And who in heck would listen to white noise with ads? Wouldn't the ads completely destroy the intended effect of the noise?
This is a phenomenon I really don't understand.
I don't have an answer, but I'm fine with not understanding. Let people have things for their own reasons.
I do that too, like a radio, but I recognise that music is far more "contentful" (for lack of a better word) than white noise variants, the latter of which can easily be generated locally on-demand for as long as you want.
This way of thinking creates things such as Electron.
The thing that reduces context switching for developers? The thing that has increased the number of apps that would have been websites during the dark times?
1) UX is better through a streaming client. It'll be named cleanly, it'll have a nice thumbnail. Whereas a downloaded file would be named white_noise_128bit_v3.mp3 and would be in a Downloads folder with 10,000 screenshots and memes, and every time you try to open it you have to find it.
2) All-in integration with everything in one client: Here's my white noise in my history next to my favourite banger, next to my last podcast. Tonight, as I go to bed I decide I want to listen to....one of those. They're all there in one place.
3) Discoverability UX. Go to Streamer app. Search White Noise. Press Play. Done.
vs.
Go to Browser. Search White Noise. Scroll through pages of results of links about white noise, articles, listicles. Search again for White Noise Mp3 Download. Click top result. Get inundated with ads and links that LOOK like they should be a download, but actually take you to an ad network. Finally find the download link. It opens in an in- browser player instead of a download. Give up.
It's honestly to the point that most of our parents or grandparents can't even get there.
4) Oh also repeat the same but for audio players. Are there good local audio players? That aren't inundated with ads? And each with worse playback UX than Spotify/etc? Most phones now come pre-loaded with Spotify or YoutubeMusic or AppleMusic. Good luck figuring out what is a good local audio player.
[0] https://www.foobar2000.org/download
Tap on white noise app, press play.
You don't have to worry about having downloading the track so it's available when you hop on a plane, or having internet, or using mobile data.
Plus, most white apps have an equalizer to tailor the spectrum and several noise generators. You might like brown noise more in certain situations.
I have a toddler, I'm well aware of white noise apps.
I'm still explaining why it's logical for people who think of white noise as audio to seek it in their music streaming app rather than getting Yet Another Single Use App, or dealing with downloads.
That's the thing, you can't, not easily. On mobile—especially iOS—it's frustratingly difficult to transfer and use normal files without an associated app.
On Android, I use a YT client app to download a 320kbps M4A of the white noise file, and then play it on anything I want...music app, podcast app, audiobook app...they all work, just like they would on a computer
Seems appropriate to me. Changing a files extension is pretty unusual and will break things in ways users don't understand. But if you do know what you are doing, it took me 20 seconds to work out how to do it without reading a manual.
I mean can't people just sync music to their iphone like they were doing with ipods in the past?
Most likely because they already use spotify. They are familiar with the interface and is their go to spot when they want to listen to something. So when they want to listen to white noise they use what they already know.
But, additionally: Spotify has a client cache, so it's not always streaming - though it may be intended for a couple of albums or play lists regularly accessed, not hours of podcast content.
It's status signaling.
Anybody can send pseudorandom numbers to their audio device, but some people are rich enough to do it on a thousand dollar device, using a paid subscription to download megabytes of pseudorandom data over mobile data, storing it on expensive flash to achieve the same result.
Don't judge it through a rational lens. It's primitive status signaling.
The younger generation grew up with Spotify having everything available for a subscription. We grew up with OG Napster, which really did have everything.