Comment by crossroadsguy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crossroadsguy | Hacker News Reader

Goodness, feels as if I could have written this post :)

I have Spotify premium because I got a year long offer for less than 1/10th the price. Since I anyway used ad-supported Spotify I went for it. I really didn’t see any improvement:

- The UX sucks, more so - there’s nothing much to say here really

- They still push podcasts and different languages down my throat, more vehemently

- The recommendations still drive me mad

- They keep adding things, like that short video, that doesn’t let me listen to music peacefully, rather violently distracts me.

- So much so that I kinda limit myself to Liked. So that I don’t really have to interact with the app.

Then why I stay and stayed with Spotify? Because I don’t use Google (so no YouTube Music for me) and Apple Music sucks trucks and rails when it comes to India/Pakistan music, more so when I am looking for some old music.

Everything else is worse than even Spotify. But still it’s not worth paying for!

I thought of heading back to the high seas. But after W.CD that part is lost as well (no, nothing could replace that; O and R are not even a fraction of its shadow).

UX def sucks. I don't understand how a design-focused company that invests so much into its design teams (www.spotify.design) can create a user interface so cluttered and hard to navigate to find music. After years of using it, I've recently discovered (on mobile) that they've hidden the search and sorting on top of the playlists.

My home page is full of things I'm not interested in; there is no way to customize which are displayed. And enough of pushing podcasts.

I've created a (free) web app using Spotify API, Echoes, with a simple interface to see your top artists and songs, it also has a New Discovery section to generate playlists based on your listening algorithm.

https://echoesapp.io

That's because "good design" and "scrambling for profitability" don't go together. The UI is cluttered because they are trying to jam in multiple media types (music, video, long podcasts). Why? Because they lose money on music.

Was going to try this out, but the permissions required are too much for me.

     View your email
     Add and remove items in Your Library
    Create, edit, and follow private playlists
    Create, edit, and follow playlists
    Manage who you follow on Spotify
    Stream and control Spotify on your other devices

I understand. It seems like too much, but I've no intention of storing or doing something with the data. Spotify API lets us follow artists, like songs through the app, and create playlists. Also, there is a built-in player that we can listen to the songs and playlists directly without opening the Spotify app.

You should try, pretty cool.

What makes you think replacements haven't filled the gap left by W.CD? The community is definitely not as fun or interesting, but it's definitely done the job for me.

W.CD had everything. Literally (almost) everything. But the replacements are not even close to it. So unless you’re from a certain geography and looking for a certain language you’re just out of luck.

And community is downright, well, let’s not get into that.

the level of curation and diversity was second to none. i recall that a popular album had regional vinyl rips, which was mind boggling for me.

Deezer is actually a great replacement and competitor to Spotify. I like that their playlists are still human curated.

I even got popups with premium, trying to get me to listen to there bullshit playlists... And then they gaslight you and call it support.

I'm ashamed I've paid them for years. I've spend, over the years, probably more the 5x what I would have spend on buying CDs as I only listen to a select few artists mostly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com