How do you rate Spotify?

Marketing surveys ftw!

I love Spotify and I pay for Unlimited (I used to pay for Premium, but I found I didn't use it on my phone enough to justify the added $5/mo).

i like spotify and pay for premium

Love it and pay for Premium. In fact, I've used it for more than a year, but only recently has it started to feel indispensable. I rarely download new albums anymore, since most of the time they're on Spotify. I don't even bother with advance leaks -- half the reason I used to grab them was because I wanted to hear them right away, but the other half was because I knew it would be more difficult to find download links later. If an album's on Spotify, I'm content to wait until the actual release date. In fact, it's kind of restored that sense of anticipation every Tuesday as I check to see What's New.

The problem now is that I don't have a smartphone, and so when I'm away from a computer (on my commute to and from work, for instance), I'm still using my iPod to listen to music I've uploaded or downloaded to iTunes. And since I don't download much anymore, I mostly just listen to older stuff. That's not such a bad thing, but I feel like it'll be untenable in the long term. Strange to think that the Spotify app is what might finally persuade me to throw away my ancient phone.

oh yeah unlimited i forgot about that, just vote premium if you have it.

It has enough to keep me occupied and it's worth $5/month, but the gaps (and the shitty UI) are enough to vote glass-half-empty.

I used it sparingly at first before I got a Sonos & an iPhone and now find it essential and quite transformative to my music listening. I still buy an unhealthy amount of vinyl but I'm a lot more discriminatory in what I choose to buy than before. There are fewer bands I now whom I buy every album from blindly than before but I think I also pick up more a more varied selection of unknown sounds than I have before. In the house I use it regularly and sometimes lazily when I just want to listen to a few tracks from something and can't be bothered getting up for the record or CD. In that sense it's been a bit destructive and made me a much more impatient and trigger happy consumer of music and I find that end result quite conflicting. Outside I use the mobile app daily and aside of the odd missing band or album it's been one of the best moves I've made. It can be overwhelming on occasional and I'm not unprone to bouts of inertia where I can't think of what I want to listen to. I was definitely feeling constricted by the limits of capacity and mundanity of maintenance involved with an MP3 player before. For me, at £10 per month, it's exceptional value for money. Socially I think it's had a more complicated effect on listening at parties where it can either result in inventive and inspired 'pass the phone' curated playlists with friends or a collective sense of unease and a discomforting jarring schizo headache of disparate sounds.

love it, pay for premium. Streaming has been a game-changer for me

don't use it, sucks for dance music.

don't use it for a combination of reasons indicated above, but voted "i hate streaming" cuz I guess that is inclusive of "doesn't pay" and "doesn't have a lot of what I want"

seeing as how there has never been (and never will be) a streaming service that pays artists and has everything

Yeah I will never pay for this on principle but I will install blockify if I feel like listening to the entire catalogue of lou reed on a whim.

theres lots of great apps for spotify. the Bluenote , Classical and Soundrop (its rooms where you can add music from spotify and chat.) apps are essential.

Soundrop you can do it via app on Spotify or by web (sign in with twitter or fb)
http://play.soundrop.fm/

You can create rooms and yes theres an ilxor room - http://open.soundrop.fm/s/W16fTbbsgjzuGhsN )

I Love it and (used to) pay for premium! But it also doesn't have everything I want...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22064353

I love it and pay for unlimited. the idea that it not having everything I want is a problem is ridiculous to me -- nor does iTunes or the best physical record store in the world, or even any given filesharing network. there's no such thing as one stop shopping. and most of what Spotify doesn't have that i do want, new anyway, is on DatPiff or Bandcamp or somewhere else that streams.

i wish they charged more, though -- i'd gladly pay more for this service, especially if it meant a higher royalty rate for artists, but since they priced it so low to begin with (which is kinda stupid, imo, it would've caught on no matter what) now it'll never go up.

It only has about half the stuff I want but given that the half it does have includes Polish beat-pop, Spanish new-wave and a bunch of other amazing stuff it would be a major pain in the neck to track down by other means, I love it.

It doesn't have everything I want, but nothing would. I pay for premium.

the idea that it not having everything I want is a problem is ridiculous to me

I don't care about it having ~everything~ it's just that there's ~not enough~ of the crap I listen to.

yeah I don't need some OTHER thing to try and find music with. especially when it's not stuff I will own in perpetuity, just stuff that will happen to be available at the moment. when spotify goes under (as it inevitably will) all you subscribers will be left with nothing/have to find some other stupid service etc (altho granted this is a complaint about streaming services not just spotify)

love it, pay for premium, would pay more. agree that it definitely has gaps - huge catalogue acts and dance music in general the most obv - and it makes even more annoyed and befuddled that at this point labels don't bother to keep almost everything in print digitally at least. at the same time for impulse listens of albums it's fantastic. i've heard four foghat albums now, i couldn't have done that w/o spotify.

agree w/ shakey that anyone who burns all their records upon subscribing to spotify might regret it some day

lol @ the idea that music streaming is a fad. Even if Spotify goes down one day, a bajillion other choices will be available.

pay for premium, love it, the ability to "download" tracks onto my iphone for offline listening in the subway was a gamechanger

yeah, streaming isn't going away. if Spotify isn't sustainable in the long run, something else will come along. it's cool if you want to own everything in perpetuity (or lol as long as your surely immortal hard drive will last) but not everybody wants that.

some dude otm. i also love the social aspects of it (sharing playlists etc) & i would pay more if they asked for it. it's not perfect but has positively changed my listening habits & made me realise what a streaming music service could potentially be. if something like spotify really had ~everything~ then i would pay whatever i could afford to have access to it.

if something like spotify really had ~everything~ then i would pay whatever i could afford to have access to it.

For real. I'd pay as much as I currently pay for my cable bill, and it would be a much better value.

It has most of what I want. There are some small DJ stuff and remixes it doesn't have, which I can do without.

For now, it suits my needs, but I find myself always downloading or buying the stuff I really like anyway.

I think the price is more than enough considering I use it to 'test out' music, and if I like it, I'll buy their record or Flac/MP3s.

I don't think that streaming is a fad, I just don't want to become beholden to some stupid/new/different corporate model every 5 years for my music

frankly i'm hoping that mp3s go out of style as the dominant medium and that something better eventually becomes the default for downloading/storing digital music, and that streaming may better usher along that transition

would be interested to see a poll of how much people would willing to pay per month for an ideal streaming service that truly had all of recorded music

I don't care about it having ~everything~ it's just that there's ~not enough~ of the crap I listen to.

― brimstead, Tuesday, April 16, 2013 4:12 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is the weirdest attitude to me. like, it's free, it takes up relatively little space on your computer, but you make a point of not using it just because, like, you're gonna use a million times that much memory for all your mp3s? even if i only used it a couple hours a month, i'd still keep it on my computer. it'd be like making a point of not having your browser up to date enough to use YouTube now and again.

Casual or even intent listening is a perfect use for streaming services, but I imagine I'll always want to make mixtapes/cds. Throwing things in a playlist just isn't as much fun.

i'm done with cds, and i'm sure i'll still grab digital albums here, but for now it's spotify

here and there, rather

and really even if i didn't want to consume whole albums on Spotify, i'd keep it around just as a stray 'check out random songs i'm curious about' service instead of YouTube, which has just gotten slower and more clogged with ads lately. (xp)

i guess i just don't care about owning music anymore. which is nice in a way

i still dl and buy albums but the days of dling things (often huge things) i might not only listen to once or never even get around to listening to at all are gone.

xpost huge ditto to social aspects and playlists in general (i'd guess maybe half my interest in ilm polls is the generated spotify playlist). good catch by ag putting youtube on there, i know an astounding number of ppl for whom youtube is their primary way of listening to music. considering they do have alot of dance music that spotify doesn't have i've often wondered about making a youtube playlist to listen to at the gym, etc on yr phone but it feels both weird to me and likely to blow up yr data cap.

There's actually loads of good, new dance music on Spotify, but there are quite a few labels that basically refuse to have anything to do with it, and if your taste clusters around some of those labels then you won't get much use out of it. Then again, that's partly your fault for having narrow taste.

it's free, it takes up relatively little space on your computer, but you make a point of not using it just because,

it requires a facebook account etc

fuck that shit

Likewise...except, again, for mixes. When I want to give someone a mix, I don't want it to be a hotlink.

it requires a facebook account etc

not anymore

also for classical, which was always hell to dl and daunting to buy, it's been beyond a godsend for me

I know soundrop allows twitter accounts so I assume spotify does

balls do you use the classify app?

my "it doesn't have everything" beef isn't really about expecting spotify to rectify an oversight - i get why it's impossible - but it's just the key reason it's not a service i need in my life. it's not just a few records here and there that it's missing - a good half of whatever i'm jamming in any given week isn't on it. i don't want to have to constantly switch between programmes to listen to music. it's also why i don't want to rely on spotify 100%, to only listen through it, as i see a lot of people doing.

also when i really like a song or album i do want the mp3, not because of any sense of ownership but because i need it for my ipod to play when on the move. this also applies to giving new songs the chance the repeat listening affords rather than just one cursory stream.

obv i realise my music listening is skewed because of my job, both in that it necessitates me listening to pre-release stuff and having access to promos (most of which are digital mp3s, CDs that i convert into mp3s, or streaming through the label's own terrible programmes). totally get why it's a revolution for most listeners. it just has no place in my life though.

(and that's before you get into how awful it is for artists, and how it doesn't seem like a particularly sustainable long-term model...)

Classify/Blue note/soundrop apps are essential for me. Really cant recommend them enough

I know soundrop allows twitter accounts so I assume spotify does

facebook or spotify, no twitter

I mean eventually Spotify, or more likely the services that succeed it, WILL have pretty much everything because streaming will become the default way of listening to music. Even now it has most of the stuff I want and the rest isn't exactly hard to come by elsewhere.

(xpost - hah, when it comes to classical music Spotify has probably changed my listening habits more than anything else, and it's usually on my commute I get a lot more reading done as well - can't read to anything with lyrics so it's classical or techno all the way).

I am fully in-line w/lex's reasoning

(well except for the job part, that's not a factor for me)

the social/playlist aspect is the one that makes me both the most envious, b/c it looks like fun, and also the most frustrated because that's when my "it doesn't have everything" complaint actually has the consequence of having to halve any given playlist i want to make because spotify doesn't have the key songs - contra youtube, which is worse quality etc but can be relied on to have just about anything i want to put in a playlist (and is super-easy to upload to, in the event that it doesn't)

really the closest thing i can compare it to is working in a record store, only one that for some reason doesn't stock alot of dance, beatles floyd zep eagles ac/dc, or certain indie labels. but otoh if you've ever been curious about foghat's new wave phase you're covered.

Yeah as a browsing tool it's astonishing, as a curatorial one it has some way to go yet.

youtube ads are the work of the devil but adblock pretty much kills them all for me

but otoh if you've ever been curious about foghat's new wave phase you're covered.

lol I wasn't before, but I am now. Thx, Spotify!

Also does anyone seriously use Spotify for everything? Why would you even do that? Their interface for organising yr MP3s is fuck-awful for one thing.

Both times I signed up for Spotify I signed up on their website & did not have to have a facebook account. It's soundrop (an app in spotify) that annoyingly requires a facebook account to use it fully so I don't know what people are on about...

I basically nowadays only use last.fm and spotify for all my music listening. Unless I want to spend the hour it takes for iTunes to load up on my computer...

I get the lex's argument and shakeys and i still buy vinyl and cds (not mp3s i download them for ipod or leaks etc) but i spend hours at night in soundrop with a bunch of other ilxors. Theres rooms for all styles or create your own with your own playlist. Id totally go in other ilxors rooms to hear new stuff in genres im unfamiliar with. If the dance cru ever make a room let me know!

viceroy soundrop allows twitter for the past 6 months at least

since they priced it so low to begin with (which is kinda stupid, imo, it would've caught on no matter what) now it'll never go up.

no way. it caught on because it was free. that -- along with some very canny marketing -- is what separated it from companies like rhapsody and napster who had been doing the exact same thing for years and who effectively proved that people will NOT pay a lot of money for this sort of thing. some people might. but not nearly enough people will.

i could list seven or eight million things that spotify is doing wrong but it's always on in my house and it's probably my primary source of music.

i don't want to rely on spotify 100%, to only listen through it, as i see a lot of people doing.

this is an excellent point.

my spotify is an old skool spotify account though cuz i signed up when UK first got it. After 2 years of moaning bout the price I jumped in cuz it had all the blue note jazz. I'd pay £20 a month just for that!

Also if you have an unlimited data plan, the feeling of just wandering around town and thinking "I want to listen to X album" and being able to almost immediately do it is beyond classic.

I love it and pay for unlimited (would probably go for premium if I had a smartphone). I keep a list of albums I want to hear and I can usually find about 75% of them on there, old and new. If I listen to something a couple of times and really like it I'll buy the mp3s (mostly for individual tracks) or a physical copy but it's how I do a lot of my home listening now. Gone are the days of blindly buying everything I wanted to hear on CD. In particular it's a great way to delve into an artist's back catalogue where you might want to hear all the albums out of curiosity but not necessarily own them.

woah foghat went new wave?

game changer

Thanks to this thread, I'm gonna download spotify and listen to some classical.

Premium means higher bitrate albums btw. (not sure if all albums are but not heard otherwise)

http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/f/foghat/album-tight-shoes.jpg

for classical there's a few aps but i usually just keep tabs on what various classical critics are recommending. i'm also fond of this playlist that updates every now and then - http://open.spotify.com/user/timrj/playlist/4omySGzcpTdUK4QAja3kUx

this is the weirdest attitude to me. like, it's free, it takes up relatively little space on your computer, but you make a point of not using it just because, like, you're gonna use a million times that much memory for all your mp3s? even if i only used it a couple hours a month, i'd still keep it on my computer. it'd be like making a point of not having your browser up to date enough to use YouTube now and again.

well yeah i dwnloaded it when it first came to the u.s., used it for a few weeks, made playlists, the got really into yellow magic orchestra related stuff for awhile and just stopped using it/forgot about it. I'm not "making a point" of not using it, I was just describing the biggest reason i don't use it.

For real. I'd pay as much as I currently pay for my cable bill, and it would be a much better value.

^^^

really the closest thing i can compare it to is working in a record store, only one that for some reason doesn't stock alot of dance, beatles floyd zep eagles ac/dc, or certain indie labels. but otoh if you've ever been curious about foghat's new wave phase you're covered.

this sounds like my ideal record store

lex pretend's post sums up my attitude perfectly.

One thing that would get me upgrade to Premium instantly is access to higher-res artwork, musician credits and liner notes for albums that predate the CD era. There are quite a few things on my shelves that I don't want to unload yet because the associated art/info isn't available anywhere else.

also when i really like a song or album i do want the mp3, not because of any sense of ownership but because i need it for my ipod to play when on the move. this also applies to giving new songs the chance the repeat listening affords rather than just one cursory stream.

― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Tuesday, April 16, 2013 4:31 PM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

again, if you are on the 9 dollar a month plan, you can download virtually unlimited songs in high quality format (about 256 to 320 kbps quality) to your iphone for "offline listening," the main place I use spotify to listen to music is on the subway

not just iphones but android and windows phones

nice, I did not know about that.

I've heard various industry types say that they think Spotify can scale to a point where it will be a legit revenue source even at low royalty rates. I think that's possible, but yeah they're sort of in a bind where they needed super low monthly rates (or free) to entice subscribers but if they need to raise prices now they may drive people away a la netflix.

I also always wonder about Spotify arbitrage, like are there bots out there listening to songs over and over again (assuming that'd even be worth it, which it may not be), and is there a way to get a "play" to register without listening to the whole song.

I've heard various industry types say that they think Spotify can scale to a point where it will be a legit revenue source even at low royalty rates.

nah not gonna happen. $10 a month is prob going to remain the acceptable music-cable-bill for people who aren't on ILM.

the other side of 'scale' is that the more music that's on spotify the less likely someone is listening to your song.

^^^

Spotify and Netflix aren't set up to generate profits from content

it could do w/ some work - certain artists' discographies are difficult to navigate as is search for a lot of stuff - but i love it as one tool among many & wld be happy to be pay more for it if it tempted more artists to opt in.

I love Spotify and pay for premium, but I also have a self-imposed three-plays-only rule whereby I've gotta buy the vinyl or CD of anything I'm liking too much. This is not so much an ethical thing but rather a way of organising my listening so I'm not darting around all the time. Anything that sounds good to me ought to have some permanent place in my life so I can give it the attention it deserves.

Yeah I feel like that too, good way of putting it.

nah not gonna happen. $10 a month is prob going to remain the acceptable music-cable-bill for people who aren't on ILM.

the other side of 'scale' is that the more music that's on spotify the less likely someone is listening to your song.

― iatee, Tuesday, April 16, 2013 5:49 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no by scale I meant more subscribers. And I don't think the second line holds true -- it's not like the diversity of listening is going to increase linearly with the amount of music available. I would say the majority of what most listeners would want on Spotify is already on Spotify, and niche stuff isn't really going to vastly change the landscape. But getting 5x as many subscribers would make a significant difference in number of plays of songs that get plays, and subscription revenue.

guys in a way you stream your whole life

spotify can absolutely scale to become a legit revenue source at its current prices. it may or may not actually happen, but if they and their peers can sell $10 monthly subscriptions to 30 or 40 million people in the u.s. for example (which is one-tenth of the number of people in the u.s. who have cellphones), that would be the equivalent of 30 or 40 million people spending $120/yr on music, which is the equivalent of the sales of 300 to 400 million albums, which is more than double what the u.s. record industry is currently selling in total (cds plus digital plus etc).

i love it and i pay for premium

netflix has a little over 33 million subscribers, roughly what hbo has. i'm skeptical spotify could approach this number though.

obviously i'm playing a little dumb here but i dunno why it costs so much just to get most of the tv channels i want to watch (but not EVERY TV SHOW EVER MADE jeez what a rip off) and so little for a comparable (if not better) music service. i wish i could give more to Spotify/the artists i listen to on Spotify and less to Comcast.

how many people have iTunes? obviously Spotify isn't on a path to that kind of ubiquity at the moment but i don't see it as that unlikely in the long run.

itunes feels more comparable to amazon, plus it had very very popular hardware that required the use of that app. ppl are way way more likely to deliberately seek out and pay for movies and tv than music (far more ppl have paid to see jack the giant slayer than have paid to hear the last taylor swift, and that's pitting a huge flop against a blockbuster). i could see spotify subscriber base being much larger than it is (and i think they're about to or maybe already have started a big ad campaign to do just this), esp as cloud based media services become more the norm and ESP if terrestrial radio grows even less friendly to playing music period, but i'm skeptical it will ever approach netflix or even hbo.

yeah definitely not equating them at all, just saying

no by scale I meant more subscribers. And I don't think the second line holds true -- it's not like the diversity of listening is going to increase linearly with the amount of music available. I would say the majority of what most listeners would want on Spotify is already on Spotify, and niche stuff isn't really going to vastly change the landscape. But getting 5x as many subscribers would make a significant difference in number of plays of songs that get plays, and subscription revenue.

well this was in reference to whether or not it would scale in a way that would seriously help the niche fat tail of artists. 5x as many people on spotify helps lady gaga a lot, prob doesn't make a huge difference to galaxie 500. their fans are probably overrepresented already - ie ilxors already on spotify - and 5x a small number is still a small number. does it help 'the industry' sure, of course, more money is more money.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22166416

Music streaming service Spotify has launched in Mexico - its first push into the huge Latin American market.

The Swedish start-up, which has more than 24 million active users, has also gone live in Asia - in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore.

Launches in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Iceland mean the service is now accessible in a total of 28 countries.

Spotify is the leader in music streaming globally, but analysts expect Apple to make its move soon.

It is believed, but not confirmed, that Apple has come to an agreement with several major labels, including Universal Music, to launch a streaming service which has been informally dubbed "iRadio".

A music industry source told the BBC he expected Apple's product to be available by the third quarter of this year.

iRadio is a crap name

Picked "I only use itunes store" but I actually use Amazon Mp3.

Not a fan of Rdio, but I would lol forever if they sued Apple over the name similarity and won.

Music streaming service Spotify has launched in Mexico - its first push into the huge Latin American market.

The Swedish start-up, which has more than 24 million active users, has also gone live in Asia - in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore.

Launches in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Iceland mean the service is now accessible in a total of 28 countries.

Man, if I were Canadian, I'd start to wonder if I smelled bad or had food between my teeth.

write in for options not here

which are?

Pay for Premium, love it (but hate the recent changes to the Windows app). Only use iTunes to import MP3s - use Spotify to play them/integrate them into larger playlists. Diligent trawler of new releases, via various means; spend quite a lot of time maintaining my own "favourite new music" playlists. Big fan of the Starred function & playlist, which is always set to offline - it serves as my on-the-go A-list. Haven't touched my iPod in at least 18 months. Stream the iPhone app via Bluetooth into a hi-fi compatible DAC, which gives excellent sound quality. Still buy plenty of CDs (preferably in Fopp), very rarely buy downloads, never download illegally, happy to wait for official release dates. Regularly use Soundcloud & Bandcamp. Only use YouTube as a last resort.

I don't really use Spotify, except in parties where people request stuff. My computer isn't connected to the the stereo (they're on opposite ends of the apartment, so connecting them would be pretty difficult too, except maybe wirelessly, but I can't be arsed to figure that out), and I don't like streaming music in general. When I'm listening stuff while traveling, I put records I own in the MP3 player. I still buy so many records that I barely have the time to listen to them properly, so I don't really need any wider catalogue. If I just want to check some artist/tune out before buying a record, Youtube is easier, and the sort of music I listen to is more likely to be found there than on Spotify.

it is unreal to me how poorly spotify does the bone-simple basics of social. like, where's my dashboard of what people i'm following have been listening to? (i don't mean the side panel.) where's my history of what i've listened to? when someone sends a track to my inbox with a note attached, why do i have to resend the same track just in order to reply? the organization of everything other than search-->play is just THE PITS.

it continuously wipes all my playlists and it seems to have a point it keeps returning to in terms of how many it can load without a big juddery refresh that sometimes refuses to happen. it's shit in many ways but i still pay for it, i guess the good outweighs the bad.

I pay for premium and would pay more. It doesn't have everything I want but why would it? iTunes doesn't either. I hate how little it pays artists but feel OK about my own usage because it's either (a) to reference music for work or (b) to investigate stuff I might want to own - then I either buy the individual songs I like or the whole album if it's solid. I've had albums on my to-try list for years without getting round to them but hearing them on Spotify gives me the impetus to buy them, so it drives me to spend more rather than less. Like I want to see what's worthwhile on post-peak Stones albums but there's no way I'd have bought them all on CD. (OK, not a great example of a band that needs the ££££). I accept that this is probably unusual and many people use it as a replacement for purchases, which is depressing. I wonder how many hardcore Spotify users are former music buyers and how many are former illegal downloaders.

I like it most for playlists though. If I can make a compilation and then share it, it's a nice way of introducing people to music. Maybe they'll follow up particular artists and buy a track or album; if not, then at least by streaming the playlist they cause a microscopic fraction of a penny to go to the artists. There's also a different art to sequencing Spotify playlists which run much longer than a 78-minute CD (which is in itself a different art to two sides of a C90) so as a compilation geek I'm into that. It's more like planning a long DJ set.

Am I the only one here who still likes CDs? I still buy them (albeit not as often as I used to), and still burn most of the albums/mixtapes I download to them. I just like being able to leave the disc in my car player, and not have to worry about plugging in/unplugging and iPod or iPhone every time I start or stop the car.

(Maybe this is a city mentality, though; if you leave an iPod in a car it will get stolen, so I quickly learned they weren't worth the hassle of transporting unless it was a really long road trip.)

My car stereo has a usb input, so I don't even bother with the iPod anymore. I just dump music on a flash drive and I'm good to go.

which are?

― Algerian Goalkeeper, Wednesday, 17 April 2013 14:10 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I like but don't love spotify, I love how they do playlists, I have paid for the Premium on and off (now off as the streaming to my phone was garbage), it usually has what I'm looking for, I'm not overly keen on their attempts at social networking, I object (but do nothing about) the shit deal artists get from streaming, I occasionally downloot music to sample if I can't find it legally and free, I sometimes use Youtube, I sometimes use iTunes store, I sometimes use other paid download stores, I sometimes use other free streaming services.

Basically I piss around everywhere to hear what I want and pay for things I like. Spotify is a useful but flawed tool for that.

I'd like them to bring back the one day subscription option.

I like CDs - partly because of the car (the ipod connection has to plug into the cigarette lighter so it gets in the way of the gear stick; also, having limited choice in the car means I can get into whole albums rather than constantly browsing) but mostly because if I like an album enough to buy it I figure I might as well get the thing rather than paying roughly the same price for a download. For some reason I can accept paying 99p for a song but not paying £8-12 for an album I can't hold, and that could be lost if my hard drive failed without a back-up. And some CDs are really worth owning. I was reading the liner notes of the Beastie Boys compilation after MCA died and that's just a great thing to have in your hands. It's like a little book.

I rely too heavily on Spotify. My personal laptop died and I lack the money to get it fixed up so my music collection is entombed in there, basically. And while Spotify doesn't have everything I want, it's got enough on it to have moved me away from torrenting.

Since my laptop is dead, I can't really update my iPod, so it's full of last year's favorites. Work blocks streaming services, so most of my listening is relegated to a temporary desktop I've rigged up so having most of my music in 'the cloud' is appealing. Honestly Spotify unlimited has been the first and sole motivating factor for me to invest in a smartphone, the idea of listening to whatever I want wherever is just too appealing, as it's lame to only have the chance to listen to new stuff in a few hours after work.

it seems to have a point it keeps returning to in terms of how many it can load without a big juddery refresh that sometimes refuses to happen

I get this a lot on the iPhone, never on the laptop, and ALL THE SODDING TIME on the iPad, to the extent that I've given up on the iPad app. But the refresh always eventually happens. When it's slow on the iPhone, I revert to the offline Starred list, which is never affected.

It has hardly anything I want
I hate streaming
write in for options not here (lousy ui)

my last house move cured me of any lingering positive feelings towards CDs

or indeed PERSONAL POSSESSIONS full stop

spotify is amazing, can't believe anybody on here wouldn't bother to use it and pay for it unless you already have waaay too much music. all these demands of "it doesn't have EVERYTHING" so i'm never going to use it. for the price of one cd you can listen to loads and loads of music in decent quality (compared to say, youtube).

and to the people that don't pay for spotify because spotify isn't rewarding artists fairly... err

I pay for Spotify and love everything about it except for the fact that it has messed up my music library. I used to buy the CD or download everything I was interested in, getting them into iTunes, tagging, organizing, putting songs into playlists etc. Now all that has fallen off and I'm not sure anything will ever be able to replace that kind of thoroughness.

remove -ing from many of those words

got really into yellow magic orchestra related stuff for awhile and just stopped using it/forgot about it

yeah, in general it seems like japanese music is largely absent on spotify. physical sales still seem pretty strong over there, which is interesting.

The Japanese market, which now makes 80 percent of its revenue from physical, saw digital revenues drop by 25 percent in 2012.

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/20130410kpopjpop

but I still love spotify / pay for premium

japan has a similarly strong print/book industry i think

tracer otm, and onomio too - the spotify application is junk

But the refresh always eventually happens. When it's slow on the iPhone, I revert to the offline Starred list, which is never affected.

I love spotify and pay for premium. poll options are not orthogonal, though.

just looking at my top played tracks of the last 3 months, ie the ones i've loved most - don't have spotify to check but i'm fairly sure at least half of my top 10 isn't on it

so? nobody's saying you have to use it to the exclusion of other players/listening devices?

mutya keisha siobhan - lay down in swimming pools
tiffany evans - 143 (i love you)
nyanda - trouble
bunji garlin ft. nigel rojas - differentology
jessie ware - imagine it was us
jade alston - pioneer
ciara - wake up, no make-up
ciara ft. future - sorry (remix)
katy b ft. jessie ware & geeneus - aaliyah
levon vincent - speck's jam
krystal klear ft. jenna g - addiction

^^^if i'd relied on spotify i would not have been able to listen to any of these and my life would have been immeasurably worse

xp i'm saying this is why using it would be more inconvenience than it's worth, and i'm pretty sure plenty of people do use it solely

how's it an inconvenience?

because i don't want to keep switching between programmes?

lol lex you can still listen to those songs! you can have spotify and still listen to music other ways, it's crazy you should try it

I recommend Alt + Tab

because i don't want to keep switching between programmes?

― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Wednesday, April 17, 2013 12:29 PM (43 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok we really are becoming the fat space ppl at the end of Wall-E

haha m@tt otm

I pay for premium and Spotify is my main platform for listening to music, mostly using the app on my ipod touch either plugged into my home stereo or car stereo. I still use iTunes to rip CDs and manage my mp3s because I like the file structure it imposes on my mp3 collection, but I don't use it to listen to music.

My favorite thing about Spotify is being able to download playlists to my ipod that combine my own mp3s with Spotify files.

My least favorite thing about Spotify is bad performance, particularly with large playlists. My ideal is to have one giant playlist, but the Spotify app takes a long time to load really big lists and tends to crash or have audio dropouts.

Lex, if you have mp3s of those songs you could combine them with tracks off of Spotify in a single playlist.

Lex, if you have mp3s of those songs you could combine them with tracks off of Spotify in a single playlist.

― Moodles, Wednesday, April 17, 2013 12:32 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

make a PLAYLIST????! jesus christ i might as well just rerecord the fucking songs myself if it's gonna be that much work

I think a lot of people take Spotify for granted; like the idea that I have instant access to almost everything I could possibly want and I don't have to deal w/ tracking down a torrent or looking for it on Soulseek or something is pretty fucking incredible. I mean, someone can say "Hey you should check out this album" and 15 seconds later I am listening to it for free.

B-b-but can it core a apple?

like i said i'm a total vinyl stick in the mud whatever dude but spotify is just amazing

Lex, if you have mp3s of those songs you could combine them with tracks off of Spotify in a single playlist.

― Moodles, Wednesday, April 17, 2013 12:32 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

make a PLAYLIST????! jesus christ i might as well just rerecord the fucking songs myself if it's gonna be that much work

― ums (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, April 17, 2013 10:36 AM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm sure that lex's point is more that organizing his music across platforms can be frustrating, and I doubt that he's being lazy. It's a bit annoying to interpret his words that way. But I agree that it's quite easy to manage downloaded mp3s with spotify, and I encourage him to try it out!

yeah would be out of character for lex to throw a huge shitfit over a relatively minor inconvenience related to some technology he doesn't understand

Didn't seem like much of a shitfit to me. I'd question the utility of a streaming service that lacked most of my top 10. I think he'd still find it to be useful b/c of said ease of importing local mp3s. I just don't know that launching into the Louis CK airplane routine is helpful or convincing.

between my thousands of disorganized records and CDs, and a decade of accumulated itunes clutter, my spotify life is downright orderly. although now that they removed "view as album list", playlists of multiple albums are a lot more difficult to navigate. I wish they designed a better system for building and organizing a "collection". one with much bigger artwork as an option at least.

I use and pay for Spotify premium. I use itunes and spotify at an equal split now. I dont understand not using spotify on at least SOME level. Like even if Lex joined just to get in some playlist action.

Well it's cuz it's nowhere near useful enough to me to pay for premium and I can't deal with hearing adverts

well premium gets the music on your phone as well (including your local mp3s) and that is very useful to me.

Lex the MP3s on your hard drive show up in Spotify searches anyway, it works like any other music player.

mutya keisha siobhan - lay down in swimming pools
tiffany evans - 143 (i love you)
nyanda - trouble
bunji garlin ft. nigel rojas - differentology
jessie ware - imagine it was us
jade alston - pioneer
ciara - wake up, no make-up
ciara ft. future - sorry (remix)
katy b ft. jessie ware & geeneus - aaliyah
levon vincent - speck's jam
krystal klear ft. jenna g - addiction

Half of these either haven't been released yet or weren't made commercially available. The Bunji Garlin/Krystal Klear/Jessie Ware ones are definitely on there.

good point

I love it in theory, but it takes so long to load on my five year-old mac that I rarely use it. Tend to use YouTube more, which is pretty good for full albums these days.

no wonder they aren't on it then

xps

but it takes so long to load on my five year-old mac that I rarely use it.

One of the best things about getting a new computer at work earlier this year is that Spotify runs on it without crashing.

the organization of everything other than search-->play is just THE PITS

actually the organization of their basic search is pretty godawful too. and i say that as a spotify fan, more or less.

the app is C-, just barely usable; the library is A+

has most stuff I want

symapthetic to artists' beef w/ it and have no problem with anyone who pulls their music off it

but I pay for premium and use it a ton

don't even know about "most" but more than half. enough to justify 10 bucks a month.

p much in the same boat as lex tbh

i (nor he i'm sure) would ever say it's not a great thing in general but as far as my personal interests go it's very rarely the ideal solution and when it is it's not often enough to pay for

also i guess i am possessive about mp3s somewhat even besides their functional use for ipods etc, collector scum what can i say

if it's popular enough to be on spotify then it's usually a matter of minutes longer to "properly" obtain otherwise

Like it, use it, was also fine without it and don't find it life-changing, ability to listen to ilx "what i'm digging" lists by far its best feature

I like that I *can* install Spotify on y HP Touchpad.

It takes a read of someone's blog, the download/install, the "log into developer mode, put this file *here*, this one *there*, etc, then reboot and start it up"...

.. and it works perfectly. Heyyy, I'm a techie! A bit like how I installed a slidey drawer in the kitchen that works pefectly so I can pretend I'm a fitter...

y = 'my', not 'your', anyway you couldn't afford my rates.

offline Starred list

i've never starred stuff, how does this work as an offline list? yet to find a record i deemed worthy of a star tbh.

for me it's a really clear delineation, i listen to albums on spotify and for dance stuff i get it via mixes, mp3s i buy, and vinyl. spotify is incredible for older music. like i don't think the scope of how much stuff is on there can be realised until you've used it for a few years, it has deluxe editions of so many brilliant records, loads of jazz/classical/african music - there will be things it doesn't have but i couldn't say my general impression of it is that it's lacking stuff.

as for subscription, you do it to get the app on your phone - you're away with friends somewhere and you bring a little speaker and plug your phone in and you're plugged in to a few decades of music.

or just being able to easily sample things on the go. the spotify iphone app and spotify generally has really changed how I listen to music.

though it was better when i had unlimited data

i've never starred stuff, how does this work as an offline list?

make your starred playlist "available offline", then everything you star is added to it and downloaded immediately, voila

i.e. there is a special baked-in playlist called "starred" and whatever you star gets added to it; it, like all other playlists, can be toggled to be available offline

it's the only spotify UI feature i actually find useful tbh

75% of the time I'm listening to may starred playlist on random. Other 25% is discovery time.

lately since the last Spotify update i can't seem to 'select all' to drag all of an album into a playlist with one click, kinda cramping my playlist style! but yeah it's nice to be able to just put, like, nearly all the 2013 albums i've listened to into one playlist, and then make that playlist available offline.

ah i'll definitely be using that feature.

Also if you have an unlimited data plan, the feeling of just wandering around town and thinking "I want to listen to X album" and being able to almost immediately do it is beyond classic.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, 16 April 2013 21:41 (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think the shared updatable playlists are it's social features to be honest, and >>>>>> nearly any other 'social' features on anything that isn't social media (and half of what is)

I just yesterday made one of my home-made CD facsims of the "Wanna buy a bridge" Rough Trade comp.

I should see how much of it is available on SPotify, just for the hell of it...

Also if you have an unlimited data plan, the feeling of just wandering around town home drunk and thinking "I want to listen to X album" and being able to almost immediately do it is beyond classic.

RIght, well it failed on:

The Slits - Man Next Door
The Pop Group - We are all Prostitutes

.. Which is pretty good as a strike rate!

I love it but am also currently subscribing to MOG which has a better catalog and less of the "here's an album missing this track for some reason."

i've been experiencing the random missing tracks less and less lately, which is nice since i kinda feared that would just become more prevalent

I don't entirely understand why one service would have a better catalog than the other. I wonder if MOG just secured exclusive deals with labels like ECM and bands like Pink Floyd before Spotify even entered the equation.

Man, if I were Canadian, I'd start to wonder if I smelled bad or had food between my teeth.

― Johnny Fever, Wednesday, April 17, 2013 8:57 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol and OTM. COME ON PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU MAKE IT HAPPEN

lately since the last Spotify update i can't seem to 'select all' to drag all of an album into a playlist with one click, kinda cramping my playlist style! but yeah it's nice to be able to just put, like, nearly all the 2013 albums i've listened to into one playlist, and then make that playlist available offline.

― some dude, Thursday, April 18, 2013 5:46 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I usually just take one song from every album I like in a season, like spring or whatever, then its a nice little diary mixtape plus lets me remember what albums I like

sure sure...but sometimes you want an entire album in a playlist

Twitter has unveiled a new music app which will recommend tracks based on who you follow on the social network.

Songs can be played directly in the app via services such as Rdio, Spotify and iTunes.

The software displays songs your friends are currently listening to - as well as suggestions from artists.

It follows moves by other social networks such as Facebook to incorporate music recommendations into their services.

Last year, Spotify announced its own "follow" system, but the functionality is yet to be rolled out to users on mobile.

Twitter's app - called #Music - is expected to be made available to download for Apple's iPhone shortly.

No app has been made for users on Google's Android or the Windows Phone platforms - but there will be a web browser-based version.

It will initially be available in the UK and Ireland, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, with more countries being added soon.
Surfacing songs

The app was likened to a "21st Century mixtape" unveiled on Good Morning America.

In a blog post, Twitter's Stephen Philips explained: "It uses Twitter activity, including tweets and engagement, to detect and surface the most popular tracks and emerging artists.

"It also brings artists' music-related Twitter activity front and centre: go to their profiles to see who they follow and listen to songs by those artists."

He added that half of the social network's users follow at least one musician.

"This is why artists turn to Twitter first to connect with their fans — and why we wanted to find a way to surface songs people are tweeting about.

Ahead of the app's release, Twitter gave several musicians early access. They included Moby, who wrote: "It's a really interesting music resource."
Apple's failure

Many companies have tried to tap into the potential of social recommendation for music.

London-based Last.fm, which was bought in May 2007 by CBS for £140m, analyses what a user listens to and offers suggestions based on the tastes of other Last.fm members who enjoy similar artists.

Apple also dipped its toe into the market with Ping - a service built into its iTunes software that promoted music it thought users may like.

At its launch, the late Steve Jobs said: "We think this will be really popular very fast because 160 million people can switch it on today."

Ping was closed in September last year.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22199692

You right-click on the album title and select Add To - should throw up a list of your playlists that way.

dragging albums onto the "+ new playlist" button still works for me

me too

sure sure...but sometimes you want an entire album in a playlist

Yeah, I have playlists of whole albums to listen to, loosely grouped by genre. I've been having this problem as well although it only seems to be if you try and drag the album from the 'artist' results - if you click on a particular album it works ok. It's pretty annoying.

Twitter has unveiled a new music app which will recommend tracks based on who you follow on the social network.

do not want

I drag the album cover or the album name, never had a problem, still works now whether on the album or artist page

Onimo you dont want U2 recommended a lot?

U2, Coldplay, Irish rebel songs, whatever the fuck Simon Pegg, Accidental Partridge, Herald Scotland Breaking News, the Pope and the United Nations are currently playing. It's a waste of time.

I don't follow anyone based on their musical tastes, apart from the odd musician, and even then...

no wolfetones?

(yeah i know they fit under irish rebel songs)

Comments as expected - http://www.last.fm/music/The+Wolfe+Tones

I drag the album cover or the album name, never had a problem, still works now whether on the album or artist page

You're right, it's working fine now.

the wolfe tones are shit up the U.V.F vs. F**K the Queen. F**K the UK. F**k the Union Jack.

lol.

I miss being able to download tracks to my Sansa Clip (Rhapsody does that) and find the search function a little iffy sometimes, but can't think of anything else to bitch about. I have unlimited data/iPhone on Verizon and use Spotify Premium for hours a day every day while traveling for work. The amount of money/time it saves is breathtaking, to the point where I assume it can't last forever. I'd easily pay $25-30/month for it, though I'm happy not to have to.

If you have a shitload of starred songs, Spotify is a nightmare to navigate.

spotify is a pretty incredible tool for poking around, exploring albums you've alway planned to listen to but had never had the motivation to track down before.

you're a pretty incredible tool too tbh

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_k07pirzBU34/S0yHnC_u4FI/AAAAAAAADTg/wa6xbMOUXBk/s400/the_spork_shirt-p235785667947487571t5tr_400.jpg

Mad Men season 6 zing

xpost, dude that is like, not a nice thing you said

spotify beef app?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22238017

interesting. i hope this song becomes as ubiquitous in america as thrift shop has been.

You can tell the album will probably win ILX AOY and its not even out yet.

This is weird because it's nowhere on Spotify's own chart list. Imaginary Dragons and Macklemore still dominate, maybe they only update it every week or something...

(ps. that What's Hot list or whatever its called is so fuckin' dreadful... "Ho Hey" has been in the top 10 for about 5 months now at least -- hmm, maybe it is broken or something and is reporting the top streams from last November.)

Spotify song charts have always moved slower than airplay charts or even iTunes sales charts -- gives credence to the idea that people keep listening to hit songs regularly a lot longer than a radio station might keep it in heavy rotation or people might be interested in buying it.

It would not surprise me in the least if people listen to the same songs over and over. Look at the last.fm ilxor group charts. New Order all the time every week for years.

Spotify takes a long time to update my personal top tracks/top artists, etc, and when they do the results are a bit nonsensical and also omit my mobile play history so I don't take their overall charts too seriously either

Is there a tool that will analyze your local music library and only ID or transfer to your device those songs that are NOT on Spotify?

No idea

I think it does that anyway - ie if the track is already on your phone it will register that as downloaded rather than downloading it again.

Don't think so.

wish spotify could play flacs

lol

http://blog.soundrop.fm/post/49200366479/welcome-to-the-new-soundrop-web-player

search just craps out for me a lot. is this common?

Most people think of Soundrop as an app inside Spotify. While it’s true that we have an app in Spotify, Soundrop is actually a social listening platform. We make our service available wherever people want to listen to music. Our first app was made for Spotify. Then we made it possible for people to embed their Soundrop room on a Facebook page. Now, we’re upgrading our home on the web- http://play.soundrop.fm/

Handy for those who cant get spotify app at work.

tracer on soundrop or spotify?

weblink to ilxor room
http://play.staging.soundrop.fm/s/W16fTbbsgjzuGhsN

Looks like its using youtube. So its not even using spotify! Spotify haters can use it and not use spotify!

All your favorite rooms are here, from our popular genre rooms like Chill Out, Indie Wok or Dubstep, to official rooms for your favorite artists like Owl City, Zedd, David Guetta or many others.

The best part: it’s all the same room, whether you listen in our web player, in Spotify or on an artist’s Facebook page. Everything — chatting, voting and adding — is synced in real-time. You’re all in the same virtual room. The only difference is that our web player handles the music playback from YouTube. It’s that simple (although technically incredibly complex, but that’s what we’re here for).

And you’ll notice that the Soundrop rooms have been renovated too. Chat is back in the main room view, and we separated the activity feed. Everything is right at your fingertips.

Also there a facebook web app too https://www.facebook.com/SoundropIlxor

Yay! I for one think that we should use a sweet web-browser accesible room just for ILX to do listening parties but I guess that sounds crazy.... TO MORONS!

mormons?

well if it's xmas time the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is pretty good for high quality choral hymns. Other than that there's, uh, "Crazy Horses" by The Osmonds...

works best on chrome btw. If you wont use Spotify. looks like we got 5 users in

on spotify desktop and mobile. search just spins and spins. or on desktop when you click on an artist's name it will start to show you their page but then just nothing.

yep, havent used this program much in the last couple weeks cos its having major issues like that for me too.

same experience here, very frustrating

Also takes forever to open and once it's open it takes even longer to function normally.

The "I've been listening to" thing in your profile is weird -- I don't even know who some of these people I've supposedly been listening to are, whereas it doesn't list the people I've been rocking all the time

My spotify takes about 2 minutes to load, tops. Do you guys have like, hundreds of playlists or something? Or is it like iTunes and it takes longer the more music you have on your hard drive? Cause currently I don't have very much but at one point I had like 300 gigs of mp3s and loading up iTunes was just intolerable.

Two minutes is a long time for a program to load imo.

I chose 'other' in the poll, because I pay premium, but won't commit to saying I 'love' Spotify.

The bad: I feel bad about artist compensation, though I have no idea what the real story is... how bad it is, etc. I also don't like the Windows application. I hate how bloated it is - I have no use for the social stuff or the recommendations, and it just makes the app sluggish while running in the background, and slow to load up when you just want to check something real quick. The playlist management is terrible. I basically have a hundred albums/playlists just dumped on the sidebar. It would be nice if I could categorize them by putting them into folders; or at least to be able to sort them by date or A-Z or something. I also hate how dependent I've gotten on the service, and feel like I am unconsciously excluding a lot of music that isn't available on it, because I don't have a lot of time to dig for good music anymore. I recognize that this is no fault of Spotify's.

The good: The ability to download and stream to my phone. I'll make playlists on my computer then download them to my phone over WiFi to use less data. The high quality streaming is great for home and work listening where my headphones/speakers are better quality. Having access to my recent favorite music on all devices is amazing. If I ever do cancel my subscription to Spotify, the only way I can really see replacing what I love about it (other than signing up for some other streaming service), is to pay a subscription for some cloud service with a cloud player app like Amazon and just upload my whole collection. Though the selection would be better for me, it would be way more expensive in the long run because I would be constantly paying for new music to add to it. It would also be a hell of a lot more work managing the library and waiting for uploads and downloads.

At this point I would say I am about 75% Spotify and 25% iTunes. I do buy "keepers" that I hear on Spotify, but end up listening to them on Spotify anyway. It has definitely changed the way I approach listening to music.

You actually can do folders, although it took me forever to figure out. Just go to file->new playlist folder.

aww man thank you!

i do love spotify but i've been playing with rdio a bit lately and the whole layout on both the desktop app and the iphone seem way better so far.

but its the content that matters? How is that? Is it USA only?

content seems similar so far?

was motived to check out Rdio simply because Spotify has been so slow lately.

I have to amend my earlier answer, since I recently started having the (apparently well-known) disappearing playlists on phone problem, which is seriously irritating enough to be a dealbreaker if it doesn't go away soon.

http://blog.soundrop.fm/post/49795857960/a-new-soundrop-for-spotify

discovered another thing in Rdio's favor: you can search by record label. i know you can do this with spotify but rdio makes it much easier (labels actually appear as search results and are organized as such). you can even start a "station" which will shuffle through all the tracks on that label.

Does anyone else find themselves kind of silently interacting and/or competing with spotify friends? I have one friend who I follow who has really good and interesting taste and is always playing obscure stuff that turns out to be good, and then sometimes I get this weird feeling we're competing to be unpredictable with our tastes. I eventually shrugged it off and figured "eh, he's probably not even paying attention to what I listen to" but then yesterday I put on a Drobutussin screwed and chopped mix, and today he put on a different Drobutussin mix.

I love Spotify, but it doesn't have half the stuff I want.

^wins the competition

Also takes forever to open and once it's open it takes even longer to function normally.

This was driving me crazy, especially on Mac, but now that my work PC and home Mac have both gotten the next update it seems better (fingers crossed).

I do like that in the new social functionality if you "follow" an artist it will send you an email when they have new music available on Spotify

Spotify is offline

...
Spotify is offline

funny, because MY PHONE IS ONLINE

Ha.

Sometimes put it offline on purpose, as mentioned on other thread, to minimize the annoying syncing.

it's online for me

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Mordy i meant that it will decide that I'm not getting any reception or some ish, based on a little blip, like losing 3G for a second, then 3G comes back, full bars, but "Spotify is Offline" for a good minute or so afterwards, at which point I've bumped into 5 people and have arrived at my destination anyway.

Number one hit for Jonathan Richman songs is "The New Teller" which I put down to ILX.

The Nutella

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Shucks. I'd been hoping this thread was bumped again by somebody whose service went offline again.

Wont use it on principle because artists get paid little so I pirate the music for free instead. 2

lol

indeed lol. think I can guess who the 2 votes were by!

friend of mine noted on facebook that if you use the spotify web app and have adblock installed it blocks the spotify adverts...?

kinda wanna comment on his post with "yeah, fuck you, musicians!" but i'm not a commenty kinda guy

except on here?

so apparently the new spotify update (not got it yet myself) will tell you the top 10 most played songs by each artist AND give you the numbers.
The top Skrillex song has 64 million plays. Gangnam style has 84 million plays.

Wonder how many plays New Order gets from ilxors?

22 per week

What, on Spotify?

Watch out, it'll be recommending you 'check out' Joy Division!

http://i.imgur.com/wnCgR2o.png

some of those numbers/order dont look right do they?

lol @ people actually listening to Blue Monday '88

http://i.imgur.com/7m2dazf.png

http://i.imgur.com/wgwxMJt.png

http://i.imgur.com/SgDbpEs.png

http://i.imgur.com/YBH4AKZ.png

Yo P-FUNK boy have you heard the Daft Punk album yet?

It seems its a top 10 of the past week and the figure is an overall figure (not sure when the start point is for that) which is why some placing/figures appear out of place.

LBI I haven't yet. Loved the 1st 2 but cared little for what came after it. Is it worth a go? Didn't like the single at all.

I can't find anyone with more plays than Skrillex yet but I'm about to look up gangnam style

Of course it is worth a go! It's a bloody brilliant album. And, perhaps more to your liking, it is teh funk.

(I am under no illusions, I don't think you will like it, but think you should give it a try regardless)

http://i.imgur.com/sty7GAr.png

coldplay,U2 etc dont top skrillex but Psy does as does...

http://i.imgur.com/Gb4Fe8m.png

OK I shall get round to it eventually. Maybe having low expectations for it is a good thing.

Have you listened to it yet AG? It's pretty good! Even better if you expect it to be totally crap.

Not yet

I really really wish the desktop app would let you browse new releases in some organized way, say, by genre. It really shouldn't be hard to implement.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/21/spotify-10m-subscribers-streaming-music

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/19/spotify-coldplay-ghost-stories-black-keys-turn-blue

are the black keys really that big?

Yes

oh dear

more yakuza and nachtmystium on this than there used to be

are the black keys really that big?

May 21, 2014 LA Times

The Black Keys' latest sold 164,000 copies in the week ending May 18, while "Xscape" moved 157,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

"Turn Blue" is the Black Keys' first album to reach No. 1 on Billboard's overall tally, though as the magazine's Keith Caulfield points out, the duo's previous record, "El Camino," actually had a bigger first week; that album debuted at No. 2 in 2011 with sales of 206,000 copies.

I wonder how big they are here

debuted at #2 in the uk

Seems obvious the way forward for artists and spotify, and the future, has to be a complete end to "rights holders" behemoth, as it was previous known.

At the moment, niche indie artists aren't making any money off spotify. For e.g, 14,000 plays of your song might make you about $90. A million plays of your song, unlikely for most artists, only makes about $6000. This money goes to your rights holder, not all to the artist. Same as buying a physical record. No non-superstar musician has ever got rich for life from record sales.

Music heritage and integrity has only got worse over time. Future of Spotify needs to be not having to pay millions to redundant record companies and all their minions for the rights to music.

Only way artists are going to be able to fund studio time and organise tours is if a more modern stripped back record company takes lead, and many have. Spotify can start offering far bigger slices of the subscription to artists.

This is all dependent on Spotify being a credible and non avaricious corporate pig however. 40 million subs paying $10 a month = $400 million coming in every month. That's nearly 5 billion a year. Make that $12 a month and it's near to 6 billion a year. Make that 100 million subs (Itunes has around 800 million users) that's $14 billion rolling through Spotify yearly.

If just half of itunes 800 million users were paying $10 a month, is 96 billion a year. There's plenty potential for even a niche indie act with only a few thousand plays of their songs to be self sustaining.

def agree that any artist embracing streaming as their primary mode of song distribution doesn't need a record label so much as a union

and any artist NOT embracing streaming as their primary mode of song distribution might want to reconsider how many of their songs are available to stream

The huge numbers going through Spotify are misleading though, as the number of artists on Spotify is orders of magnitude bigger than any record label ever had. Even if Spotify paid out nearly all of thpse $12 a month, it still means a paltry sum per song played. The difficulty for non-superstar artists is to get played by a thousand times more listeners than you needed in the CD era to get similar money.

Ten years ago, as a small artist, selling 1000 CD's would pay for your recording costs. In the Spotify era, even a million plays won't get you the same money. So, streaming isn't a viable revenue source.

http://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-explained/ if you want more actual details...

It takes a heck of alot of plays to get rich at 0.006335 cents a play. I think in the end ALL of these digital realities for musicians are bull shit. Only ones getting rich are the tech companies.

^^^^^yup. i agree with the sentiment that streaming could be a strong revenue stream for artists if implemented better/without greedy corps running the shots. however, i fear that the "world of music artists" is too diffuse and complex for a "union" type situtation to really take hold. i realize this sounds just like that lovely old canard "communism works in theory but not in practice"

<quote>but there are quite a few labels that basically refuse to have anything to do with it, and if your taste clusters around some of those labels then you won't get much use out of it.</quote>

<quote> it's not just a few records here and there that it's missing - a good half of whatever i'm jamming in any given week isn't on it.</quote>

Does anyone know WHICH label groups are withholding so much old/obscure music from Spotify? Most of what I listen to is not on there, and its the main reason I don't subscribe. It seems like only Majors and Major Indies catalogs are represented.

Ten years ago, as a small artist, selling 1000 CD's would pay for your recording costs. In the Spotify era, even a million plays won't get you the same money. So, streaming isn't a viable revenue source.

Read my post 2 above yours on why streaming absolutely is a viable revenue source in the future.

Long thread by Dave Lowery:

Try living on $0.0038 a stream and then get back to me. https://t.co/bUVtICBfQ1

— David C Lowery (@davidclowery) April 4, 2019