For things I am (and maybe most normal users?) interested in, it works really nice: choose a song, listen to it, listen to the bands other songs, listen to their "radio" with similar songs, find new interesting bands, repeat.
I switch between listening on my phone, my computer, other computers, and my google home devices all day. With Spotify, I can choose which device to choose to from anywhere, and I can also control it from anywhere. I can play music from my laptop, then change songs from my phone, then send it to my google home speakers whenever I'd like.
Tidal didn't have that. Didn't even have google home integration. Didn't even have a desktop app on Linux. I switched back in less than a day. As annoying as Spotify's app can be sometimes, it's the service that works across all my devices, and can switch between all my devices.
How do you use Spotify to discover new music? What am I doing wrong?
Fully agree, they personalize the radios so heavily that I just get the same garbage over and over again (this is why I use spoqify.com, not a typo)
1. Start a "song/artist radio" from one I like, listen to the artists I don't recognise.
2. When I find something interesting I add it to a playlist (my playlists are a bit thematic with genre/feeling, if it doesn't fit with any playlist I have an "inbox" one to sort later)
3. When I have collected a few songs (5-15) in a playlist, enable "enhance" and listen to the recommendations from artists I do not recognise (used to do it with "playlist radio" but it's been removed in favour of enhance/smart shuffle).
4. Rinse and repeat with other radios (artist radios for the new artists I found, song radio for some songs/tracks I gelled with).
Been doing that for many years, discovered a lot of music this way.
Anyway it’s a complicated subject. I read somewhere nobody wants the same out of their music app and that’s why most of the time they end up being weird pieces of software in order to try and satisfy everybody.