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> This is detrimental to music discovery, because discovering a song is a lot less meaningful than discovering a new album and consuming the project as a whole and appreciating its composition.

This is a very silly statement. As someone who prefers to listen the full albums and does so 95% of the time and basically never seek to play a specific single; I’m definitely not going to listen to an entire albums of new artists at a time.

I look at the discover weekly / release radar. If I like a song, I’ll listen to the album. If it I like the album, I’ll listen to the discography.

Most music is not great, but it’s easy to sample and dive deeper.

>If I like a song, I’ll listen to the album. If it I like the album, I’ll listen to the discography.

Not everyone wants to put forth that much effort. Design decisions are often, if not always, centered around the path of least resistance. [1]

1: https://www.usertesting.com/blog/why-users-wont-go-where-you...

> Not everyone wants to put forth that much effort.

How is that more effort than listening whole albums?

I personally do my Spotify discovery exactly that way - I listen to "discover weekly", and when a song stands out, I just click on the artist and listen more. I can't imagine any way of putting less effort than that into discovering new music.

Albums aren’t what Spotify recommends. Path of least resistance. See my comment above.

Albums are literally one tap away - you tap on the song title and the album opens.

> See my comment above.

Please either reply to my comment with new words, or not at all.

Listening to albums is a bad way of discovering albums you like. That’s my point.

> so DJs had to break new songs, styles, and have a wide array of music offered (within the theme of the station).

I'm an older Zoomer and this was never the case for radio in my lifetime [1]. I heard "college radio stations" being a bastion of this but I've never listened to one myself.

One of the earliest internet services I remember loving was Pandora because it recommended me artists I never heard on the radio and was the start of my love of music.

[1] I'm guessing it was related to all radio stations being owned by the same companies.

Late Gen-X/Early Millennial here; there was a time before the consolidation of radio stations and invasion of iHeartMedia (at the time named Clear Channel) where DJs had the final word in what got played and most were quite good at introducing new music. Here's my experience form the outside of the industry: once consolidation started there was a push to use canned (pre-recorded) intros, outros, and interstitial announcements to reduce costs. Stations often kept some talk shows, but few kept real DJs. This let stations use a small number of voice actors for a large number of stations. Combined with centrally controlled playlists they were able to push the costs down and increase profits to the point that older style stations with bespoke DJs couldn't compete financially and either adopted the same model or they sold out.

EDIT: I may be misremembering, but there used to be a limit on how many stations a company could own in a given market.

You are correct. There used to be a limit. Radio was deregulated in the 90s and by the early 2000s local DJ selected music was essentially gone.

Yep. I recall this happening. Let's all praise DEREGULATION and the dollars it brought us.

I recently switched off Amazon Music and went back to Pandora (must have started using it in like 2010 and then gone on a 13 or so year long diversion into the on-demand streaming services).

I guess it isn’t surprising because it is their core value proposition, but the Pandora discovery algorithm seems so much better than the competition, at least to my ears.

I miss the ability to hyper-focus and play an album over and over, but on the other hand, it is probably better not to burn out on an album, and anyway, if I really want to, I can buy the album I guess.

Pandora + Bandcamp reminds me of what the internet looked like it could be. Sad that Amazon and their ilk have to silo everything.

Last.fm was pretty good too. I wonder how they are holding up…

Pandora was my go-to circa 2007-2009 and I haven't thought about it in years. Looking back, I discovered a disproportionate amount of the music I like in that timeframe... I'm honestly kind of surprised they're still around (and, if I'm reading your comment correctly, haven't morphed into something entirely unrecognizable in the meantime?)

I don’t know much about their business model under the hood, but from my point of view they seem pretty similar to back then.

It was funny to log in and see all my old stations from a decade plus ago, still working.

I use Pandora and subscribe to Premium which allows me to listen to albums on demand. When I started out as a free user after I gave up on Youtube in the background apps, I didn't like Spotify because it kept forcing me to listen to awful songs that it pushes on everybody instead of what I actually wanted to listen to. Pandora was a much better experience as a free user because their "radio" plays music similar to what you've already told it you like.

How does Spotify "force" you to listen to stuff? I have a very different experience. Pandora (many years ago when I tried it) did not let you choose what you wanted to play (e.g. am album) and Spotify did (and still does). I have hundreds of my own playlists on Spotify, and my listening time is split between those, Spotify's "daily mix" playlists (generated from your personal music tastes) and occasionally "discover weekly" (one way I discover new music). I like choosing what music I listen to.

Dude... THANK YOU. I just logged back into Pandora and the recommendations are just as excellent as I remember. I also remember discovering some of my absolute favorite songs/albums via Pandora.

One thing that Pandora has is GENRE based stations. I don't know of any other service that can do that. This will be a game changer for when I dive into new genres.

Correct - this sort of thing was basically over-and-done by the mid 90s.

Since I'm not seeing anybody mention it yet but it's one of my favorite ways to find new genres, I'd highly recommend everyone check out everynoise.com because they seem to have scraped Spotify's genres (you'll need Spotify to listen to more than 30 second samples, but probably still useful even if you don't use Spotify). The number of genres they have listed in the THOUSANDS, and I guarantee they will have something you've never heard of, but it's a great rabbit hole to go down when looking for new music. If you like a genre, they'll already have multiple playlists for it, and if you like a particular artist, they'll have those too. I am not affiliated with the website, but try to turn everyone I know onto it because there's just so much out there to discover that I wouldn't have otherwise.

(everynoise.com developer, if you're reading this, I love you <3)

I'll add one more

5. Once you find a band you like, pull their tour dates. See who they're opening for or who their openers are.

6. Go to whosampled.com and figure out the originals. Whom do they cover, whom do they sample.

Younger artists cover older artists all the time; when older artists cover younger ones, that's probably a recommendation.

Examples: Dolly Parton covering Joan Jett; Alla Pugacheva and Sofia Rotaru covering t.A.T.u.

mindlessly

Or mindfully.

You have no idea why people choose what they listen to, and suggesting they're doing it without thinking is just your snobbery showing.

Read my comment again. If you're listening to a playlist, you're not mindfully choosing each song. There's nothing wrong with playlists, but my point was to describe how listening to music from Spotify's playlists often isn't a mindful experience (excluding when your attention is grabbed the occasional standout track).

A GOOD playlist can keep your attention, and those are often handcrafted by other users. Just look at some of the other responses in this thread. Plenty of people have the same experience.

I also said that music from playlists is often (not always) groovy background noise - This isn't a mindful experience - And that's okay.

>My current new genre is South African Amapiano.

How did you discover Amapiano? I ask because Tyla has become massively popular in the last year and I'm wondering if the discovery was truly coincidental or undercover marketing?

Uncle Waffles @ Coachella 2023

I see this in https://everynoise.com/#updates

> 2024-01-05 status update: With my layoff from Spotify on 2023-12-04, I lost the internal data-access required for ongoing updates to many parts of this site. Most of this, as a result, is now a static snapshot of what, for now, will be the final state from the site's 10-year history and evolution, hosted on my own server. Some pieces may get disabled and reenabled over time, and some that only made sense with current data may never return. But we'll see.

> This is because labels pay Spotify to put certain songs on large playlists

Source? This is what Spotify says about it themselves:

"We want to make something crystal clear: no one can pay to be added to one of Spotify’s editorial playlists."

https://community.spotify.com/t5/FAQs/How-to-get-your-music-...

Sure, they could be lying but then all the labels and their employees would need to be in on the lie as well.

This is the same defense used in radio. Note the wording ... "no one can pay". Favors and indirect payment are used excessively in the music industry. Note that I also said that payola was the act of "direct payment".

An example of indirect payment in radio would be the record label gifting a set of expensive tickets to the station.

Remember those contests in the 2000s where the radio station would play a collection of songs over the course of a few hours, and if you could call in and be caller number 15 and name all the songs, you could win free concert tickets?

The record label didn't pay the radio station with money - The tickets were gifted to the station for free. But as a result, the radio station played [insert band name]'s songs for 2 hours straight (and possibly other artists on the same label).

This is a win-win, because a ton of people talk about this contest with their family and friends, so the station gets free promo, and the artist gets exposure.

I don't know how Spotify is doing this in the digital era, but ask anyone connected to the music industry. This 100% happens.

For a lot of casual listeners, Spotify editorial playlists are the new radio station.

So in other words: you're just speculating and have no basis for the claim.

I don't know about the Spotify analysis here, but certainly cosign RateYourMusic, which I just learned about this last weekend and am now a little bit obsessed with. It's like IMDB crossed with Pinboard, and the list of new stuff I have to listen to now is long and intricately connected to what I already listen to. It's a pretty amazing resource, even if everyone there is wrong about Uncle Tupelo's "Anodyne".

I pay for it because it's dirt cheap and you get track ratings. If I discover an artist I use RYM to get the best 3 songs of their best 3 albums on YouTube. if I still like the band after that I'll buy the highest rated album.

I used it for like 5 minutes before paying for it, it's obviously great, and the "pro" upgrade has the funniest best feature ever (exclude ratings by the age of the rater).

Haha yep, and I also exclude an entire genre and all of its sub-genres.

Also - just don't use Spotify. It has a UX that is just consistently opposed to album-centric listening. Or any sort of focused listening, really.

There are alternatives. Apple music is fine. Tidal + Roon is also pretty good.

For discovering music, Roon provides a much more album-centric way to browse and learn about different albums and genres. I use that combined with subreddits for particular genres and good old fashioned album reviews and artist interviews.

I’ve wondered for a while if Spotify skews playlists in favor of cheaper songs. I have no evidence of this, but it’d make business sense to use the equivalent of store brand music (even if that just means outsourced to a cheap agency) for generic study music playlists and such.

> it’d make business sense to use the equivalent of store brand music

They've been accused of almost exactly this: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-is-creating-i...

Spotify denies doing this but you can google to find a lot of controversy over fake artists on Spotify.

A more recent variation on the theme: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/19/swedish-comp...

I noticed Google Play do this with Soundcloud Rap.

Their amorality has caused me to enjoy SoundCloud Rap at a formidable age, now I cannot shake it. My kids listen to it, swear amorally, and the cycle continues.

All because Google Play didn't want to shell out an extra 60 cents per year for paid Rappers.

What???

I think they tend to play what is cached locally, to save on streaming costs.

That’s certainly possible, but I’d expect licensing costs to dwarf bandwidth costs.

You have no idea how little artists make from selling music on platforms. The money is in the live performances and merchandise.

Strongly disagree with your take on albums. I'm a music lover, spotify wrapped always puts me in the top 5% for most artists. I never search by album, always song, and if it's great I'll click in to check to see if the album is to my taste.

I have discovered so much music on spotify. I'm not going to listen to a whole album to see if I like a new artist, lol.

>> labels pay Spotify to put certain songs on large playlists

What are you talking about. IM going to need you to back this one up with some proof.

1. The labels have a giant back catalog that remains popular. It does not need promotion. Huge long tail profits there.

2. The labels dont have a lot to sell any more. The big artists tend to get out of the system (and make money on tours) and small artists get nothing. And lots of artists have bought back their catalogs, again long tail.

The album, as a vehicle is mostly dead. Hell songs are mostly dead, if you cant hook someone in the time of a ticktock video your going to have a lot of trouble getting them. And there you need to be "background music" with a groove.

Anecdotal, but I was close friends with someone who managed a niche (but popular) artist’s social media and streaming service presence. We discussed this fact and this person mentioned it could be $10k+ to be on some playlists 1st song spot for just a few days. I doubt it’s only Spotify official playlists.

Or, you know, Spotify lists suck because they dont want you consuming.

The optimal state for Netflix, Spotify, any other bandwidth intensive fixed price service is for you to PAY for it and NOT USE IT.

These services are optimized for maintaining subscription numbers, not your enjoyment.

I'm listening to some Amapiano now... and loving it.

Care to share some of the other genres you've tried before this one?

My previous genres were dozens of Techno subgenres. Check out the 2023 Coachella lineup. That year had a strong focus on 'World Music'. I went last year and that's how I discovered Amapiano.

If you like Amapiano, check out a song titled 'Ungowami' by Sha Sha

Check out 'Big Flexa' by Costa Titch. Awesome music video too. Huge dance culture in South Africa.

Also check out 'Abo Mvelo' by Daliwonga (this song gets me hype during workouts)

And check out Uncle Waffles' Boiler Room mix. Truly awesome performance.

> So you're discovering new music, but none of it is memorable, because listening to music in 2024 (for a lot of people) is often a wall of slightly groovy background noise, with the occasional standout track that you probably toss into your own personal playlist.

Yea, I tried streaming for a while, and found exactly that. When I play some genre-specific stream with a goal of discovering new music, I find it's basically full of unremarkable, generic musak, punctuated by maybe 0.1% memorable, great tracks that I'm motivated to bookmark for later. Are these few needles worth slogging through hours of haystack? After a few years I have sadly concluded "no."

Not sure why this is. Has it always been this way (0.1% great stuff in a sea of mediocre?) or are "content creators" of today just more focused on churning out quantity than artists of the past?

You’ve discovered the Pareto Principle. It’s true about literally everything.

So now I was on the German and the English Wikipedia entry of the Principle and noticed a noteworthy difference:

English: While it is common to refer to pareto as "80/20" rule, under the assumption that, in all situations, 20% of causes determine 80% of problems, this ratio is merely a convenient rule of thumb and is not, nor should it be considered, an immutable law of nature.

German: The 80-20 distribution in the Pareto principle often leads to the false assumption that a sum of 100 is mandatory. In fact, however, any other distribution is possible, in which, for example, 50 % of the efforts lead to 90 % of the effect, and again 50 % of the efforts lead to the remaining 10 % of the effect. This is easy to see in the trivial case that 100% of the efforts are the cause of 100% of the success. [0]

It's interesting how this explanatory information is lacking in the English version. Should be a cool project for an LLM to transfer information between the different language versions of a Wikipedia entry.

[0] Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

It's "true", yes, for almost everything, but there is a lot to gain from recognizing the difference between 80/20 and 90/10 or even 99/1, etc. Just like 99%, 99.9% and 99.99% uptime are VERY different promises to meet, while looking virtually identical to a layman.

The old school way still works too:

5. Listen to the radio.

Nah, most people only have consolidated radio stations, they play national playlists of soup.

If you still have independent stations which pay actual radio DJs empowered to craft their sets, cherish them.

Three D Radio, local independent radio station in Adelaide, South Australia is the source of most of my discovery.

They play a lot of styles, and there's a lot I don't like, but there's a very high chance you haven't heard it before - and that counts for something.

https://www.threedradio.com