Spotify - anyone heard of it?

I hope Glenn won't mind if I link directly to that post here; it's relevant to the subject of this thread and includes some wisdom about corporate employment I wish I had encountered a decade or so ago.

https://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=log&id=473

― Brad C., Sunday, 17 December 2023 22:12 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Thanks Glenn (and Brad for sharing) - this spoke to something I think about a lot, as someone who also works in a big tech corporation. All the really great ideas I've seen have come from individuals thinking up something cool, or getting frustrated at something not-cool and wanting to do better. As a manager I sometimes think my best work involves putting those individuals in situations where they will be sufficiently inspired/frustrated and then retrofitting our existing plan to whatever great ideas come along.

Took me a while to realise that if you click on the green tick next to a track in the desktop app it now tells you what playlists you've added it to. Miss being able to see which songs I've liked at a glance though.

the worst change ever getting rid of the heart AGAIN. you can post your displeasure with it here:
https://community.spotify.com/t5/Community-Blog/The-Heart-button-is-being-replaced-with-a-Plus-button/bc-p/5831722#M23900
and vote for it here:
https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Bring-back-the-heart-button/idi-p/5709907

Clicking on the tick works on the phone apps too.

I do really like that feature

It doesn't work properly on the phone for me. Even when the green tick shows it only sometimes tells me which ones it's in. Weird, as exactly the same track it doesn't work for on desktop will not work on the app.

https://i.imgur.com/KA7C43F.jpg

Aghhh im paying to be advertised to agghhh

They wanted me to listen to some booktoky audiobook about singer songwriters :/

how can I copy/paste japanese from spotify?

for when I happen upon a massive banger but have no clue who the artist is

japanese lettering* that was supposed to be (or kanji or furigana or katakana, sry for being a complete novice)

If you open your Spotify acct in your web browser, you should be able to copy the text

how can I copy/paste japanese from spotify?

for when I happen upon a massive banger but have no clue who the artist is

cool!

thanks, eventually was able to get it via a pluging for copypasting url titles

Asei Kobayashi

Don't know if it has been discussed yet (probably), but there's a pretty damning investigation by Dagens Nyheter that revealed that some unknown Swedish chill-out composers have managed to rack up billions of plays by writing under hundreds of aliases and getting their songs strategically placed on background music playlists (like "Peaceful piano" or "Stress relief"), in exchange for reduced royalties (namely 25%). The study cites Johan Röhr, with 15 billion plays, among 91 Swedish artists hidden behind 5700 artist names who have composed over 13000 tracks.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/19/swedish-composer-johan-rohr-becomes-spotifys-most-famous-musician-youve-never-heard-of

this article is missing info on the alleged reduced royalty rate for playlisting deal

it's a damn shame that functional music/sounds is piled together with real music - but it's not really a secret or anything new, is it?

sadly, every time you play a white noise/soothing rain sounds track on spotify, you are moving resources from actual musicians

we've gone from a society that reads books to one that watches 20 second videos, from a society that listens to or god forbid sings and plays music to one that listens to literal static /uncool conservative opinions

I guess the Spotify response is "What about it?" and an implicit confirmation that playlists are product placement and that the competition is biased / flawed / nepotism.
I would say Johan Röhr is an actual musician, I'm not shocked that stock nature sounds are on the platform, and I can even accept that different business models for different customers cohabit on the platform. But allowing for money-making schemes / free-loaders appears more significant than they're admitting here.

Yeah, I do feel the "fake artist" angle is flawed, like... it's pretty common to release music under assumed names

the playlist placement thing sounds an awful lot like payola, but hard to tell if Röhr's distributor is on a discovery mode type deal https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/3-things-to-know-about-spotifys-controversial-new-pay-for-influence-tool-discovery-mode/

In any part of the Spotify Service, the Content that you access, including its selection and placement, may be influenced by commercial considerations, including Spotify's agreements with third parties.

I'm surprised if paying for playlist placement isn't illegal

"Swedish chillout playlist scam" worthy of the next We Didn't Start the Fire

Swedish chillout playlist scam
Houthis funded by Iran
Blame it on the TikTok ban
Desantis and his boots

payola is the weed smoking of the music industry: some people do it proudly, others on the dl, others fiercly opposed. its legality is always a grey area, everybody has an opinion and, more importantly, everyone does it.

also that was incredible, table.

I thought payola was illegal because it was happening on the public airwaves. This is more like publishers paying for bookstore displays or something.

Yeah I am not a Swedish lawyer, but I wouldn't assume it would necessarily be illegal for Spotify to make $$ deals for playlist placement...

haha irl lol Austin

also beautiful work by table and Keyes

tbc I was lolling bcz of yr description being delectably otm

Each week, more and more of Discover Weekly being cluttered up with bullshit forgettable winsome little 2-minute tracks that credit (and maybe sample, minutely?) 6 different artists, 1 of which I follow, and that nobody ever needs to listen to, called things like 'Sip and Groove'.

Even worse, mine has Catatonia songs on it

yeah I stopped using mine a long time ago, kinda sad since in the beginning it was quite useful

I hesitate to use the term enshittification, but all the same it seems like there's a big algorithm supported move towards unobtrusive mellow vibe music, not necessarily ambient, but very functional

Curious if anyone else has noticed Spotify pushing the same artist to them on autoplay over and over again recently? Regardless of what I play, when it ends, they seem to throw a Beck song on for me. I have nothing against Beck but rarely listen to him and don't know why the algorithm thinks I am constantly in the mood for more Beck.

turn autoplay off maybe

Despite having a multi-billion-dollar net worth, you decided to stop paying artists for songs with less than 1,000 streams (months before giving Joe Rogan $250,000,000). So I made a playlist of 300+ great songs with less than 1,000 streams to give them more visibility and plays. https://t.co/IwLJ8lgT01

— Micro-Chop (@micro_chop) March 29, 2024

xp I have, and I have verified it's off! It just autoplays anyway.

yeah same

the spotify interface has become a nightmare that actively discourages me from doing what I want to do (listen to full albums at once), should I just switch to Apple Music?

— Kyle Chayka (@chaykak) April 16, 2024

Spotify is absolutely desperate for me to never seek out the thing I want to listen to specifically and instead just take one of its recommendations or play something again that I played recently. This is the "music" tab pic.twitter.com/bfEFuaDj4t

— Kyle Chayka (@chaykak) April 16, 2024

I don't think it's too much to say that this algorithmic interface is absolutely wrecking our relationship to culture and turning us into passive consumers who don't pay real attention to anything. I wrote this in 2021 but it's so much worse now https://t.co/c5E6KpyzmK

— Kyle Chayka (@chaykak) April 16, 2024

I don't get it. Did Spotify get rid of search?

Is he asking for there to be a menu of albums to choose from like when you pull up Netflix?

sounds like a skill issue

i think it's a complaint about the way you _browse_ (not search) for albums being a moving target that is increasingly hard to find and difficult to use.

I guess the idea of Spotify as a browsing service is foreign to me, but I suppose now that record stores are gone it's what's left.

Yeah, I'm not getting his complaint either. Is Spotify supposed to know what he specifically wants to listen to?

And my music tab/home page/whatever will often have recommended albums based on my listening history, which seems like a good thing to me 🤷‍♂️

I see people complaining that it's getting harder to discover new music on Spotify. I don't know if that's true. I mean sure it can be annoying that anytime I listen to an electronic album I can tell it's over because "Xtal" starts auto-playing.

The weird thing is that he has a book about how algorithms are flattening us into passive consumers, yet he's looking for a streaming service to offer up recommendations rather than actively seeking out new music.

But given that his listening history is all Vampire Weekend albums, he probably does need some help.

Lol

And yeah xp

The algorithms occasionally throw up something interesting but most of the new music I discover is the same way it's always been: recommendations from friends, threads on here or other forums, magazine and website reviews/features etc etc

I use Tidal myself, but do keep a (free) Spotify acct, and I think he's putting his thumb on the scale by visiting the "Music" tab... the "All" tab seems to have what I assume he's looking for (Recently Played, Popular Albums, Your Favorite Artists, etc.). The "Music" tab is weirdly anemic for me – it has nine different selections (a grab-bag of playlists and albums, only a few related to what I've liked / listened to). Not a tab I would visit!

also might be "putting his thumb on the scale" by cropping out the search bar and then saying "Spotify is absolutely desperate for me to never seek out the thing I want to listen to"

"I want to listen to a specific album. Why doesn't it magically get suggested to me on the home page?"

The people who don't care that much are the passive consumers, and a minority of people are actively seeking/curating, and I think that's fine? Most people over 25 don't care that much about music.

Also in what imagined past was this situation better? Does this guy miss the monoculture?

I basically only ever use Spotify to listen to specific entire albums, and I'm pretty sure I've never felt "discouraged" in my quest.

performative stupidity, he’s just doing that passive aggressive thing, yknow like people who say “hmmm what does gratuity fee mean? where’s the line for me to put the tip?”