Spotify - anyone heard of it?

For an artist with a huge discography, lots of reissues, etc., it can get unwieldy (try scrolling for a specific Grateful Dead album on any streaming service)… but reverse-chron is generally my preference.

It's not the chronological aspect; it's the one-long-vertical-scroll part. They used to be displayed as a grid and you could click on the album you wanted to hear. Now the newest album (even if it's, say, a 2020 reissue of a 1975 release) is up top and you have to scroll down and down and down until you find the one you want.

Do they expand all the tracks of each album in the scroll?

Has this discography thing not gone back to what it was a year or so ago. I thought they did used to have discography's stacked vertically without thumbnails. Are they just continually throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. & I'm not sure for who cos they keep dumping things i like and trying things i really don't.
THey have updated the new episodes thing like once since I complained then stuck with that,.

I remember it being a pain trying to find things like specific Grateful Dead tracks when you weren't 100% up on what the individual set was when I was setting up playlists for teh radio show i did a few years ago. Which was mainly done using the Spotify set up because teh radio station had an account with them. & i think that was when I started using the program.
Think i frequently had to try to find the tracks using the search engine.
The thumbnail representation of a specific lp/set was pretty recent I thought. Is it actually older than teh current continuum of random changes which would date back 2 or 3 months wouldn't it? things are changing so much it's hard to keep track.

Really wondering what the story on that New Episodes thing is, looks like it may be done manually so it will update a load of things at the same time instead of automatically as a new episode is upped. Would think it would be part of an algorithm that would do the latter but this is the 2nd time I've seen it act like that. Would think incremental change would be more subtle and less visible.
Very odd, would think that this is a very individual process dependent 100% on the individual user's listening history and therefore not something that could act like that. Is there a process that would only update a number of things after a trigger or something I'd checked the new episodes thing at least once before it updated this morning and it still had the update thing from 2 days ago. JUst not getting this and am assuming that if it is happening to me it must be more widespread.

They used to be displayed as a grid and you could click on the album you wanted to hear.

I still see this method. I forgot there used to be a choice between grid and list view though.

Tabs would probably work well here although maybe there are accessibility issues with this that may be preventing it as viable method of navigating between albums, singles, comps per artist.

lol nm just noticed the grid/list toggle is still there at the top corner

lol nm just noticed the grid/list toggle is still there at the top corner

Thanks! Problem solved.

There’s a fake Scott Walker track https://open.spotify.com/track/41ZXCDf4bzzM5Ocy3Fs5xm?si=2QNJPiNMTKijvHK5w5_A5A&dl_branch=1

fake Elder track turned up in my release radar
https://open.spotify.com/album/2LghjX6Um8mcyXkoUxJrlR?si=a_Ckj9QKQiOiniFAXt1dTg&dl_branch=1

Accounting side has caught up with software side, and I've been informed that my Unlimited account billing is going away

Same here! I'd really like to keep Unlimited as I still have little use for the phone app. And I can't really afford an upgrade. Given the Unlimited option was grandfathered a very long time ago we're clearly very loyal customers, so I guess they're betting on us sticking around regardless. (Or there's so few of us left that they don't give a shit either way.)

I'll stick with free until/unless it's too annoying. I think I'll still be able to add to my existing playlists, the main one of which I play at work from someone else's (premium) account.

lol nm just noticed the grid/list toggle is still there at the top corner

seconding unperson's thanks for nashwan's wellspotted help! I've been annoyed for days too.

Makes you wonder how well that tested. It's wild to be having to scroll down so much for those oldest releases either way. Putting the releases in a table view effectively like the playlist view so you can sort by newest/oldest and other criteria could be a winner.

Ah, I see how it could test well, especially with a younger (whatever that means etc) audience: it is actually somewhat pleasant when the discography is short.

Has anybody else experienced the thing where you highlight something from the bottom of teh queue and try to move it only to find something completely different has been moved for no apparent reason. Just bugs me badly. & I don't know why it happens.
Am I missing how you highlight things because I have had things start playing when I've just been trying to highlight them before.
There's a lot about this interface that I don't like. Not sure if the cointinualk turnover of teh last few months has actually improved things has it.

But would really like to know if that thing where highlighting one thing appears to have another thing movable. I don't think what is being moved is actually something previously highlighted or anything. But I have seen that if I scroll through th elist i can sometimes find some random seeming thing highlighted for no apparent reason separate to what I have tried to highlight. Like what gives

I am assuming that the probl;ems I am having with interface are more widespread so wanted to check if teh same activity is happening with others. I would think that if one tried to highlight something in say Word and something else completely random moved ine would find it strange. So is this happening to others in the current set up of Spotify.
Or is everybody creating playlists for listening they will only do once. Should be able to set up a queued set of podcasts without need ing to have it be a unit that is more at least semi permanent.
Whatever, process of highlighting seems to be counterintuitiuve at best. I'm expecting the set of shows I've got lit up to be recognised when I click on them to move them in the queue not something completely different. I don't know what the completel;y different show's connection to being clicked on is. I noticed yesterday that if i clicked on one specific show I got a lit up bar across another several numbers in the queueing sequence higher. I couldn't see the connection with what I was trying to do. I unclicked the show I hadn't clicked but each time I clicked the one I was trying to move thsi one would also light up. Is that a bug or a feature?

Re: the Spotify Unlimited ending thing, I got that email too, but the regular 5 bucks payment was taken out as usual a few days ago, and after checking a few things it looks like the Unlimited subscription is still active but has reverted to its original form, i.e. full functionality on the desktop app but only the free version of the mobile app. I'm kind of peeved that I'm now only getting what I paid for, but fair play I suppose.

why does the program recommend albums then have every track blacked out so it won't play? Seems a bit counterproductive. From what I remember of trying to queue a track from this it just skips. Odd behaviour but I've seen it several times now.

I feel like you have a lot of weird technical issues that I've never seen before. Is anyone else confirming this stuff?

Not so far but I'm getting them frequently.

I've had some albums turn up in the reccommendations folders and they have had one lit up track for some reason. Which makes some sense but is still frustrating since would be good to have choice of tracks. But to have things turn up and have no playable tracks makes little sense.
Is it the fact I'm using Ubuntu as my OS?
Not functioning in the way I'd like it to anyway.
& still I think there were elements of the pre mess around interface that I preferred to current.

Latest one that was all blacked out was bruce palmer The Cycle is Completed which was in my Album Picks.
Not sure how bespoke that Album Picks thing is to me or alternatively how generic. Assume its somewhat based on my play choices but can tend to be a bit repetitive. Don't think I've seen that Bruce Palmer much before. Did mean to buy it when it was around as an I think Rhino handmade, saw it compared to peter green's solo lp The End of The Game. Long improvised mainly instrumental tracks.
Not heard it in an age though.

Anyone tried this?

Whatever you do, do *not* ingenuously tap @Spotify’s new “Enhance” button on one of your carefully hand-crafted playlists. It would more accurately be labeled “Vandalize,” or perhaps “Ruin.”

— Michael Chabon (@michaelchabon) September 18, 2021

uhoh

lol You can go back! Just tap "enhanced" again and it goes back to your original playlist!! in the replies

I think it should just mean it zooms in on the artwork images in the playlist view enough to make them having been worth including there

re: things being moved, i liked this https://kylechayka.substack.com/p/essay-the-digital-death-of-collecting (which is kind of like the spotify specific version of this https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/how-social-media-redesigns-manipulate-us)

Finally, in recent years, Spotify became the single international behemoth of mainstream music, an unavoidable* iceberg of content.

*citation needed

posting to link this question crut asked me but I haven't had the chance to expand all posts on a computer since

Not only is Spotify avoidable, there are a number of alternatives. That’s why I don’t really understand why people complain about it so bitterly, why not just try another service? They all have the same stuff, more or less(?)

Don't know if anyone else got the survey? Basically the gist seemed to be would I like to pay twice as much for a bunch of things that are very much not music. I would not.

Didn't see a survey, but was one of those things hi-rez streaming?

Actually, you’re right, that was the one musical thing.

Any word on Spotify HiFi? Announcement was in February which said later this year. Thoughts there would have been an update by now.

Seems all quiet. Just searched and there's been no follow-up.

Also to morrisp's point about alternatives... I signed up for an Apple Music trial this week just to dink around with the lossless and hi-def and Atmos and stuff. Maybe it's better to use on Apple hardware but on Android and PC it's not in Spotify's league at all. I'm using a USB DAC on my phone to sample some Atmos as those fancy features aren't even implemented in Windows yet. (I'll bump the Apple Music thread to see if anyone's heard anything interesting out of the selection of Atmos material)

The issues I had, at least, with the roll-out of Spotify's new desktop client were resolved. I still think the cluttering up of artist pages above their discography is a pain. The corralling of users towards podcasts and other cheap content is a pain. Joe Rogan sucks. It is worth discussion because it's still the sleekest service of its kind. Which is pretty wild. Or maybe Tidal has gotten a lot better since I last saw it?

xps What was in this survey? Please paste if it was emailed. I've turned off as much annoyance as I could in the app so maybe it didn't pop it up at me, if it's in there.

To add to my point (such as it is) - I understand some folks have tons of saved playlists or whatever in Spotify, which has a "lock-in" effect.

True. I wouldn't let that stop me from moving (a third party converter would carry them over well enough), but there aren't as many interesting playlists on other services. Spotify's own playlist curation and what's been put there by labels/companies/artists/fans has become a selling feature.

I particularly like that you can use the Radio feature on a track, an artist, an album, a playlist. This has been very useful to me for tailoring searches for new music that matches a particular style that I want.

I think Glenn came to them from their acquisition of "Echo Nest" to do such things? Is there anything comparable? God dang it

when everything but the music keeps subscribers around, one can forgive spotify for thinking the music is not their product

I feel like these features enable me to hear a lot more music that I wouldn't otherwise encounter, which also leads me to buying that music on other platforms like bandcamp or beatport, but I know that isn't everyone's experience

I am enjoyiong the recommendations when they're not overly repetitive. Heard some new sounds that I hadn't before but do have the same things turning up in apparent rotation in that feature. & do wonder how much clicking on free etc jazz artists I would need to do to have taht become a regular feature in that cos it seems I'm getting a lot more rock & psychedelic stuff but do wonder if that is inevitable anyway. & do assume that continually clicking on whatever black artists turn up in the recommendations would colour the algorithm's recommendations and so on.

Currently got a playlist with 100+ titles in. Which I think would probably have caused it to get dumped a few weeks ago. But still apparently randomly selecting titles within that list if i go to move things around. Do wonder if there is an ASCII or similar coding that I'm missing that would make sense of that iff i did know more about how the programming involved worked. Or if it is truly random.

I've found with radio playlists that the first big chunk of tracks will mostly be ones I'm familiar with, but if I scroll down to the point where there are tracks that are new to me and start from there, I end up getting more stuff that I haven't heard before as it adds to the end of the list.

That you're familiar with the first handful just makes it sound more eerily accurate. It doesn't know exactly what you've spent years with before you used Spotify. It will probably be more useful for people now growing up on Spotify.

Anyways I think reading ilm has been even more helpful to me in hearing about good new music. So uh, go humans

the first bunch of songs on most auto-generated playlists are almost always songs that I've listened to a lot lately or very closely related to them

The “radio” playlists always throw in a lot of tracks you already know and listen to, and are clearly affected by your account’s taste profile (or whatever Spotify would call it). To get music recommendations that are similar to a given track without the suggestions being so “contaminated” with stuff you’re already familiar with, start a new playlist containing only that track, then look at the recommended tracks that appear at the bottom of that new playlist.

Another way to see what Spotify track radio would have produced without personalization is to stick a track link or URI into https://everynoise.com/research.cgi?mode=radio&name=spotify:track:1vzqcPRQ6P1Uw7NZ5M77wJ. Radio currently has a pretty strong popularity bias in addition to the personalization, though. The Fans Also Like list on artist pages has less of that.

going to give this a try. I already use your new releases page as a starting point for a lot of my searches.