I never understood the love for Spotify. It’s always felt so much more commercial to me. I’ve had a pandora acct for about 10 years now and I love it. Ad-free is awesome and I can just skip over the artist spotlights and sponsored stuff.
Do folks reminiscing of the good old days of physical media not remember how much label promotion media was packed with media? I have records where the sleeve is basically an order catalog for other artists on the label. I don’t see Spotify promoting albums on a discover feed to really be that much different than the marketing old except adopted for a digital interface and streaming economic structure.
Another reason to just use local player. Just buy physical albums and rip them, buy the actual digital files (from eg Bandcamp) or if you can’t afford it right now, I’m sure you can find the files floating around the internet. Just make sure to buy the physical album when you can afford it.
Artists will receive far more support from buying their music this way rather than through Spotify which pays artists very little and the algorithm is against mid and small size creators.
Yes, stresming service music players are trash compared to local music players. I use musicolet as a player that have the cool feature of switching between playlist without losing tje position of the latest player songs
You’ll also get higher quality files. Spotify can’t play CD quality music. Apple and Tidal make a massive deal about being able to play “high quality audio”, but it’s a lot less impressive when you find out they really just meant CD quality, which had been around for almost 30 years. A real 24 bit flac takes longer to download than to play. Real high quality audio will never be streamed.
“A real 24bit flac takes longer to download than play” if you have dialup maybe. I don’t think you can even legally call it “broadband” if your internet is slower than a flac bitrate
Downloads depend on the server as well as the client. I can say for certain that I’ve never been able to download a 24 bit flac album in less than 30 minutes, usually over an hour.
I like Audacious. The UI does not look modern but that’s not something I care about. It has every feature I need, it’s lightweight and does not have any telemetry.
I’m still using an older version of Winamp. It supports pretty much every audio format ever, visualizations, and has an excellent media library format. There is a new Winamp, but I haven’t tried it.
I also use VLC, which supports fewer formats, but supports all the major ones out of the box and is open source and under active development.
I hate Spotify so much, but every other attempt I’ve made to move away failed.
I used tidal for a bit, but it seems to break frequently from any privacy tooling I would use. I know they give artist a better payout, but if you don’t work with my privacy method, it’s a non starter.
Yeah, that’s a great option, but then the artist who created the music gets definitely zero for their product. It’s not like Spotify really pays fairly for the product, so it’s become pretty similar. The money grabbing Spotify does sounds like it’ll pump up business (making artists pay to promote) but I would be so hugely behind a streaming app that actually paid their artists fairly and promoted new unknown stuff, just because. The novelty alone!
I just buy the music I want from bandcamp or the band. I can organize and rip whatever and keep it backed up incredibly simply.
Then I put it on whatever device I want to use. Do you remember album/tape/CD collections. It’s like that but digital. The tech gives us all so much more control, it seems a shame to stream from a source like Spotify. Just stream your stuff to yourself, or put it on a tiny piece of silicon.
You can use Spotify like the radio I guess. A really creepy, ultra-payola-driven radio. Why not own some digital media, though? Like pay some artists directly and listen to their content digitally.
Who the fuck really needs Spotify to distribute their content? Maybe shitbags that NEED a corporate entertainment structure to survive. Fuck em.
Spotify isn’t genius. They just created a cultural choke point and they are gonna milk it like a starving baby cow. Having the investment and cooperation of the big labels allows and maintains this lucrative exploitation of creative labor.
Edit: There’s an episode of the Nerdist when some jerk from Linking park was on. He talked about getting royally fucked by the label they were on. That terrible band could not have been drilled into the culture without major label support and payola. They deserve nothing because they are a sacchrine confection of the corporate music industry. They are a golem of mass-market, general-purpose angst. They only positive thing from linking park was the singers suicide.
I switched to Qobuz. Mainly for sound quality, but they also pay artists more than ten times as much and they have pretty neat long read articles and deep dives, which is a way more satisfying way to discover new stuff. It’s pretty great.
This is payola in the modern age. If a record company gives enough money to Spotify, they’ll promote the hell out of it and guarantee it’s a hit. So the record labels with the most money are the only ones that can make serious money.
Does Spotify disclose that this is paid promotional content in the app?
It’s shown right there in the thumbnail. The text reads “Sponsored recommendation”. After some initial conditioning, it seems easy to ignore it after a while, just like the first few Google results or other ads seen across the web.
I’m so glad I stopped updating the app, I am lucky to still have the recently played at the top of my home page and then daily mixes right below it, I have to scroll to see the nonsense
Never used Spotify. I have my own methods of finding new music and once I have something I want to listen to I usually just type “[artist] [album] full album” on YouTube and if it’s not there (which is very rare) it’s usually on Bandcamp or SoundCloud. I do pay artists though, I buy their music if I enjoy it and always make sure to see them if they are in town, I think it’s healthier than a subscription service model.
I don’t expect any ads of any form when you pay for a service. The artists who pay the most will shows on the homepage, I don’t understand how any listener would like that
By homepage I was referring to the main screen that Spotify loads into, the default view of all your playlists, recommended lists, etc.
And I expect all the same things you expect for my regular browsing behavior. But on the music discovery and listening platform I don’t get pissy when new music is shown to me, even if it’s unrelated to my tastes.
The spotify home page is like the youtube trending page. I don’t care about it, never look at it, and it doesn’t get in my way. It’s really not a big deal. If this helps to keep the price down, great!
Tidal is way nicer than Spotify. No bullshit promos for right-wing dipshit podcasts or shitty playlist payola schemes. It’s like what Spotify originally claimed to be; an agnostic platform for streaming music.
They display visual promos on the front page of the app, even for paid customers. For over a year, Joe Rogan graphics were slathered all over the front of the app.
They gave $50 million to Joe Rogan for his podcast. Imagine how good the player could have been if they had given that money to developers instead. It could have went to the musicians as well.
I switched to Tidal over a year ago. I thought I would miss SOMETHING about Spotify after 1 year but there’s nothing. The curated playlists are better, my recommended tracks are better, the UI is cleaner and easier to navigate. I actually learn about new genres and musicians that I otherwise wouldn’t have been exposed to. It’s the best.
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