queue i had set up beforehand. Which was continually changing up til now. Oh well.

aight finally cancelled spotify (and qobuz) going to try the $9.99 Tidal HiFi tier - this should be CD quality (no MQA encoding but I'm skeptical of that whole format, it's cheaper than Qobuz (which I love) but this whole spotify thing made me want to go through all my digital subscriptions and tighten my belt a bit, all these little things that are "only $10 a month" add up

sounds really good so far

Napster

A friend says his younger sister uses Napster, of all things (it's apparently a streaming service like any other now?). She's too young to even remember the P2P days

using Napster, having a Friendster account, playing the Hollywood Stock Exchange--the late 90s/early 00s are coming back!

all these little things that are "only $10 a month" add up

Truth bomb. I have about every subscription and didn't realize how much they all were combined and about fainted

The best thing about Tidal (for me at least) is that it integrates into Rekordbox/Serato/djay so you use the songs for mixing.

Spotify pulled that functionality two years ago and Apple Music never allowed it.

^^

Just want to add, I've started putting music on platforms that offer user-centric royalties. And so far it's worked out at about 2 cents a stream. I think this is the way forward. Deleted my music off Spotify a couple of months ago and haven't regretted it.

For any musicians on here, I would recommend giving these platforms a try. There are a couple of new ones: there is minm.co (a new site that is running smoothly with easy upload feature). Then there is resonate.is (still quite basic but they are promising an update soon so worth keeping an eye on).
The more people upload stuff on these platforms, the more traction they will get.

If any of those work with DistroKid I’ll take a look and activate them if I can.

Apparently dozens of old Rogan episodes have been removed from Spotify. Rogan also apologized for his frequent use of the n word (which India.Arie had cited when removing her music).

Mirostones, thanks for the tip! I’ll consider it.

I just took a tour of free Tidal this morning and it seems...alright. Don't know yet how advanced their algorithms are for rabbitholing purposes, and I'm still tied to Spotify for the free Hulu subscription, but I may cave and move over before too long. I'm reluctant to even take Apple Music for a spin for other reasons (i.e. I hate Apple).

Hey classical heads, how’s Tidal for a classical selection? Also is the 9.99 Hifi level better quality than “hifi” Spotify?

there's a lot of classical, I think if that's a focus Qobuz might be better but it's a bit more expensive

the $10 hifi Tidal is CD quality vs MP3 on Spotify

AFAIK Tidal hifi is FLAC, Spotify 'hifi ('very high' quality setting) is AAC 256kbit/s (or 320?).

Thanks!

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/feb/05/joe-rogan-apologises-for-using-n-word-and-racist-planet-of-the-apes-story

Some highlights:

"The podcast host Joe Rogan has offered “sincere and humble apologies” after footage emerged of him repeatedly using the N-word on his hit show.
The musician India Arie has also announced she would leave the streaming service in protest, saying she objected to Rogan’s “language around race”.
She shared an edited compilation of clips of Rogan using the N-word more than 20 times on her instagram account.
Rogan also addressed a clip that Arie shared of him telling an anecdote in which he appeared to compare being around black people with the film Planet of the Apes.
He said: “I was telling a story in the podcast about how me and my friend Tommy and his girlfriend, we got really high, we’re in Philadelphia, and we went to go see Planet of the Apes.
“We didn’t know where we were going, we just got dropped off by a cab, and we got dropped off in this all-black neighbourhood.
“And I was trying to make the story entertaining and I said: ‘We got out, and it was like we were in Africa, like we were in Planet of the Apes.’"

we got really high

oh in that case, it's totally fine then apparently????

You don't have to scratch very deep to find the racist in a lot of these bros.

i kinda like where rogan is headed. i may start listening now. pic.twitter.com/BZxFPrluZC

— ben schwartz (@benschwartz_) February 5, 2022

“what are they going to say about, joe? what? are they going to say he was a smart man? he was an informed man? that he knew what he was talking about? bullshit, man!” pic.twitter.com/lTheKTR3KG

— ben schwartz (@benschwartz_) February 5, 2022

And you got the cigarettes, that's what I've been dreaming of

people are reporting that spotify has taken down around 70 joe rogan episodes lately

https://www.jremissing.com/

aiui that’s almost 1000 hours of problematic content

Looking at that list, I was thinking... how many times has he had the former Arsenal and England goalkeeper on?! Oh, it's some nutcase.

Didnt they already remove like 40 episodes when they first made the deal with him? Great guy to get into business with, just need to memory-hole a few hundred hours of his content every couple years, no biggie.

culture wars are a waste of everyone's time. i suppose that's kind of the point.

this really does just get worse from here, doesn't it?

Napster used to be called Rhapsody and I've been subscribing to them since 2006. If there was another, earlier streaming service someone let me know. It was really annoying to see Spotify swoop in and get all the glory years later.

Eve 6 dude posting pictures of what the band looked like when they signed the contract that would wind up denying them any Spotify royalties in the present day is pretty powerful, they were literally teenagers

Eve 6 dude should point out that they didn't actually sign with Sony in 1997, they signed with RCA, whose parent company merged with Sony in 2004, the same year Eve 6 initially disbanded. I bring this up because I think it's more powerful to illustrate how their destiny has been controlled by a label they had nothing to do with that now also controls part of Spotify.

Womp etc

Full text of Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s note to staff: pic.twitter.com/3FHlmzV3UW

— Peter Kafka (@pkafka) February 7, 2022

things i did this week:
*bought something off bandcamp for the first time (fwiw, it's virginia astley!)
*switched over to tidal and dropped our family spotify account

tidal needs to work on their selection from japan and/or noise stuff but they had most of what i listen to lately/historically