Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

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> Is there nothing troubling about the fact that the company who _decides_ what you're listening to decides that you only listen to their music? I didn't sign up for that.

Spotify doesn't decide a thing. Everything I listen to on Spotify is based on what I chose to listen to. I have to choose to listen to background music, and choose a Spotify playlist over someone else's.

> I use Spotify to find new artists so I can follow their artistic journey and see them in concert.

So do I. This doesn't take away from that at all. That's "real" music which is most of my listening. But when I want "background" music, I can put on one of these Spotify playlists if I want. But that doesn't affect my ability to find new artists and follow them. If I'm putting on background music that I don't want to draw my attention, those are not artists I'd be following to begin with. It's like a different category of music entirely. What's wrong with Spotify providing both?

Discovery matters. Google doesn’t decide which websites you visit, but how often do you go to the 2nd page of search results? Supermarkets don’t decide what you buy, but there is a reason why everyone wants their product in middle shelf and not a bottom one. And Spotify doesn’t decide what you listen to, but a playlist on main page will get an order of magnitude more listens than a playlist you need to search for

This may be true for you (it's mostly true for me as well with Apple Music), but the spotify playlists and the auto-playlist-generator-thing are both enormously popular. There's little you can do with your behavior to affect the power Spotify has in the industry.

> What's wrong with Spotify providing both?

Spotify shouldn't be anything but a dumb pipe. Corporate money should not be dictating what art we gets produced and we have access to. It does, of course, across multiple industries, but that's generally a very bad thing.

> Spotify shouldn't be anything but a dumb pipe.

That's the absolute last thing I want.

I've found so much music through its radio recommendations, it's "artists like this", getting into a new genre via its curated playlists.

The primary value proposition to me of Spotify is to not be a dumb pipe, but to actively assist me in discovering new music I like.

There are lots of services I could choose to access music through (Apple, Amazon, Tidal, etc.), if all I wanted was a dumb pipe. I pick Spotify because of how much better its recommendations are over the other services, in my experience.

But that's not taking away any choice, it's only adding to it. Sometimes I choose to listen to stuff I know I like, and Spotify algorithms play zero part in that. Sometimes I want new stuff, and Spotify algorithms and playlists are a huge help. They're not "dictating" anything to me, because I'm actively choosing to use them.

> The primary value proposition to me of Spotify is to not be a dumb pipe, but to actively assist me in discovering new music I like.

> Everything I listen to on Spotify is based on what I chose to listen to.

I'm not saying these contradict, but you are in fact allowing a corporate entity to dictate your music taste on some level. Payola means certain artists pay to get prioritized to you. Maybe it doesn't work on you! Maybe you like this. Maybe your taste surrounds an area of music where payola isn't a problem. All of these are possibilities.

To me, that's a very large problem. To you, that's what you're paying for. That's fine, but we're going to continue to disagree over whether or not Spotify is destroying the music industry and music culture. To me, this is exactly the opposite of how technology should assist in connecting artists to listeners and paying artists.

But whatever; we really have no say at the end of the day, we're kind of just stuck with what we have.

> but you are in fact allowing a corporate entity to dictate your music taste on some level.

I think that's a very weird way of characterizing it.

That's like saying, when I choose to watch a movie at the theaters, I am in fact allowing a corporate entity to dictate what I watch for the next two hours.

True in some sort of technical sense I suppose. But I still chose to watch the film in the first place. So I don't really know what there is to complain about.

(And I haven't noticed any kind of payola in Spotify radio recs or related artists -- but that would definitely be a decrease in quality that could send me to another service. In their editorial playlists, I don't mind though -- I assume it's editorial rather than algorithmic from the start.)

> That's like saying, when I choose to watch a movie at the theaters, I am in fact allowing a corporate entity to dictate what I watch for the next two hours.

You absolutely are. That's the entire point of trailers.

EDIT: my reading comprehension is poor. Yes, you have to opt in to watching the movies and in this sense you're 100% correct that corporate money isn't dictating what you watch. I think it's a little different in that it's much easier to miss out on music whereas movies can spend more on advertising than they do on production.

I'm not saying this is even avoidable, either. It's just super depressing.

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