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Comment by joshl32532 | Hacker News Reader

This is the problem with public listed companies that need to "maximize shareholder values" and look for infinite growth.

I just want Spotify for music (playlist, recommendation, lossless audio). I don't need their podcast, audiobook, ChatGPT, concert tickets etc. This just makes their app bloated for features I will never use.

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I disagree; Spotify is good at serving up sound, so it makes sense for them to also serve audiobooks and podcasts; just like it makes sense for video streaming services to have both movies and tv shows. Similarly for concerts; people who listen to a lot of music are probably interested in going to see their favorite band live.

Mind you, I definitely have complaints about the app (like notifications interrupting music, their abysmal lock screen widget, and their "randomization" that always ends up playing the same few songs from a list of thousands); but I also understand why they want to expand.

Glad I made a true(r) random playlist before they shut their API, which I figure killed those tools

Expand to all Google Play Music features pls Spotify (play counts & the impossible upload-your-own-music to Spotify’s cloud)

I have definitely become informed of concerts I’ve then gone to by way of Spotify. They know everyone I listen to and are well suited to advertise the artists I’d actually like to see to me.

> I also understand why they want to expand

I'd have fewer complaints if I could hide the sections I'm not interested in (new releases, audiobooks, podcasts, concerts, etc...).

it's in their interest for them to show you more things that they don't need to pay record labels royalties for.

Unbelievable that spotify's shuffle is still broken a decade later. No chance the people working there dont know about this as everyone with large playlists runs into it, but for whatever reason they refuse to fix it.

Another reason to use Bandcamp and just buy music. Of course then you've gotta setup a whole stack to store it, make it available to your devices, etc etc. I dunno, Spotify certainly isn't going to get better at this point. Best we can hope is that they die and something better takes their place.

My impression from the selfhosted sub is that most people looking to replace spotify are not into albums, and want a lot of popular music not available on BC.

> Of course then you've gotta setup a whole stack to store it, make it available to your devices, etc etc.

I have avoided building my own stack by uploading everything into Youtube Music (which used to be Google Music, which ... whatever.)

It gets a little worse every day, and one day it'll get bad enough where the pain of sysadmining something new will be preferable to them.

I haven't set up my own stack for music, so I'm just guessing tbh, but administering Jellyfin has been completely painless. Let Claude write a docker compose file, toss it on the server, haven't had to think about it again. I bet there's something equally good out there for music management.

navidrome is pretty good.

> Of course then you've gotta setup a whole stack to store it

No you do not. Just use an external drive and an MP3 player like some kind of caveman. There are plenty of high quality models out there. Additionally smart phones will let you store music on them to listen to using the player app of your choice (VLC or something).

Well to elaborate on what I meant - Spotify makes it extremely easy to have access to your music everywhere. Once you get into (or back into) storing MP3s you have to solve that for whatever level of convenience you want. I have Plexamp and things setup myself but it does require some work.

For the last 20 years, my "stack" has been a NFS-mounted hard drive full of MP3s, and the occasional rsync mirror to a USB stick if I need to listen to something without a network connection.

>Of course then you've gotta setup a whole stack to store it, make it available to your devices, etc etc.

Uhh, no you don't? Nearly all of my Bandcamp purchases, except the literal one or two physical-only purchases that didn't also come with a digital copy, are all available to stream to my heart's content via the Bandcamp app and their website.

I mean, I also download it all because I DJ, but yeah... having access to it whenever I want is entirely effortless and doesn't require anything beyond Bandcamp itself.

Cloud storage (I use Dropbox) and an app to sync it with my phone automatically. It doesn't take a long time to set up.

And if I want to listen to a random song I don't have while I'm outside... I just don't.

If you're on Apple devices it's $25 a year for iTunes Match. You can throw all your Bandcamp purchases into the Music app and they'll be available across your devices.

I understand not wanting them to expand into playlists and audiobooks.

But concert tickets, notifications, etc., seems like a no-brainer. That is firmly within the category of music.

It also likely makes it harder for people ho are not users of Spotify to get tickets - which is almost certainly the goal.

Less than 10 years ago I could stroll into a local record store in my city and buy paper tickets to concerts directly from them, zero markup, zero "processing fees". And the ticket itself would be a souvenir because it often had a unique design or typeface. Now it's just a hideous barcode.

It's the newest version of Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment:

> Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

You may need to move on to other services like Apple Music

Apple’s prioritization of Apple Music on their HomePod turns me off it a bit. Could help guide users more to alternatives but would reduce services sales.

Meh, I’m being kinda unfair b/c the experience is gonna be better. Shame Spotify forces streaming from phone (YouTube Music can run on HomePod itself like Apple Music). YouTube Music via HomePod might play the audio from a music video instead of playing the real song, so does make sense to shuttle normies to the Apple service, but guess I don’t find the situation perfect.

At least concert tickets are somewhat aligned with listening to music, unlike autoplaying video podcasts on the homepage rather than showing my playlists.

So just use it for music. Who cares if the app bundle is bloated? If that's really your main criteria, just use the web player

music listening has been falling for a while now. no company public or not will choose to commit suicide out of purity principle

Spotify is welcome to go into all those other businesses, but why do they have to destroy their one valuable resource in an attempt to leverage it for all this other garbage? Doing one thing really good - so good that people will pay you for it - is not a "purity principle". It used to be the fundamental reason for existence for many companies.

its not garbage. podcasts is now major chunk of listening. so why not give ppl what they want. "one thing" is not just music. My own listening habits have shifted from music into podcasts.

I'm sorry what? Artists do not make money on streaming, they make it in touring. Spotify integrating concerts into the same product surface is the MOST logical thing they could do.

Touring costs a fortune for bands. They don't even keep most of the money, the record label takes a big cut and there's Ticketmaster after that, and now Spotify I guess. Selling paper-thin T-shirts, vinyl and lapel pins for absurd markups at the merch booth is how they make money.

i get a lot of value from these other features (podcast, audiobook, concert suggestions) and would appreciate some livenation disruption

Hmm, see I don’t agree. I use Spotify extensively for music, but also for podcasts and audiobooks. Great for a long car journey, or background listening whilst doing DIY.

I have plenty of frustrations with the app, but not with the core offer as a delivery mechanism for various types of audio entertainment and information.

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