Fans quitting Spotify to save their love of music (2022) | Hacker News Reader

Fans quitting Spotify to save their love of music (2022)

theguardian.com

88 pointsedu133 comments

Unlike put forth in the article, I listen to music for the experience not as background noise. For me the problem is simply being "over-whelmed by choice", which AI tells me was outlined in a book called "The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less" by Barry Schwartz, which I haven't read because there are so many other books to read.

I am beginning to miss the times in my life where all I could afford was just a couple of albums per year, max. I would listen to the tracks over and over and over again, fully immerse myself in the experience, assign my own meaning to the lyrics based on my own experiences in life at the time and permanently associate songs with feelings, situations and people. Now I have seemingly infinite choices and nothing seems to satisfy me anymore. One of the things I used to love to do growing up was driving and listening to music. Now I just skip songs during my commute until I reach my destination because I'm always thinking that maybe the next thing that spotify will throw at me will be an even more enjoyable thing somehow.

And to your comment, I remember not even fully understanding some of the lyrics, so I would just try to come up with phrases that made sense to me. Worse, not being a native English speaker.

My German wife’s sister famously (in our family) used to sing along to a song called “Jamaica the Sun” (Jamaika die Sonne).

It was U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday”

Just go all in; Ken Lee, tulibu dibu douchoo is a glorious mondegreen of baseless self confidence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQt-h753jHI

I call your mis-understood English song, and raise you one song purposefully written to use fake-English sounding 'words':

> The song is intended to sound to its Italian audience as if it is sung in English spoken with an American accent, however the lyrics are deliberately unintelligible gibberish with the exception of the words "all right".[8][9] Andrew Khan, writing in The Guardian, later described the sound as reminiscent of Bob Dylan's output from the 1980s.[9]

> Celentano's intention with the song was not to create a humorous novelty song but to explore communication barriers. The intent was to demonstrate how English sounds to people who do not understand the language proficiently. "Ever since I started singing, I was very influenced by American music and everything Americans did. So at a certain point, because I like American slang—which, for a singer, is much easier to sing than Italian—I thought that I would write a song which would only have as its theme the inability to communicate. And to do this, I had to write a song where the lyrics didn't mean anything."[6]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisencolinensinainciusol

* Audio-only: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQDY3HFkh_Y

* M/V: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8

Quite catchy.

After some time I understood this is not easy and simply requires hard work (also, the YT algorithm that worked well in the past simply shows me the same songs I listened to many times).

So once a few months I put away some time for that, usually a few hours, and go through my favorite section on Israbox, checking every album in it. I disregard 95% straight away. Usually it is enough to hear the first notes to understand, sometimes I listen for a couple of minutes. The result of these couple of hours is 1, 2, maximum 3 albums I choose. Often VA: it is more and more difficult to find artists who manage to be creative enough so that all songs in their album don't sound the same while preserving their individual spirit.

Years ago, I would do similar work in a music store, every month on Saturday once I got my paycheck. And I would look forward to this "discovery Saturday" knowing there will be a lot of disappointment but also, mist likely, a satisfying surprise.

You can skip the book and watch the TED talk[1]. It’s been a very long time since I watched it and I recall liking it, but I was also a different person back then, and nothing about it struck me as needing a full book to flesh his ideas out in.

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_the_paradox_of_choi...

Ok so it wasn't just me! The book is fine but it covered almost nothing that the TED talk didn't. About the only take away I can remember from the book over the talk was, Barry had trouble finding Jeans.

That's true of a great many books in this vein. Yes, examples and research can flesh things out a bit, but a TED Talk or an article probably provides 90% of what you might want to know. But TED Talks and articles don't put food on the table.

This came out about the time during a trend where some idea/concept like this, which could be nicely explained in a 10-20min TED talk or long form article was then padded out and published as a full size book.

It's publishing economics. If you go through a publisher, something like 250 pages is about the minimum they're willing to deal with. The one time I've gone through a publisher, I was happy enough with the second edition for, for the first edition, I really felt like I was padding out the book.

True. Something I used to do is go to a bookstore and if there was some new book that seemed like it had an interesting idea, I would look in the ToC for the chapter named the same as the book and just read that. I never felt like I walked away needing to buy the whole book when I did that, and so the only books I tended to buy were history, cooking and fiction.

I’ve never read the book nor seen this talk, but somehow I’ve heard about the paradox through the grapevine. It just seems like one of those ideas that should be obvious once you hear about it.

A very well-known effect, actually, resulting in "analysis paralysis".

Many will relate here via a simple example. When I have to start a project, I can spend weeks trying to decide what combination of language, framework, and cloud offerings to use. There are just too many ways of getting the same thing done.

Many years ago I read an article about a venture capitalist (I think) who took over the ailing Avis car rental company. He said that the most important thing he did to turn around the company was to fix a deadline of one month for all decisions. If you have been trying to work out which of several options to choose and have spent more than a month on it then you just toss a coin.

The rationale is that no amount of analysis will guarantee the right choice so more time is just a waste when you could be finding out in real life whether or not your decision was right. Instead of spending six months agonizing over the decision and still making the wrong one you get to make that wrong decision five months earlier and discover a month later that it was wrong. Now you are four months ahead and can go for one of the other options.

Makes sense. In general, I found there is a middle ground. I often look back and I am thankful to myself for "marinating" on something a bit, as "jumping in" has its drawbacks.

You can spend weeks implementing something and then having to start from scratch - time wasted. It's important to at least play certain decisions forward in your head, understanding that you will not know a lot in advance until you actually run into them - discovered work.

Sometimes I wake up in the morning and a bulb goes off - "oh, THAT would be a huge problem! Next option."

So yes, marinate, but up to a point.

> over-whelmed by choice

I'm not sure it's really that, because we can't hold more than 7 plus or minus 2 alternatives in mind at any time [0].

It's more related to FOMO, or a gnawing feeling that whatever we choose is sub-optimal, because we could have made a better choice. The apparent magnitude of possible choices kinda just confirms that.

You see people on Tinder dates sitting at a restaurant table each still scrolling in case something "better" turns up.

The way out of that it to accept this moment is unconditionally perfect and relinquish control. That's not a common skill nowadays.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus...

>You see people on Tinder dates sitting at a restaurant table each still scrolling

Do you actually? That's appalling.

Some time ago I was on a second date with someone (met through a friend, not Tinder) whose phone was frequently pinging the Tinder notification sound. She was very pretty, I was under no illusions about the level of competition, but I was so insulted by the disrespect. Imagine not even putting your phone on silent! Had no idea it could've been worse, god help me if she got it out and started swiping.

This describes me at FOSDEM: too many parellel tracks, a headache coming up from keeping attention to talks and schedule, running around feeling FOMO wherever I go.

But then I let go, had a coffee, had some beers with peers. No more headache + increased happiness.

Life lesson learned.

Breakouts at a conference mostly don't matter unless it's something you're especially interested in or know the speaker. At FOSDEM they're recorded anyway--not that you'll get around to watching the recordings.

Speaking of conferences, this is one thing I loved about the Monitorama conference in Portland. It has a single track, so everyone attending the conference goes to all the same talks, which means you now have something in common with everybody in the hallway track and post-conference events to talk about.

("Loved" because I haven't been in years -- the conference is, AFAIK, still going strong.)

This kind of comment always blows my mind. How can you come in and say 'well, actually, i think what you say you experience is not true. And disregard all the literature on the subject too!'

> This kind of comment always blows my mind.

In a good way or a bad way?

> How can you come in and say 'well, actually...

It's a mixture of qualities; education, scepticism, and original thinking are the key ones. Some cultures discourage this sort of thinking and promote an unquestioning attitude that takes whatever is presented on face value. For me as a scientist my own upbringing placed a lot of value on the opposite life-stance.

> i think what you say you experience is not true.

That is an unfair characterisation of what I said. Truth or falsehood hardly applies to experience. I am suggesting there's an alternative way of looking at what people report than "overwhelming" choice. That may apply to you. It may not. Make your own path.

I think maybe you took what was intended as a general observation about this phenomenon as a rebuke of your personal experience.

> disregard all the literature on the subject too!

One TED talk and a book (albeit a good one) does not really count as "all the literature".

I wish I could understand you better. Does encountering other points of view feel "offensive" because you disagree? Does it feel like invalidates something you believe in, in a "personal" way (like an attack)? Or do you really feel uncomfortable with sceptical thinking?

Bit ironic, ha.

Oh man. With Spotify bundling music and podcasts in one mingled experience, it drives me mad.

And their Spotify DJ crap and random banners. Spotify 5 years ago with minimal interface and just music was great.

They have ruined the experience for me now. Same with Apple Music and Google Play. So much jank.

Most apps ruin their initial allure by doing too much. Having too many hands in the kitchen.

The recent Psychic thing in the Spotify app was just bananas. To think they claim they can’t afford to pay artists properly yet pay PMs huge salaries to come up with crap like that.

I’d guess that paying pm a few hundred thousand compared to increasing royalties by a single penny would pale in insignificance

Of course. My point is that the app was “complete” a long time along yet they add more and more unnecessary features.

i disagree. Some of the new features are welcome imo. for ex: daylist and now searches can find songs by lyrics

Searching is a core experience I agree. So is being able to organize/discover music.

There is still so much crap that isn’t core to the music experience.

It's a conundrum, because stagnation is also not good. Shareholders expect results.

It is. The major music streaming players all have pretty much "everything" except niche stuff. (Spotify tried to differentiate with podcasts but it's probably fair to say that was fairly unsuccessful--or even a net negative for some.) And how much can you twiddle with the interface in ways that don't, on net, piss off at least some of your user base? And I would guess that pretty much everyone who is in the addressable market for music streaming at current market rates that are maybe breakeven with a tailwind already have it. (Which probably not coincidentally are in the ballpark of what people paid for music pre-streaming.)

For apotify it's not even share holders anymore. They need to figure out how to survive at all. It's either flail their arms in a desperate attempt or just give in like jack on the titanic.

Most of these services have an API of some sort. I wonder if they are complete enough to build a client app good enough that people would pay for?

I subscribe to Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, Sirius, and get Amazon Music (via Prime). I think a great client could eliminate one or two of those subscriptions.

I’ve been down this path, all of the APIs specifically restrict monetization of apps that interface with their API, except under very specific circumstances.

Last I checked, I believe using the Spotify API for a player (or, explicitly called out, a music quiz app) is against their terms

I use Spotify a lot, but also listen to a lot of niche programs on BBC sounds. Jazz, electronica, 90's dance... Those kind of feed my Spotify playlists and nudge my tastes.

One thing I will note is that the BBC often makes great effort to 'enthrone' each song, telling little stories about the people, history etc which helps you engage with it but Spotify tends to just vomit track after track at you which can devalue them a bit.

I second your recommendation of BBC Sounds. Those stories about the tracks being played are short but they really help to put the music in context. The programs are also well curated by people who actually listen to and enjoy the music themselves. I have discovered a lot of music on the BBC that I later bought in one format or another.

I personally like BBC Sounds most for the classical music on Radio 3, but, as you say, there are many other genres played as well.

The wealth of offerings on BBC Sounds, and the amount of time I spend listening, almost make me feel guilty for not living in the UK and paying the BBC licence fee.

Not paying the licence fee seems to be a thing to boast about here. It's such good value for money - worth paying for Radio 4 alone.

My brother also wasn't a BBC fan until he had kids and realised how much better their content was than everyone else's, not to mention it being ad free.

I really don't understand why BBC Sounds is free outside the UK. The argumement for not making it subscription based seems to be focused on UK listening via the radio. Perhaps it's just not worth the hassle to collect it.

https://www.radiocentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Radio...

Do you gets ads on BBC Sounds when you listen abroad? There's some noise about introducing them here, but there's always license fee chatter so it's hard to distinguish what's real and what's politics.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/19/bbc-plan-run...

> Do you gets ads on BBC Sounds when you listen abroad?

No. Sometimes when a program on replay is streamed as the podcast there's an announcement at the start that BBC podcasts may have ads outside the UK, but I've never heard one.

I'm in Japan.

>Do you gets ads on BBC Sounds when you listen abroad?

No never.

I only use it to listen the Essential Mix and never ever got ads

I love good radio, I leave selecting great music up to the professionals and I’m introduced to way better stuff.

Emphasis on good radio, because a lot will just play what is most popular (creating a self-reinforcing loop) or what they're paid to play / promote.

No doubt!

The arguments in the article seem to basically boil down to 'I stopped using Spotify because I didn't like how I was using it' and 'I stopped using Spotify because I assign value to music outside of listening to it'. In both cases I don't think Spotify is really the issue.

This 100%. I have a stash of Sansa Clips for the end times but I still use Spotify because its easy.

People seem to want to hate Spotify because it makes them feel special

I get where you're coming from with that last sentence - people do sometimes go against the grain because it's not cool to follow the crowd.

But I am one of those people who have felt a definite shift in their relationship to music because of streaming. I don't feel special and I don't want to hate Spotify - I still have an account and use it daily.

But I am less mindful. I don't build relationships with albums any more. I sometimes don't even know the name and artists of songs I listen to and enjoy dozens of times. I definitely feel like I have lost parts of my relationship to music (I've gained things, too, but I'm still not sure if I'm happy with the trade). It's a quiet loss that I've only started to appreciate in the previous year or two, and not yet salient enough to take the radical step of cancelling, but I really do get where the cancellers are coming from (even if there are some edgelords among them!).

This is somewhat in line with a comment I wrote yesterday about listening to music from vinyl (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39803620).

Spotify primarily breaks the experience by making it hard for me to find something I want to listen to in the moment. Discovery Weekly used to be a great way to surface new things by having me listen to the same songs again and again but now I’m not commuting I’m not using it.

Sonos takes it to a whole new level by having a UI so poor that it sometimes leaves me not even wanting to listen anymore. After clicking about a little I just give up and put BBC Radio 6 on.

I would love a mode where there were just 2 album covers visible on screen from my collection and an endless scroll until I hit something I wanted.

I made a thing which is pretty close to what you're after: https://dailyalbum.art

It picks 12 random albums every day. It's picking from a number of curated "best of" lists (Rolling Stone, Mercury Prize nominess, Rough Trade, etc.) so there's often a mix of familiar and unfamiliar options

> Sonos takes it to a whole new level by having a UI so poor that it sometimes leaves me not even wanting to listen anymore.

Just never use the Sonos app if you are a Spotify user. Spotify Connect is their single most important feature for me. The only reason to open the Sonos app is to re-group speakers and that‘s basically a shortcut from the Spotify app anyway.

That didn't work out well for Apple and they changed their UI to be just another spotify clone.

Even though I never actually used the album cover wall on apple music, I do miss it.

Musicians leaving streaming services because they are annoyed by the app/UI/algorithm, then, later on, wondering where did all the royalties disappear?!? If we all agreed that one individual song playback is worth half a penny, then, streaming is the only way to go. The only way to distribute royalties per real-world usage. The fact that people are using Spotify to discover music has nothing to do with using a streaming service to record and playback music (building your personal playlists). I tried them all and I left Spotify many years ago, and I understand fully how easy it is to build your own (pirated) music library, but I still hang on to Tidal as I really, really want to send my half-a-penny worth of payment to the artist I listen to. Simple as that. Apply the golden rule, and you'll realize that streaming services are the only way to go. Now, wether or not are streaming services being fair and paying their royalties to whomever deserves them down to the last penny - that's a discussion for governments/regulators/lawyers.

If you're under the impression that your average musician gets any significant money on streaming, this is not so.

I know a lot of professional musicians who make a living from their craft. Their income sources are touring, Patreon (or the like), Bandcamp, and then streaming.

Oh, people at the top rake in big bucks, but most of the money that streaming distributes comes from people who play music all day long based on recommendations, or tags.

I met one person who makes a living on Spotify. He has literally thousands of tracks labelled "smooth jazz" and makes a steady income entirely from people who type "smooth jazz" into Spotify and then leave the program running. He isn't ripping anyone off - his tracks are unmemorable but competent and fit the bill. But this isn't really doable for people who think of their music as creation and not a commodity.

If I like an artist, I buy their tracks outright, often on Bandcamp. Quite often I buy their whole catalogue. Thing is, if I buy a $10, 10-track album on Bandcamp, the musician gets between $8.50 and $10, almost immediately. But if I play that same album 10 times on Spotify, they get $0.30, eventually. I'd have to play that album 300 times to get the same payout to the artist, and it's extremely rare for me to play albums that often, and never in one year.

>most of the money that streaming distributes comes from people who play music all day long based on recommendations, or tags.

I don't usually care much for background sound. But my brother, like many people, does and he has either the TV or streaming music on as background pretty much all the time.

I'm doing the same. Still use Spotify to discover music and "test" it, and if I like the album I buy it from bandcamp.

Sadly Spotify doesn’t work this way. You may think if you spend $20 on Spotify that the firm takes say 50% and the rest is distributed in proportion to what you listen to. If you just listen to say Jason Donovan’s greatest hit on repeat that he gets the $10, or if you listen to 10 different opera singers evenly they get $1 each.

Instead your money goes almost entirely to Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift - artists you may not have listened to even once.

Spotify takes 30%; the rest is distributed somewhat in proportion to what you listen to. Really small payouts (like $1) don't happen because they opened the floodgates for streamcount fraud (ppl just faking streams on fake artists - yes, that's a thing) while making absolutely no difference to regular small artists.

The distribution among all artists isn't equal but the result of very complicated licensing deals with the various major labels. The deals change every year, and the parties negotiate super hard. It's quite common for a deal for, say, 2023, to only be finalised in November 2023 - i.e. 11 months late. It's ridiculous but that's how it is.

Most of the complexity behind the payouts stems back to the special treatments the three majors want for their artists. After all, they need something special to offer to their roster. And since they have the most important artists, they have the negotiating power to pull this stuff off.

Source: worked at Spotify in the content team.

Stream share in aggregate. If I pay $14 a month and listen to Chesney’s “I am the one and only” 100 times in that month he should get $10 and Spotify $4.

That’s not what happens.

What’s the benefit in me listening to a fake artist that is me? I would get $10 back for the $14 I spend. Seems like a lot of effort to go to.

You could argue that as Chesney has a label that’s upto him and his rights holder. Fine. What about Dave Smith , my local crooner down the pub. If all I listen to is him why doesn’t he get the $10?

> What’s the benefit in me listening to a fake artist that is me?

My guess would be on the free tier, not the paid tier

This is sad af. We've been discussing with my wife of cancelling our Spotify subscription. This is actually a good reason to do so.

And here's a source for the above https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/royalties/

Tidal supposedly pays artists out the most of the big names. Only beat out by Napster!

I started working on a website that’s helped me avoid the “uncomfortably familiar track loop” issue once I noticed it myself.

It basically incentivizes/rewards you with a “disc” (displayed on your profile) once you listen to every track on an album using Spotify.

I’ve been able to find some great music I would have otherwise overlooked because of my reluctance to listen to albums in full.

https://discollect.app

See my profile here: https://discollect.app/profile/clo0oz2hw0005fv02qbxn866c

Interesting reading this as this has been exactly me over the last year.

I don't exactly know why, but I'm not able go use Spotify in a way I enjoy, I end up looping over the same tracks, or discovering things in a very shallow, single focused way.

For the last year, I've been finding music on mostly bandcamp, and streaming my collection with astiga (which is an awesome tool I can't recommend enough). I've found it gives me a much better relationship with the music I listen to- I actually discover albums, and enjoy knowing the stories behind them.

The interesting thing is, there's no reason I couldn't discover and then listen to albums on Spotify in the same way, but I don't seem to actually be able to do this in practice. I guess it shows the power of UIs.

I find new music mostly through Bandcamp weekly or just browsing, KEXP on YouTube and by checking out concerts in my area.

Though Spotify has randomly played some artists that I hadn't heard of and I ended up really enjoying. But I agree it's somehow not as great to just sit down and discover something new.

I use Spotify in my car because it's convenient. I buy albums on Bandcamp and listen to those at home or at work. I take a lot of chances on concerts, my best concert experiences have been the ones with $20-30 tickets so I can afford some misses.

If I listen to any spotify-generated playlists, it's literally the same couple of hundred songs over and over and over again. It drives me up the wall.

There's accusations they have biased their site based on how much they need to pay their artists. They've started commissioning mood music using session musicians. The only way to avoid it is to search for the exact artist/album you want to listen to and avoid all other features.

I had a suspicion it would play / recommend the same random tracks (autoplay after an album/playlist finishes) to ensure cache hits instead of needing to download songs off their servers.

I think caching is right. The shuffle mode prioritises cached songs too.

Back in the 80's I was a huge vinyl collector of the new music scene (all the punk, industrial, and what became new age) with about 5000 albums. Of course, they got destroyed in storage. Huge loss, many unique pressings where obscure bands could only press 50 copies, like early Foetus / Lydia Lunch experiments.

When Napster came out, I managed to collect around 87 gigs worth of obscure music very similar to my old collection. Over the years I've added another 40 gigs of hip hop and more recent new music, but that original 87 gigs of the 70's Art Rock, the original punks, original industrial and new wave and then all the fantastic rug cutting Jazz classics... who needs anything new, that originates as a very watered down derivative?

I don't know if it was just because I saw the potential loss of owner ship when streaming came along or if my inner Stallman was stronger than I anticipated, but I never engaged with any of these streaming platforms. I saw things like the (DRM Free) iTunes music store as the best middle ground between analog owner ship and digital convenience.

It is still CD's and DRM free downloads. I have a Sony NW-E394 walkman as my portable player. Is it as convienent? Not really but I have a bit more control. Also FOMO isn't really something I have much of. Sometimes it can be JOMO (Joy Of Missing Out). I usually discover stuff via local radio or TV. You know it is past midnight when Rage comes on (Australian music program).

Works for me, might not for you.

Damn, Rage is still on, been on TV for longer than I've been alive, with the same logo, same time slot!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fOjrQ2N3K0 Ahh,,, guess I'd better go to bed .....

And the same intro! RRAAAAAAAAAAAAgggggeeeeee....

I've thought about it. I have a big library from pre-streaming. Some Napster (though that's mostly music I had owned on vinyl) but mostly ripped CDs. I could very reasonably populate any holes and add the occasional new album/song. But, for now, I find streaming convenient.

I'm really into music. Like, really into music. Probably much moreso than most HN users, although less than true audiophiles.

I've got most of my music organized digitally with Roon. Roon is expensive, but really interesting. It basically lets you integrate your local collection with Qobuz or Tidal. It handles all the metadata and playlists and discovery through a combination of both local and streaming. For my use cases, it's basically perfect.

How does it help with discovery? Does Roon have some (local? Cloud?) algorithm that looks at your local collection and then suggests things to stream on Qobuz/Tidal? And they've managed to do this well?

Roon are metadata kings. Genres, sub-genres, sub-sub-genres. And frequently there's a Roon curated playlist associated with each.

They also list every single musician on every single track - not just the title artists. Producers, composers, etc. I can find a song I like and click "play radio" and it'll find similar songs. However, I can also click the genre or sub-genre. I've found out whole genres I love that I never knew existed, by seeing what Roon categorized them as.

Or I can click a song, see who the guitarist is, see what else they have been in by just clicking their name. Same with producers, etc.

I like the sound of that last bit. But I honestly thought they were just a software outfit, putting pieces together, are they really providing this extra stuff? It sounds like a huge amount of work in itself.

You can read about precisely what Roon adds to the equation here:

https://valence.roonlabs.com

It's their own database and algorithms.

I was using radio paradise a couple of years ago, where I discovered a lot of new musics and it was great. But also I wanted to listen to some of my favorite songs (things I listened when I was a teenager and some more commercials titles) and I went to a streaming service. Sometimes I regret radio paradise and the discovering of new things. But also, I like how streaming services allow me to listen to old (and new) things more "commercial".

Radio Paradise [0] is great. What about occasionally listening to it?

I usually listen to my local playlist in my day to day life and Radio Paradise is not exactly to my taste, but I occasionally like it as background music when receiving people. It's less random than my playlist, and I trust it to play good music. And if the music is bad, it's the radio's fault :-)

You could also rip it and listen to it, skipping songs you don't like. That's allowed after their FAQ if you don't split by songs, and I'm no one to advise you do split.

For more "commercial" music (Top 40 stuff), since you mentioned it: I used to listen to Fréquence 3 [1] all day. French webradio, but it's just music, and ad free. But as top 40 turned more R&B, I became less interested (it's not a criticism, I just don't enjoy it). Maybe it's just a period, I haven't checked what it's like currently. But I have the same issue as you, I have not updated my playlist as often as I would like since then.

There's also La Grosse Radio [2] which is nice. Also ad free and just music, mostly, IIRC.

[0] https://www.radioparadise.com/ (putting the link for people who don't know it, worth trying! It's ad free, supported by donations. It's a US radio but you don't need to be American to like it)

[1] https://www.frequence3.com/

[2] https://www.lagrosseradio.com/

You are right, I think I need radio paradise occasionally :)

Are you French? If so, "bonjour de la part d'un autre français perdu dans les méandres d'internet"

Ouaip :-)

The most dramatic influence on my listening habits has been online communities like rateyourmusic.com, algorithms be damned.

Also, count me among the many HN readers I expect will weigh in about self-hosting Navidrome. Rediscovering my old favorites (and the albums I had long forgotten) has been such a delight. I ditched Spotify as a result, but for new music I signed up for Deezer because of their fair(er) pay arrangement with artists.

I sometimes get nostalgic and romanticize the old days of downloading mp3s and manually labelling metadata (trying to identify genres was a lot of fun), but man did device syncing get tedious. Spotify just makes discovering/listening to music so dang easy - perhaps too easy, which I get is the point of the article. Overall I relate to it a lot.

Have you tried https://www.funkwhale.audio/?

It can be used effectively as a "private spotify". Labeling is a solved problem thanks to https://picard.musicbrainz.org/, and the fact that a lot of the music you buy these days comes pre-labeled already.

You then have a web-app (and/or a mobile app, if that's your thing) where you can stream music as you would with Spotify.

You can even build yourself a little music-sharing commune with friends, where you all upload the albums you buy and accumulate a nice collection of diverse tunes.

You still need to buy, upload and – the horror! – choose what you want to listen to each time, but perhaps it fills your other convenience needs.

I've been going backward lately, sick of always hoping from the new hip stuff to the newest through streaming and set up a navidrome server on a rasp. Give it all my mp3s to eat and it was such a joy to discover them again. I now listen to my music through supersonic on Linux/macos and Play:sub on ios while connected at home through vpn. Give it a try, nice refreshing project and a great ride into memory lane

A system where musicians are not adequately compensated will always be more attractive to the listener.

I don't think pirating mp3s is more attractive to the listener than Spotify.

The services Tidal and Qobuz give user-controlled access to most music in album form, often at higher than CD resolutions. I listen via Audirvana Studio, a Schiit Jotunheim DAC and balanced headphone amp, and Aeon 2 headphones.

My interest has reawakened in deliberate listening to music as organized by the artist.

I once sat next to a friend of Steve Jobs, on a flight. He appreciated my admiration, and took a drawing of a "current mirror" iPod charging circuit to show Steve. The conversation became uncomfortable when I asked if Jobs wanted his legacy to be the death of the album.

Jazz is the higher mathematics of music. With Tidal or Qobuz, it's easier than ever to begin an exploration of this world.

Not sure what you mean here.

All of the music services give you access to music in album form.

They just also bundle songs into different playlists.

Yes, I was thinking of services like Pandora (radio station-style playlists) when I chose Tidal, then added Qobuz. You're right that album selection is now available on various services such as Spotify. Some offer lossless CD-quality audio, some are matching the greater than CD quality offered by Tidal and Qobuz, as available.

Spotify's best quality is 320kbps (Ogg Vorbis).

I have a significant amount of driving for my agricultural job, (generally with a 20-45 minutes chunk of uninterrupted driving), so that’s how I generally enjoy my music. I can’t really think and enjoy/listen to most music at the same time, so I don’t generally let it be background noise while actually doing things.

Currently I’m adding “Weedian” compilation albums as each as it’s own playlist in the bandcamp app. I then listen through it a few times, aggressively pruning away individual songs I’m not really into. This makes it easy to come up with a much shorter list of decent songs, and uncover a few rare gems to subsequently look further into.

While a simple enough concept, removing the need to remember what I’ve liked has been a huge improvement.

I feel like Spotify generated playlists always lead me into some insignificant easy to listen background music and it feels like it's led by cost-effective algorithm that reinforced itself over years.

Audiogalaxy p2p (2002ish) had way better discovery feature.

Semi-related question - do any of the big services other than Apple Music let you upload your personal collection? Google Music did but I'm pretty sure they lost that functionality in the transition to YouTube Music.

I've got a lot of obscure stuff that isn't on streaming services I want access to. I love that Apple Music lets me add it, but for some reason massive chunks of my library keep getting corrupted in the cloud even though my local files stay fine.

not upload... but spotify allows you to hookup a folder of local music last i checked.

So just like... It can play files in your phone? Not really what I'm going for.

I'm looking for access to my near terabyte collection without filling my phone's 128gb memory.

I don't believe there's any service that offers that - piracy concerns and all. At best you could set up a media server and a tunnel to your home server.

What I used to do was create a smart playlist that would be randomly filled with a selection of music every time my ipod was synced.

> I don't believe there's any service that offers that

Like I said, Apple Music literally does offer that. I use it every day. It’s just got problems.

Google Music used to offer it.

I'm not sure about size limitations, but apple music allows syncing personal collections through their service. Having access to my large library, much of which is not available through any streaming service, is why I use it.

That said, apple music has a large number of bugs with this service that are infuriating to deal with. For instance, I've noticed it dedups some of the library to the incorrect (censored) version of songs.

Plex or Navidrome. I love Plexamp and it has completely replaced other apps

Plex

Interesting, what streaming taught me when discovering new music is to skim and listen to beats / rhythms. I can pretty much tell in a few seconds whether the song is a banger, medium - worthy of adding to liked, or not enjoyable by my taste.

I do have to stop from time to time to listen in in a focused mode to see how I feel about the tone, voice and other elements though.

I have tried to organize album clubs where you take turns suggesting an album per week among a group of friends. I think this is a great way to discover music.

Unfortunately after about a year people lost interest and the club self died. I been trying to find similar things online but it appears that album clubs are not a thing?

Perhaps there’s something similar on Reddit or Lemmy? It could be more around the context of “weekly recommendations” inside subreddits for specific genres.

The anglosphere press loves to focus on Spotify for some reasons

"Fans" never quit Apple Music of Google Music :)

For me, Apple Music is part of a bundle of Apple services and integrates well with my Apple devices ecosystem. (Also have a big library of music stored there mostly dating back to pre-streaming.) Not sure why Spotify dominates music streaming discussions so completely.

I'm genuinely surprised to learn Google hasn't killed Google Music (yet).

Is there any curation system that actually works well? Fucking hate the Spotify forced recommended categories blended with random maybe poorly recommended things to listen to. Apple music playlist just sucks for me too now.

Ugh.

Personally? I find Youtube/YTMusic scarily accurate at maintaining "coherency" between tracks. I could listen to a 1 hour (human made) mix and I won't realize when the mix ends and the algo picks up. Spotify (for me) mixes upbeat tracks onto slow songs and mixes instrumental tracks with vocals and whatnot. Youtube rarely misses for me.

The best I guess is last.fm, which works based on "you like A, lots of people who listen to A, listen to B and C as well. Give it a try?" But honestly, nothing beats exploration and putting some work into finding yourself. I like to read comments in YouTube and last.fm.

YouTube music worked for me, after a while, and that while was months. Another one is Mixcloud, where if I find a DJ, or radio personality whom I find interesting music-wise, I can listen to their long mixes to see what they come up with. Mixcloud is a bit more human, I feel. It also has a free tier, I used it like that for years. No account needed to try either, just go there and explore.

There are other music steaming platforms. I use Tidal, finding it to be the least annoying of the ones I've tried (Spotify, Amazon, Apple).

What's with Spotify removing the like (heart) symbol from playlists?

It was an important way for me to group songs, or choosing where to start playing.

It’s a plus sign now. I guess the designers had nothing better to do, and had to justify changing something.

It seems "Playlist Radio" also disappeared in the new UI (or whatever the Windows edition is on currently), which makes Spotify basically useless for me. Luckily, it seems like the Linux version still offers Playlist Radio and favorites are still visible in playlists.

I can relate with the article. If you are just looking for some background music, I'd recommend radio paradise.

Tangential, does anyone know of good recommendation systems that aren't completely out of left field? Youtube's algo is pretty great in my experience unlike Spotify's (which never seems to understand what a genre is), but youtube isn't the best for music.

Edit: Spotify also has a habit of recommending more "mainstream" stuff, while a lot of what I listen to isn't the typical "Billboard Top 100". Youtube seems much better at suggesting songs with only a few thousand views that nearly perfectly match my taste, rather than playing yet-another-David-Guetta track (no offense to Guetta).

Maybe don't hand off your preferences to an algorithm? Make playlists.

I'm not being snarky, but as a former Spotify user, it annoyed me that I'd have to skip every third or fourth tune because it did not fit what I was looking for. I ended up moving to Napster and Bandcamp, despite their awful UX on anything but mobile. When I am having my coffee or whatever, I add stuff to playlists, then just let it run for the day. By using both and flipping between the two when I feel like it, I discover a lot of music I never knew I liked and I am much happier for it, rather than asking a streaming service to build my playlist for me. I find it worth the extra little bit of work and much more personalized.

Thanks for your reply, is discovery decent on Napster/Bandcamp, and can they suggest based on your tastes or is it more non-personalized?

One of my main "issues" is that I am very slow/hesitant to listen to new music and therefore mostly stick to known tracks unless something forces new music - heck, Hotel California is still the only Eagles songs I'm familiar with. Hence I prefer to break in/expand my taste by listening to similar music (initially, at least).

There's the pivot by cover | instrument path ...

eg: Hotel California -> Hayseed Dixie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keX84EUVd-I

then, if you can live with a banjo, add a didgeridoo .. surprisingly there's a cover (not of Hotel California) featuring both instruments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr3iI8gg2fo

Thanks!

One that I use is Mixcloud. Mixcloud has a recommendation algorithm, just like any other streaming site, but the value is that on Mixcloud, the unit is not single tracks, but rather mixes, mostly around an hour long. So, during that hour, it's not an algo that mixes the music, but a person, and there are many on Mixcloud who do a good job not just with the selection, but also with the specific order and the transition from one track to another. Some do such a good job that from my favorite mix, I don't even like the particular songs that much, as they are a bit boring and drag out simple ideas for too long. But in the mix they are presented in, every idea of them shines for just the right amount of time, and the way the blend into one another, each of them elevates the next one's experience.

Finding DJs and radio people with similar tastes was definitely work, but the payoff was also huge for me. I have many dear favorites that I accumulated over the years, and that I go back to from time to time.

> Mixcloud

Thanks for the suggestion, this sounds interesting. So if I understand right most/all these mixes are human-curated, right? Some of my tastes like Melodic House/Ambient are slightly more popular so I might be able to find a decent mix there.

They are supposed to be human curated, yes. The quality of the mixes definitely vary, but with a bit of time, it will be easy to separate the wheat from the chaff. Mixcloud also has a labeling system, so it will understand things like "melodic house", even having charts for it if it's popular enough.

Labels are also a good way to discover music, especially now, with the many specialized net-labels. If by any chance you like dark ambient too, Cryo Chamber on YouTube can be a good one. I find their mixes excellent as background music for reading, for example.

Thank you! Haven't heard of Cryo Chamber, the biggest ambient name I'm familiar with is Brian Eno, also maybe Justin Boreta or Tycho but I don't think they'll qualify as dark ambient.

surely here 'youtube music' would fit your needs. I switched from Spotify to YT music a few months ago, exactly because it had my youtube music listening history already there and there are lots of songs that aren't on spotify.

Thanks, I do use Youtube Music sometimes/often, but unfortunately some mixes still only appear on Youtube (even when others by the same channel are available on YTMusic). However it feels like Spotify is still much more of a music service than YTMusic which is why I don't want to fully dump Spotify. Stuff like the autogenerated playlists like "On Repeat" or the yearly recap and the other analytical tools, amongst others.

(I will say that I wished Google Play Music was still around. Being able to buy tracks outright using Play credit was really nice.)

I just revived my MP3 collection after getting frustrated with this & Spotify and purchasing a Pi5. But the process of self-hosting, correcting ID3 tags, etc is so time consuming (& frankly somewhat beyond my ability level) and is almost pushing me back to Spotify.

Have you tried Musicbrainz Picard[0]? It works wonderfully well, updating and fillings tags.

0. https://picard.musicbrainz.org/downloads/

As industry processes, the cycle of invention, societal benefit and cannibalism of the invetions foundations are going very quickly now.

Coreybdoctorow should really ponder how enshittifixation is really just a overall social/techno struggle, similar to traffic shockwaves.

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