I’m not a fan of Spotify but I don’t want to give up community playlists/discovery features. Also Spotify works with everything. If it has a speaker and any kind of App Store (or even “only blessed developers” App Store, aka infotainment systems and the like) then there is a Spotify app.
Apple Music is the clear alternative (for me) but the last time I tried it (to be fair, it was 4+ years ago) I hated the UI. Also, integrations with other devices were hit and miss unless you were using AirPlay. Nowadays Apple Music might fit my needs nicely so I should give it another shot.
I will never listen to a podcast on Spotify (they are a cancer to the podcasting industry, anyone who cares about the podcasting medium should not be using Spotify for podcasts) and while I have less of a aversion to their audiobooks I already have my workflow for audiobooks that I love (Audible->rip->Plex->Prologue).
Maybe I’m the weird one but I _hate_ having music, podcasts, and audiobooks together in one app. I want to switch between these 3 things picking up right where I left. I can open Overcast and hit play and pick up on the last podcast I was listening to. I have a lock screen complication to launch Prologue and pick up where I was in my book. And for Spotify I can start listening right where I left off in a playlist. The idea of combining those into 1 app sounds horrible.
tlyleung 15 hours ago [-]
I’ve read a lot of people griping (quite validly) that Spotify doesn’t distribute each subscriber’s monthly fee according to the streams they listen to that month. Does anyone why they don’t do that? Is it complex artist deals or difficulty in computing attribution at scale?
Raed667 15 hours ago [-]
I don't have any insider knowledge, but I can't imagine this to be a technical limitation.
I think this is the outcome of contract negotiations, with big labels being shareholders of Spotify the power balance is not in favor of the smaller artists.
Edit:maybe there is some overhead in paying so many smaller artists
conartist6 14 hours ago [-]
The simplest answer is probably that they've never seen an upside to it worth the cost.
If articles like this get a lot of traction, one would hope they might see the upside in not stomping on culture
fragmede 13 hours ago [-]
It's not too complex for them to do it because they used to do that. The problems is scammers caught on to it and abused the system. They'd create music and get it listed on Spotify, and then create fake listeners that would listen to their music non-stop and then get paid out as an artist with a lot of listens. After getting tired of playing whack-a-mole, Spotify changed the system to what it is now.
Raed667 11 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure thats how it works. For the artist to get paid, the fake listener has to be paying a subscription.
Unless it is money laundering, this excuse makes no sense
joshstrange 11 hours ago [-]
Agreed, at best they could “make” is the cost of the subscription minus Spotify’s fee in this system. So I put $10 in and get $7 out (making up numbers). For money laundering it could make sense but I agree, nothing else makes much sense.
fragmede 10 hours ago [-]
Free listeners listen to ads which turns into dollars.
easy, make the ad-money pool different from the subscription money pool
vouaobrasil 14 hours ago [-]
My main problems with subscriptions for media is is that (a) the provider can change the price whenever they want (b) they can change the service whenever they want, (c) you don't get the media to own, and (d) they can track your usage and sell your data which contributes to the sort of economy I'm not fond of.
Yes, there is the advantage of discovering new media with algorithms, but I'd rather just do some independent research and pay for MP3s to download forever. Nothing beats having a song on a local file, being able to play your song, knowing that it only costs the electricity, and finally that no one in the world knows that you are playing it.
Everyone has better music discovery than Spotify. Tidal is the best but their ui is the worst apple is ok and Spotify just pushes garbage that the artists label payed to push, mixed in with songs they know they won’t have to pay the artists anything for. The algorithm optimizes for minimum cost per stream.
the_cramer 15 hours ago [-]
I am a heavy user of spotify and their "station/radio" feature. Like a song? Go to it's song-station and explorer other songs like it.
It's this kind of discovery that keeps me using Spotify.
Are there any alternatives to that?
deltaknight 13 hours ago [-]
FWIW, other services like Apple Music and Amazon music (I’m sure others as well) also have similar “station” like features, where you can play a station for a given song/album.
Apple Music will also recommend songs at the bottom of your playlists that it thinks fit in, which I find is another great way to discover music.
I think the play-a-station method of music discovery has been around for a long time. If I remember correctly, even old iTunes used to have Genius(?) which played similar songs from your library.
jazzyjackson 15 hours ago [-]
I think Bandcamp is neat just for having users' purchases be default public, so I can click on user profiles of people who bought an album and see what other albums they bought. Admittedly I don't discover much this way but I do like the Bandcamp weekly radio shows. Probably the highest density of finding new artists was back when I listened to XLR8R podcasts... Wow I just went to see if they were still around only to find they shut down like last week
I'm a Qobuz subscriber now but the auto playlists let me down more often than not, totally changing up the genre of whatever album just finished. Hard to beat their drm free lossless catalog tho. I think nowadays my primary method of discovering new music is Shazaming tunes in hip thrift stores whenever I visit LA or NYC
pirates 13 hours ago [-]
In Apple Music I look forward to the playlist of 100% new (to you?) songs that it offers every Friday. The Discovery station is usually good too, but I find more keepers from the Friday playlist than others usually.
Bandcamp is definitely the best for finding completely new artists and genres though, for me at least. Something about their featured “New and Notable” posts makes me willing to just try a new genre or artist, much more readily than other services. And I strongly agree on your point about user profiles being public. The “what’s your favorite song on this album” and “why do you love this album” text fields that you can see all over are full of comments that are just wonderful.
0x073 15 hours ago [-]
Sounds like last.fm did, but not sure if it still works.
pohuing 13 hours ago [-]
Youtube music has the same thing
fragmede 12 hours ago [-]
That is Pandora's product - finding you similar music that you like to listen to.
http://Pandora.com
16 hours ago [-]
lawgimenez 15 hours ago [-]
Just cancelled mine last week too, my Spotify is one of the earliest accounts (my url is still my username not some random hash).
Basically, I am just tired of waiting Spotify’s lossless plan.
Rendered at 02:13:21 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Apple Music is the clear alternative (for me) but the last time I tried it (to be fair, it was 4+ years ago) I hated the UI. Also, integrations with other devices were hit and miss unless you were using AirPlay. Nowadays Apple Music might fit my needs nicely so I should give it another shot.
I will never listen to a podcast on Spotify (they are a cancer to the podcasting industry, anyone who cares about the podcasting medium should not be using Spotify for podcasts) and while I have less of a aversion to their audiobooks I already have my workflow for audiobooks that I love (Audible->rip->Plex->Prologue).
Maybe I’m the weird one but I _hate_ having music, podcasts, and audiobooks together in one app. I want to switch between these 3 things picking up right where I left. I can open Overcast and hit play and pick up on the last podcast I was listening to. I have a lock screen complication to launch Prologue and pick up where I was in my book. And for Spotify I can start listening right where I left off in a playlist. The idea of combining those into 1 app sounds horrible.
I think this is the outcome of contract negotiations, with big labels being shareholders of Spotify the power balance is not in favor of the smaller artists.
Edit:maybe there is some overhead in paying so many smaller artists
If articles like this get a lot of traction, one would hope they might see the upside in not stomping on culture
Unless it is money laundering, this excuse makes no sense
here's an industry blog report on the problem:
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/great-big-spotify-sca...
Yes, there is the advantage of discovering new media with algorithms, but I'd rather just do some independent research and pay for MP3s to download forever. Nothing beats having a song on a local file, being able to play your song, knowing that it only costs the electricity, and finally that no one in the world knows that you are playing it.
Related: "The Ghosts in the Machine" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42461530
"The Ugly Truth About Spotify Is Finally Revealed" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42478107
Are there any alternatives to that?
Apple Music will also recommend songs at the bottom of your playlists that it thinks fit in, which I find is another great way to discover music.
I think the play-a-station method of music discovery has been around for a long time. If I remember correctly, even old iTunes used to have Genius(?) which played similar songs from your library.
https://xlr8r.com/news/xlr8r-has-closed-down-its-subscriptio...
One episode I listened to over and over was Songs To Get Killed In The Woods To, wayback machine cached the MP3 thankfully https://web.archive.org/web/20201223182606/https://xlr8r.com...
I'm a Qobuz subscriber now but the auto playlists let me down more often than not, totally changing up the genre of whatever album just finished. Hard to beat their drm free lossless catalog tho. I think nowadays my primary method of discovering new music is Shazaming tunes in hip thrift stores whenever I visit LA or NYC
Bandcamp is definitely the best for finding completely new artists and genres though, for me at least. Something about their featured “New and Notable” posts makes me willing to just try a new genre or artist, much more readily than other services. And I strongly agree on your point about user profiles being public. The “what’s your favorite song on this album” and “why do you love this album” text fields that you can see all over are full of comments that are just wonderful.
Basically, I am just tired of waiting Spotify’s lossless plan.