Spotify, Ever the Fans of Openness
daringfireball.net
daringfireball.net
These platforms only care about lock-in. Spotify doesn't really add anything. The only convenience over Winamp is social sharing.
All of the platforms are catered to mass audiences anyway and suck for power users. They only want to extract money and are doing it the easiest way possible. Customers that don't complain about lack of features.
I posit that nobody in any of these orgs deeply cares about music.
Finding and downloading mp3's isn't a problem.
Do you really think there's no difference there? If you get a text from a friend saying check out this song and you're out and about on your phone, are you really saying that somehow downloading an mp3 to your phone is as easy as spotify?
Spotify's real innovation is not music streaming. That technology is not new in any way. The real innovation is the fact it somehow obtained the licenses necessary to legally stream the music people wanted to listen to.
Spotify also lets you stream any kind of music, anywhere. It's a nifty feature that some people find useful.
Seriously, arguing over these analogies is like arguing between buying books and a for-profit (albeit digital) library. It says more about the comment that brought up the comparison (in the way that it did, as if they are mutually exclusive) than it does about the two services.
Like you said, it depends on your habits, but there’s no point in arguing, or denying, that Netflix or Spotify do not offer anything more than VLC or WinAmp respectively.
What no one has mentioned is that VLC and WinAmp offer features that the others lack. Somewhere in those features is an argument against vendor lock-in, but that trade-off of features is exactly what revolutionized how most users consume content by default, so I don’t think it’s a very good one.
I recently started buying music again for a few different reasons, but I’ll be damned if I lose the discoverability in Spotify.
That's any kind of music that everyone already listens to and anywhere where you have internet connection.
Spotify is the new radio.
It’s already decent for chat.
I think it could be a way out of the server/client model that could actually work.
Or fitness, or messaging, or movies, or TV shows...
Every platform nowadays is a way to lock you in. Strava makes exporting data exceptionally difficult and has API rate-limits. I’m sure there’s a technical reason, but still sucks.
One of the tech journalists I follow has advocated the need for legislation for data portability to avoid shenanigans like Spotify has. Much like the phone number portability in the mid-2000s or interoperability after Ma-Bell AT&T was broken up, it sometimes takes legislation to enforce an open Internet. I think GDPR was one of the first steps towards that.
https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/216918437-Expor...
I just downloaded all my data and it only took about 5 minutes for them to send me the link. (I have about a year of data.)
It was a brief window. Now their catalogue is so full I doubt anyone could add too much value like that.
He sent me a tshirt, which was kind, but what I remember more is how he responded to recommendations. He's a musician and it was obvious he cared deeply about music. To that point of unhealthy obsession that drives some of us to work at record stores and host radio shows, and others to commit to building a transformative service that helps everyone discover new artists they might like.
You can't help but recognize it if you have it.
You might have a different opinion on the economics of it all, or wish the industry could go a different direction. But if you really talk to these people, there's no doubt they do what they do because they love music.
They are catered to investors. The "mass audience" is just a selling point.
Neither investors nor the web/mobile "entrepreneurs" care whether the "audience" is complaining or not, they just care whether the audience is captured. If the audience cannot "leave", if it is made excessively difficult to do so, if there's no other viable alternatives, that's a positive in the eyes of the investor and hence a first priority of every web/mobile "entrepreneur".
<s> Why not support these generous "entrepreneurs". They give away so much "for free". Accept all advertising and tracking. </s>
I know people who work for “these orgs” and most (albeit not all) deeply care about music. Some were previously full-time musicians. Many make music as a passion/hobby but never pursued it professionally. Some are ashamed of or uncertain about the impact they’re having on music and the industry. Some seem to genuinely believe they’re helping push music forward. None of them are perfect stewards for music or the music industry, but none are the cold, greedy caricatures you’re imagining. I can only speak for the people I’ve met and they may not be representative, but the bar you set was “nobody” and it’s just not that simple.
The economics of streaming mean that the long-tail just isn't commercially viable. People no longer buy music outright, so that leaves practically no way to make money selling music.
If you deeply care about music, how can you work for an organization that, according to all musicians, is destroying music?
Bandcamp [0] seems to be doing alright and according to Wikipedia [1] is (barely) in the Alexa top 1000. Not sure how it is for other Genres, but for metal almost every not-big band I find out about is on Bandcamp.
If a band outside the mainstream could live off their music, it was concerts and merch, and that was usually already only for bands at decent labels.
I know and love a band that exists since 1997, not even once were they even thinking about giving up their day jobs.
I don’t like Spotify (I usually listen to specific albums of bands I like), but I feel it’s more of a problem for the middle-class of bands, not the small ones.
I'd say tons of small artists that can't make a living today, could make a living by selling 30-50K records back in the CD/Vinyl days.
There was an explosion of small bands brought on by the internet and cheap digital distribution, but I doubt people started buying more at the same percentage as the amount bands increased.
Not necessarily buying stuff from Bandcamp...
1) they believe your characterization of their impact
2) they believe that your characterization is complete (vs outweighed by some greater good - don’t have anything specific in mind here)
3) good for music = good for musicians = good for the industry
Starting with (1) and (2). Regardless of the merits of your argument it’s hard to talk people out of self-deception that lets them keep their jobs, esteem, etc.
Point (3) is a little more complicated. There’s a lot for reasonable minds to disagree about when defining “good” for musicians, music, or the music industry independently, let alone collectively. There’s a very strong argument that many musicians are currently making less money than they would’ve 20 years ago because of streaming services like Spotify. The argument that Spotify is destroying music itself is significantly weaker and does not necessarily follow from the first. Great music was made long before the modern music industry existed. Great music has been made by people who were not fairly compensated for their work. I want people to be fairly compensated for their work but I can’t definitively tell you it will make music better.
Spotify is doing nothing* to hurt live shows, which have been the primary mode that music was produced, consumed, and made money from for the vast majority of its history.
* well, the existence of easy to consume recordings definitely has an impact on live shows, but I don't think it's that drastic.
Perhaps killing this era of licensed recordings as the main source of income for the music industry is not such a bad thing after all.
As did society, without the idea of e.g. cooked food.
Still, once we get something, we might find it's good for some reasons, and want to keep having it...
Rather than trying to put the genie back in bottle (which I don't see happening), perhaps musicians and songwriters can focus their attention on the practices of the major labels that enable them to extract a huge amount of the revenue the music industry generates, as well as experiment with new income streams (and you still have merch, donations, sponsorships and touring (admittedly difficult right now), avenues that aren't all as available to artists working in different mediums).
It's easier and cheaper, more accessible than ever before to record, mix and put out quality music. Is it harder to make a living off it? Maybe. Would that be solely due to streaming removing income from album sales? Maybe there's also more competition over listeners' dollars these days. And at the end of the day, as a society is the goal to maximize the number of people who can live off their music, or do we have other competing objectives as well?
Sure, there is a greater variety of music than probably ever in the history of humanity.
On the other hand, I think a much smaller proportion of humanity is participating and creating music than ver before - the rise of recorded music has made folklore music all but obsolete - there is essentially no new folk music being produced, maybe for the first time in history.
Of course, Spotify is still driving in this same direction, and maybe it will be even worse.
We started with Spotify pulling a douchey anticompetitive move, and ended up at
> Spotify doesn't really add anything. The only convenience over Winamp is social sharing.
Somewhere along the way we've gotten lost. The only convenience of Spotify over Winamp is "social sharing"? Am I taking the bait here or do you actually believe this? How can you believe this?
What about the convenience of being able to play a massive amount of music without having to download and store it on your device? What about facilitating new music discovery? How did you come up with social sharing of all things as the honorable mention Spotify has over Winamp, when the latter is desktop software that requires you to manage all your music on your own?
I can understand if you don't personally value Spotify because you like owning media with no restrictions. But I can't understand being in denial about inarguable, significant conveniences offered by the platform.
The comparison of how we used to do things, to how we do them now are often just a marketing tactic, because old and new are relative regarding value. E.g., an old violin is better.
What's lacking with the new internet is about this and that, or lack of options. So the entirety of the culture is flavored by an oligopoly in their respective market.And Spotify is missing loads of music.
Music needs to change its perspective to a this and that view. Is "this" what you want over "that"? How old or new something is, is irrelevant.
No musician that I know, and I know lots as a lifelong musician, is enthusiastic about Spotify. Most of us feel we just have no choice. Same with Facebook etc. Most people don't even like it.
In twenty years, ML is going to wipe the slate clean.
That's exactly what I mean. There's a change coming that will disrupt everything. Generative music will replace musicians and art will become dirt cheap - effectively valued the same as the memes on Reddit and Twitter. The same thing that happened to photography is coming to music, film, and games.
https://github.com/NVIDIA/mellotron
https://github.com/xushengyuan/FastSing2
https://github.com/jik876/hifi-gan-demo
https://github.com/bshall/VectorQuantizedCPC
And I can keep going. It's such a fertile field.
Vocalists can and will be improved upon, duplicated, and generated. Instruments played to match any style or theme desired. Entire albums generated in seconds. The latent space will yield more than any human could conceive.
Of course artists will still exist, but they'll exist in a space that is much bigger and more complicated than today. The tooling will also help them make more and become more productive.
I think the cheapness of it all will erode copyright. Companies like Spotify will simply be selling bandwidth, which doesn't sound like a profitable venture.
I give it a twenty year time horizon to be safe, but it'll probably be faster.
Nothing makes me think that the average person would ever choose music they know is generated over another human being creating something they want to create. It will be nothing more than a novelty
> What’s so great about New Thing? It’s just Existing Technology but with a Small Improvement.
This is exemplified in the best HN comment of all time where someone showed their new product called “Dropbox” and this dude was like “but I can get the same with FTPFS and versioning with a version control system”.
Technically correct, but completely missing the point. OP is worse, because he can’t even acknowledge the value that Spotify brings to hundreds of millions of people. Implicit is the claim that they’re only using it because they don’t know any better. If they were as intelligent as OP they would use Winamp and share songs manually.
Clearly this was my intent, and I'm glad you appreciate the intelligence of my remarks.
The substance of my argument isn't to point out that WinAmp should have a 50 billion dollar market cap instead of Spotify. It's an observation that the trends in our industry are disappointing because they favor lock-in, simple interfaces for non-power users, monopoly, and consolidation.
You get "sharing" with a whole lot of bad.
A hypothetical "good" company could provide much more than what Spotify does and in the same breath not monopolize all the podcasters or prevent data export. But why do that when you can capture 90% of the market, hold them completely captive, and not do these things which take effort or risk your stranglehold?
I dislike the future we found ourselves in. There was a lot of promise, I suppose wholly imagined, that never panned out.
I'm angry because I imagine better. This shit sucks.
I really doubt the anemic social sharing they offer is all that compelling to that many people. Sure, it has its uses, but if did nothing else, I doubt it would see much use. What's extremely, extremely compelling to me personally, though, is that for the price of half a CD a month, I get access to almost everything I'd ever want to listen to, on all my devices, everywhere, without any friction whatsoever. Even if I really wanted, I could never replicate that with Winamp on my own.
As to the rest for your argument, I'm basically with you and I think you have an important point, I guess you've just made it in a needlessly incendiary way. There are many things to be said in favor of capitalism, but I'm severely disillusioned with the way the currently-favored brand of capitalism is shaping out on the internet and in computing in general.
I'm not going to bother explaining why I think either of those services is superior to these handrolled solutions. But fortunately, both have 100 million+ paying users. You can ask one of them why they're foolishly paying for something when a superior alternative exists.
I'm not talking about hand-rolling solutions. WinAmp was just an analogy. An analogy.
Spotify sucks because it's a draconian walled garden. Yes, they have millions of customers. But there are no alternatives. They all want to lock you in. It sucks.
Back in the day, people were building tools left and right that were interoperable. They were writing importers and exporters and playlist managers.
It wasn't just music - there were tools for RSS and everything else you could imagine. It wasn't as "easy" as things are today, but there were so many novel things you could do.
Now it's all shrink-wrapped plastic that's rented to us. And we don't get to change the paint.
The world is less flexible, less free. Want another analogy? Look at modern Reddit and the disappearance of the 3rd party Twitter clients.
We're serfs.
It sucks. I hate it. Period. That's my argument.
I very strongly felt the way you do until a couple years ago when I started following those communities and eventually started hearing non-technical people IRL start asking about how to cut toxic centralized products out of their lives. I think the internet that inspired you is still out there, maybe even the same or bigger in size, it's just harder to see because the larger centralized serf net is so distracting.
Perhaps for some people the process of discovering music, downloading it and storing on their device is super trivial.
Did you know you can only listen 24 hours of music per day and that's only if you don't sleep at all ? You don't need a "massive amount" of music and you never will.
This cracked me up!
Did Winamp let you stream (almost) any song you wanted?
The spotify handoff is rarely seamless but it usually works well enough.
Uhm, no. Could it be that you’re using the free version of Spotify…?
You're probably thinking of autoplay. It's the last option in "settings" on the desktop app.
Compared to traditional music radio, it is more expensive, but vastly more tailored to your own personal tastes (try finding an actual radio station playing prog rock one album at a time...).
I admit I loved both of those things in 1999, but the novelty wore off. Outside of phone cases and laptop stickers, it looks like most people are over skins.
What you actually hate, I suspect, is neo-liberal capitalism, not so much the internet itself.
As only the latest in a series of public resources to be surreptitiously privatized, the rules of the internet have started being dictated by investor interests.
For the record, I don't like neo-liberal capitalism much myself, but I just thought it was important to correctly identify the fundamental problem here.
This is one in a long series of recent posts dedicated to pointing out the hypocrisy of companies (Epic, Spotify, Microsoft, etc) that have been agitating for Apple to loosen its stranglehold on the iOS ecosystem.
The gist seems to be: “See? Everyone else is doing the same thing with their own platforms, too!” As if the self-interested actions of a bunch of huge companies is what sets the moral baseline we expect them all to adhere to.
I wish Gruber would spend a little more time thinking and writing about how these companies _should_ manage their platforms and a little less time trying to undercut the entirely legitimate criticisms that developers large and small have with how Apple, the world’s most valuable company, deals with them.
Mind I’m also the type of person that listens to his podcasts so feel free to take what I say with as much salt as you like on this topic, but more generally, I get very different impressions of the same people reading their blogs versus listening to their podcasts and I’ve started to give the latter more credence in forming my impressions over the last three or so years.
Not arguing with you by the way, just trying to offer up an alternative take to you and other passers by in this thread.
I was actually thinking of migrating from Apple Music back to Spotify at some point, although this douchebaggery may end up changing my mind.
I use songshift so I can copy my Spotify playlist to Apple Music...just so I can listen to music offline on my Apple Watch. How is it reasonable to have to pay for 2 music services just because interoperability sucks. Spotify and Apple are in this tug of war and it makes them both worse companies for their users.
Zooming out here, I think there's an interesting pattern/trend that needs to be solved for (with old or new solutions): if you can make a superior UX and/or get a strong network effect of users, then you can make these moves and "boil the frog" so to speak. Some companies know when to stop before their users get too mad while others boil it quite quickly. I don't see any end to this problem, in music or elsewhere, unless something fundamental changes.
I'd be preaching to the choir here to bring up open standards, but I wonder if it is time to bring in mandated (by law) regulation for some industries. Let the current big players in a few markets design something super abstract, and then let reps from many (+ some significant representation from users / small players) maintain and slowly shape it. I'd wonder if that could even commoditize some of these to even make entry by smaller players easier.
Potential markets to approach with this regulation:
- Music
- App Stores
- Social Media Posting (I know Mastadon exists, but not going to open that can of worms in this post for now)
- Maps (OSM already is kind of here)
- Ride Sharing
- Food Delivery
- Streaming Services
- Health Data Apps
- Dating Apps
I think OSM is a great example of how this can bootstrap smaller players and ideas into quick effectiveness. I can't imagine what it could do for these other areas. If you remove the friction of user switching, you make it that much harder to "boil the frog".
Yes, regulation will inherently slow down these areas in terms of "innovation", but we as users need to ask if that speed is worth the power and control most users end up giving these companies in regards to data/privacy/long term UX and user friendliness.
Though I don't agree that Spotify has to let users transfer Spotify curated playlists as that is a business strength. Songshift seems to show Spotify curated playlists on their homepage like Discover Weekly so I can see why Spotify won't like this.
If their ultimate goal was to make a universally beloved product, they should absolutely do this. But their ultimate goal is presumably to make money, so I don’t expect them to make it easier for their customers to leave unless they’re forced to by regulation or an improbable level of churn over this particular issue. I’m not arguing that it’s morally right (or wrong, for that matter), but it’s exactly what I’d expect them to do given their incentives.
Under article 20 of the GDPR ("Right to data portability"), subsection 2 states that "[i]n exercising his or her right to data portability pursuant to paragraph 1, the data subject shall have the right to have the personal data transmitted directly from one controller to another, where technically feasible" [2].
Seeing how this has been previously been done, Spotify has already shown it to be technically possible. Enough users should be able to pressure Spotify to re-enable the API.
I just sent a mail to privacy@spotify.com:
L.S.
I'm a paying user of the Spotify music service. I want to exercise my rights under the GDPR article 20 subsection 2 to data portability to transmit my data, namely playlist information, directly to another controller, namely SongShift.
It is clear that this is technically possible, as it has been possible in the past. However, Spotify has chosen to force SongShift to disable its API. This is in violation of my rights under the GDPR. I demand that you re-enable this API to allow me to exercise my rights under the GDPR.
I expect a notification of receipt within 5 days. I expect a full answer within 14 days. In case of no reply, or no satisfactory reply, I will enter a complaint (verzoekschriftprocedure) at the Dutch civil court (Rechtbank Midden-Nederland).
Thanks for reaching out to us. We deeply understand that this will be a disappointment for you as you can no longer create transfers from Spotify to another music service. This is because it violates our Terms and Conditions.
So here's your request to download a copy of the personal data that is likely to be most relevant to you:
- Log in to your account page.
- Select Privacy Settings from the menu in the left.
- Under Download your Data, click REQUEST. This page also contains instructions for accessing your data and a summary of the categories of data you can expect to receive.
If you would also like to receive the technical log information we collect to provide and troubleshoot the Spotify service, extended streaming history, or have a special data request, please let us know.
Let us know if we can help with anything else. We're just an email away.
Regrettably, the steps which you have outlined for me are not in compliance with the GDPR article 20 subsection 2, which states that "the data subject shall have the right to have the personal data transmitted directly from one controller to another, where technically feasible."
Clearly, it is technically feasible to transfer my personal data directly to another controller, as it has been done with SongShift in the past. You decided to disable this method, in violation of the GDPR. Your terms and conditions do not supersede Dutch or European law.
I demand that you re-enable the API or allow for some other method to allow me to exercise my rights under the GDPR, so I can transfer my personal data directly from Spotify to another music service.
If you do not allow me to exercise my rights under the GDPR, I will file a complaint (verzoekschriftprocedure) at the Dutch civil court (Rechtbank Midden-Nederland). I expect that you respond with a timeline about when and how I can exercise my rights under the GDPR within 14 days.
I also want to challenge them on the export taking multiple days to be generated. This also is in violation of the GDPR as "undue delay". Many people cite that they have 30 days, but this is actually the maximum time.
Thank you for getting back in touch.
I get that you've come to rely on SongShift to transfer your playlists to other services, thus I understand how you feel when the service was removed. However, please know that the service they offer goes against our T&Cs and due to this violation, the app has been taken down.
If you want to transmit your personal data to another service, we can help you request to receive a copy of that data and give it the other service.
Due to the large size and complexity of the data retrieval, you will receive your personal data in three separate packages.
First, you will receive a ZIP file with a copy of most of your personal data via our Download your data function, after you verify your request in the confirmation email sent to your registered email account to ensure secure delivery.
This download will include information about your playlists, streaming history, searches, a list of items saved in Your Library, the number of followers you have, the number of accounts you follow, the names of the artists you follow, and your payment and subscription data. For more detailed information about what is included in each file of your download, please see Understanding My Data.
The second data package will include the technical log information of your account that we collect to provide and troubleshoot the Spotify service. The data description is provided in the Read Me file together with the data.
Finally, the third data package will include your entire listening history for the life of your account. Each of the above data packages will be made available to you as soon as they become ready in the coming weeks.
You can request for the first data package via the Privacy Settings section of your account page. If you want the 2nd and 3rd data package, please let me know your username so we can help you request for these data.
I hope this email clarifies. Let me know if we can help you with anything else.
Regrettably, your answer didn't clarify anything at all. In fact, it seems that you are ignoring the substance of my previous two messages.
If you have not already done so, I strongly advise you to forward this email conversation to your legal department. I will not hesitate to file a complaint (verzoekschriftprocedure) at the Dutch civil court (Rechtbank Midden-Nederland) if you do not allow me to exercise my rights under the law.
The process you are describing would fall under GDPR article 20 subsection 1. However, my previous demand isn't about those rights. Instead, I want to exercise my rights under GDPR article 20 subsection 2 to transfer my data directly from controller to controller, for example (but not limited) to SongShift, when you have specifically shown that it is technically possible.
GDPR article 20 subsection 2 is Dutch and European law. You cannot overrule the law with your terms and conditions. You have an obligation to me, a Dutch citizen, to allow me to transfer my data to another controller when technically feasible. Your message tells me that you are refusing to do so.
I demand, again, that you re-enable the API or allow for some other method to allow me to exercise my rights under the GDPR, so I can transfer my personal data directly from Spotify to another controller such as (but not limited to) SongShift.
Seeing how you responded the previous two times with unsubstantive answers, I'm giving you 3 days to respond substantively. If you promise to provide me a timeline about when and how I can exercise my rights under the GDPR or otherwise want a delay, I will give you an additional 10 days.
If you do not respond or offer no solution, I will send a registered letter (aangetekende brief) to your Dutch offices in Amsterdam with a last warning before starting the verzoekschriftprocedure. Note that I will be hiring a lawyer to draft this letter, and will thus be incurring costs, which I will recover from you as damages.https://www.politico.eu/article/have-a-gdpr-complaint-skip-t...
And I'm fairly sure spotify's competitors also give you the same kind of options with different degrees of curation (if that is a word).
If what you are asking for is "I want a magic DJ that solves all of my listening habits" then I think no app will do that.
Spotify does do that...
In fact, my personal experience is that Daily Mixes do a better job showing me new music than Discover Weekly does
This is the primary way I use Spotify, is that functionality not working for you?
On iOS: Your Library -> Liked Songs > Shuffle Play
I'm sure if you went after smaller and indie labels, you could license a big catalog, without much music people actually want, for a much more reasonable amount.
- Does not have many famous artists, due to licensing, and the catalog is continually decreasing.
- Actively anti-competitor behaviour.
- For a little more than a monthly subscription, you can purchase a full DRM-free album, which you can play for the rest of time.
I cancelled my subscription months ago.
That all of course got axed[1].
More product-oriented decisions like removal of messages & inbox[2] I am more sympathetic to, as this is more them picking & choosing? Re-work is hard[3].
But cutting off remaining support for DJ apps &c, as has recently happened: that's un-good[4]. Spotify withdrawing the remote-control capabilities that standard Freedesktop users have enjoyed for a decade, that's sad as heck[5] & just petty (ed: this might be more "whoops" than sinister intent).
In sympathy with the GDPR spirit of being-able-to-get-your-data-out, it feels there's actually a decent phase happening now, where sizable parts of the tech world are waking up to the realization that it needs to act less crummy, not box people in, not leave users feeling so trapped. Efforts like Data Transfer Project[6] have a long way to go, are frankly not yet very practical for much, but feel like one of the few places tech can redeem it's name, long term, where dignity might be restored to both parties. A starting place for not needing to be regulated into the sun as mal-competitive & toxic. This kind of re-opening from the locked-off closed inaccessible cloud tech is also, likely, necessary for innovation & competition to emerge, which is a thread Cory Doctorow discusses in his excellent & on-point discussions on Adversarial Interoperability[7]. Alas, as this Spotify story & their history indicates, not everyone is willing to help turn around our bad practices & treat other humans with technical respects & deserving of technical rights or capabilities.
[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20160310102643/https://developer....
[2] https://musically.com/2017/02/28/spotify-is-removing-its-inb...
[3] https://www.inverse.com/article/56923-spotify-update-backlas...
[4] https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/24/21192473/spotify-revoking...
[5] https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Linux/Spotify-stops...