Hacker News Reader

let's compare:

>For me, buying a physical disc

physically drive to a store, find the cd, purchase, etc. or buy online, wait days for it to arrive, etc.

>transferring the files to my computer

hook phone up to computer, extract files, load onto dropbox, and then finally have access

vs.

>manage a subscription account, log in on multiple devices

you literally click one button. that's all. And you login once and never again. no more difficult than logging into dropbox.

>either manage caching music local to the device

again, one button. on your spotify playlist / album there is a "download" button. click it. boom. done. listen all you want, without internet.

>absolute number one thing I need is the raw music files

you and about 1% of people. no one else does, hence why spotify is a billion dollar company and cd's are obsolete.

You forgot the part where you have to find a computer with a CD drive

I had this issue some time ago. My grandparents had some pictures their friends shared via CD. They asked me to show them and print them, but neither me nor my wife had a laptop with a CD drive with us..

>What’s not easy is needing to manage a subscription account, log in on multiple devices, and either manage caching music local to the device (and frequently needing to clear items out of the cache to switch with other items) or always use cellular data services to stream music.

Somehow doing this with Dropbox is easy, but not with Spotify?

Really?

You can't imagine that it's easier to search for a new song on Spotify and play it immediately VS buying a physical disc, transferring the files to your computer, then transferring them again to each of your devices?

Just finding the physical discs is huge inconvenience

So, for me, I want to listen to good music, but I don't want to curate a collection. I certainly don't want to deal with the hard parts of starting a collection where I have to buy a bunch of albums at once to have variety; I also don't care to do the work of finding new things to listen to.

I want a radio experience, where some nice person somewhere else (or an algorithm, whatever) picks music for me. Bonus points if they don't come on after every song to tell me all about whatever. I'm not worried about the cost or inconvenience of using cellular data services to stream music, that's the primary reason I have a data plan.

I use a curated streaming service, but I can see the appeal of Spotify, because thanks to the mandatory licensing regime, they can literally stream any released music in a radio context; and having access to everything is amazing. When Launchcast was a thing, it's recommendation engine was pretty great, although they lacked depth in the genre's I want to listen to; I strongly suspect Spotify does too.

Just curious; what genre(s) would that be? I have found the most surprising things on there ...

I was listening to Vocal Trace for a long time. Most commercial services might have the studio albums, but the DJ mixes are better IMHO, and I've been listening to Digitally Imported streams for nearly 20 years at this point, so I'm used to their curation [1]. Lately, I've been listening to their Synthwave channel; I don't know how widely that music is distributed, it's basically new music in the style of 80s synth and video game music (the reddit community is r/outrun); I'd guess this could be found pretty easily on Spotify/others, since it's all originals and most likely the artists are submitting it everywhere.

[1] https://www.di.fm/vocaltrance

OK thanks - always interesting to get acquainted with a new genre. I counted to 80 Spotify playlists when searching on the term (with a few hundred followers as median), so it is at least represented to some degree.

> What’s not easy is needing to manage a subscription account, log in on multiple devices

Yet you seem to do it with Dropbox just fine... You make it sound onerous. The reality is it's a one-time effort of about 20 seconds for each device. Drop the hyperbole, it just makes you look silly.

> and either manage caching music local to the device (and frequently needing to clear items out of the cache to switch with other items)

How is "putting them into Dropbox or transferring them via VLC to each of my devices" materially different from "manage caching music local to the device (and frequently needing to clear items out of the cache to switch with other items)"? If you want to put music on a device that's already full, don't you have to delete something first whether you're transferring files manually or downloading them through Spotify?

Okay, so you honestly can't understand how

> buying a physical disc, transferring the files to my computer, and either putting them into Dropbox or transferring them via VLC to each of my devices

is harder than

> Search for song, click "Play" on song

???

And let's not even get into backing up, keeping in sync, correct song metadata, etc.

If you honestly can't see how much easier the second thing is compared to the first, I would honestly go see a medical professional about it, because you're literally delusional.

Most people could sign up with a new account and be a song or two through their favorite album by the time you would have gotten back from the store and ripped the songs off the CD, though.

>personally I do not understand how anyone thinks streaming services are more convenient. I cannot empathize with any use case where streaming would be more convenient.

This mindset is the reason why all software is terrible.

Having the same playlists, interface, and experience on various different mediums is more convenient. The vast majority of people do not have enough local music to have to clear out their local cache manually. It's easier to share playlists with your friends who are likely all on Spotify as well.

My issue with streaming is I don't want to have to pay for more mobile data (primary use for me is in the car - can any of these services cache 2 hours worth of stuff for offline use?) and a lot of what I listen to isn't going to be on a streaming service like spotify - fandom music, soundcloud remixes, video game soundtracks (probably some on those services but not all), vaporwaves from youtube. I also still find FM radio a decent experience.

Yes, Spotify allows you to download 10,000 tracks offline per device. No limit on the expiration.

You used to have to go online every 30 days (or something) else they would expire. Is that no longer the case?

Also, it used to be 10,000 across 3 devices and bizarrely only 333 on each device (even if you only used one device)! I think they have since fixed that.

It looks like they still need you to go online to check your subscription status every 30 days, but the 10,000 songs looks like it's per device (up to 5) https://support.spotify.com/is/using_spotify/the_basics/list...

Did you mean 3333 or was Spotifys policy really that absurd?

Oops yes, sorry typo there. 3333.