Spotify - anyone heard of it?

I just read about this. Apparently some kind of streaming iTunes looking service with rights to all the majors cleared. Could be interesting? If nothing else just to see it fail miserably...

trying this now. blatant rip of itunes design-wise but looks better in many ways. all i really want to do with it is listen to whole albums easily and it seems to let you do that very well (i haven't heard the ads yet tho).

20 second xbox ad came in after 5 songs. not bad really.

needs last.fm support asap

the ads don't bother me that much either, haven't noticed if 5 songs is always the limit? in any case it's 5 songs of any length, and you can listen to "In C" for example straight through which is cool.

I love it!

I think there is progress towards spotify scrobbling happening here:

http://www.last.fm/group/Scrobble+for+Spotify

carsmile sent this link: http://code.google.com/p/scrobblify/

scrobbles perfectly

for Windows maybe!

Yeah this looks terrific, I like how easy it makes it to dip into artists with huge discographies.

Although I haven't actually listened yet, just been browsing so far.

i am so in love with this thing <3

some artist tag crapness tho

the radio is fun for discovering things totally insane and cheesy

Oh wow the quality is actually pretty good.

The radio thing is indeed cool. I'm trying to get it to find me some techno from the 50s.

the quality is good, the range not so much, but this could well prove useful.

Presumably the range will increase as they agree deals with more record companies? It seems fine for major label stuff and a quick search for eg Kompakt pulls up a lot.

does it pass the melt banana test?

the range seems identical to what's on 7digital (and therefore itunes i think). eg they have trina's first and third albums but inexplicably not her second or fourth. i dunno how much use i'll have for spotify but kudos for how well it works, the quality of the tracks etc - the tags need ironing out but i'm sure they'll do this in time.

actually it'll be most useful for stuff like the goldfrapp album this year - i didn't really expect to love it but i wanted to hear it, so obv i wouldn't buy it but couldn't be arsed blagging it. that's a ton of consumer laziness in there.

oh god i should've said i was american! fuck. could've got access to all the hip-hop and r&b which never makes it over to this godforsaken, miserable island.

Do they have a license for the US now? I don't think they did a couple of weeks ago...

Four MB albums, Deano: Teeny Shiny, Bambi's Dilemma, Charlie and Scratch or Stitch.

does not work in australia yet

Just searched for The Recession and that shows up in its entirety, and it hasn't been released here at all right?

It's really good for the one-album playback when you've no idea if you'll like it or not and can't be arsed downloading.

yeah i'm basically going through albums i've been wondering about checking out but didn't have the hd space for.

no the recession was released here, but the label didn't bother telling the pr - she only realised when she looked on amazon and found it had been there for a fortnight

"80s funk house disco" radio suggests Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers!

> Four MB albums, Deano

thanks. we don't have any, amazon.co.uk mp3 store has scratch n stitch and a couple of tracks from compilations, emusic had a lot... all these people seem to be getting their info from the same places though, they all make the same mistakes (search for broadcast on amazon - details are about duophonic / warp broadcast but the listed albums aren't)

One detail I like: when it gets to the end of what I've queued up, it just continues with the current album without me needing to ask it to. (I suppose I can see how someone might not like this, though.)

Finally got round to sorting scrobbling for this (there's a windows messenger box ticked by default in the last.fm client that somehow stops Scrobblify from working). So far I'm really liking Spotify - handy for hearng stuff you randomly think on that you haven't got in your library or for legal trying before you buy. The adverts don't annoy me in the slightest.

fails Boredoms test :(

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

anyone got a spotfiy INVITE?

If not, try the "oooh ask me please!" option on the website ("Get started" -> email in "Not invited?" field). Took about five days for me, was surprised to get it at all actually.

jordan, webmail me an email address to send an invite to.

didn't get asked for an invite here, just got straight in

This is amazing! You type in what you want to listen to, and then you are listening to it. all this needs is to work on an iphone, and then i'll buy an iphone, and then i will have achieved bliss.

Mine appears to have made it through an album without giving me any adverts. Maybe they've bumped me up to a pro account without realising it.

you can now scrobble to last.fm from within spotify (it's in 'preferences')

That's handy, saves me running that scrobblify thing at the same time.

Spotify lists 'The Prodigy' as 'Prodigy' and makes last.fm think this guy sings Smack My Bitch Up and Out of Space
http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/252/17704623.jpg

can someone please send me an invite?

thanks!!

Er....

https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/

Think there's still a waiting list though.

<3 this service btw.

Got in straight away with the link I posted.

Aha they've obviously opened it up!

Downside is loads more ads (I've heard two during the same album), but you can hear them coming after a while and tune out. Still great.

thanks Chewshabadoo but I need an invitation code.

Please!

If i hear gareth jones from cardiff reciting pi again i'll scream

(advert)

And I'm not buying that White Lies record either.

At least it doesn't scrobble the adverts

jonathan from spotify sounds remarkably like Michael Vaughan

I understand but don’t really get the Zitron/Kyle Chayka critique. The Tiktokky bits don’t get in the way for me; I find it’s still very easy to navigate and create a music-only experience.

Also not (yet) having any of my pop or ambient playlists taken over by AI slop. The curating still seems pretty sturdy and helpful.

xp yeah I agree. I open the app and there is still a search button that is prominently displayed and easy to access.

And it never tries to put on videos for me.

I get a NEW MUSIC FOR YOU popup that has to be dismissed to use the app, that shit sucks.

But Apple does something similar I believe. Enshittification is unavoidable.

If you're interested in an alternate UI to Spotify that is more oriented around, let's say, collecting and listening and data, I have this thing I've been working on:

everynoise.com/curio.html

I tried it but I’m getting some authentication issues once I’ve logged in to curio

Hmm, if you logged in successfully (your name shows up on the login button), then either you missed an API-key step, Spotify is having issues, or...something else. Email me at gmcdonald at furia and I'll figure it out.

Would you be able to provide some use cases or scenarios for Curio, Glenn? I'm sort of staring at a couple of my playlists, sensing there's something I could do that would unlock the universe but not sure what it is. Equally, tell me to clear off if you have better things to do!

Yes, I need to write some docs and make some demo videos.

The general aim is to better coordinate the active collecting functions in Spotify: your playlists, your Library, your listening history. Without any other manipulative or promotional agenda. "Unlock" is the right idea. It's not trying to deliver the universe to you, it's trying to make it less cumbersome to collate and extend your curiosity.

Part of that is just showing what I think is the right information, like being able to tell the difference between the songs on a playlist that come from albums and the ones that are just singles.

UI-wise, generally if you hover over things various little icons will appear. From a track on a playlist you can go to that artist's whole catalog (☰, displayed in a more informative way so you can see the patterns of tracks across releases), or to their neighborhood in related-artist space (», their related artists plus those artists' related artists), or one-click Google search on the artist/track/album for research (†).

You can select tracks (one or multiple) and then move them to another point in the playlist by clicking on the little target arrows, because I make long playlists and drag-and-drop can get awkward (although there's also drag and drop for moving single tracks). You can delete tracks, of course, but you can also designate a "bin" playlist, and then there's a one-click icon to move any track to the bin. So, e.g., I have a playlist of Christmas songs, and I use this to easily move Xmas songs off my weekly new-release playlist onto the Xmas one.

If you have a track from an album on your playlist, you can click the "1/13" track-number bit to pop that album up in the sidebar, because I do a lot of swapping which track from an album I want on a playlist. Those pop-up albums also show which tracks on the album are actually new, as opposed to having already been released on singles or otherwise, because I always want to know that.

And up at the top by the playlist title there's a link to the more-detailed playlist-profile view in everynoise research tools, and a thing for generating the vertical-stripe-style images I like to put on playlists.

You can also A/B compare playlists by selecting (click in the blank space) the B one (or ones) in the playlist list, and then going to the playlist view for the A one.

The other pages are all encrusted similarly. The artist lists give you genre categorization you can sort and filter by. The Listmarks page keeps track of where you were in each playlist or album you've been listening to.

If you download your Extended Streaming History from Spotify, then there's a History page with a bunch of ranking things.

And, for philosophical reasons, all the data Curio gets and creates for you is completely open to you. You can see the underlying data for any page, and there's a full query language for asking your own questions if they aren't the ones for which I've made views.

I post about the project mostly as @everynoise on Bluesky.

"It's the apathy that absolutely does me in. Artists, bands, music industry people, shitposters on Instagram - everyone's been banging on about what a total shitshow Spotify is, has been and continues to be for a while now, and it's largely just been met with an almighty shrugging of shoulders, and carrying on, because 'well yeah, but I've got my playlists on there, and I like my Spotify wrapped!', despite the arms tech investments, despite the meagre royalties, despite the sacking of their editorial team, despite the 1,000 play thing, despite the creaking tech that's full of bugs, despite the adding audiobooks so they could argue for an even *lower* royalty rate, despite the general cheapening and disconnection of music, despite the explosion of shitty AI slop, despite one man masquerading as many different artists being responsible for a huge royalty payout by juicing the system, despite the literal owner of the platform claiming that 'content' doesn't take any money to make these days, despite everything, despite all of that. But people just think it's a bit of fun."

https://blogaboutsatan.blogspot.com/2024/12/what-were-skies-like-when-you-were-young.html

glenn i’m travelling now but will look into it when i can.

coincidentally, just saw this float through my timeline:

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machine-liz-pelly-spotify-musicians/

lol sorry that’s literally the same article

Glenn gets a mention in the current issue of Private Eye:
https://jameshamiltonsdiscopage.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/temppop.jpg

I listen 80% to stuff I have uploaded to my youtube music account. Its very handy and I resent "algorithmic satanics"

The person who sang on the original Snowman soundtrack was NOT Aled Jones - he only recorded the single! It was Peter Auty

Wrong thread!

Still, worth reiterating

I validate this turhful approach

Glenn wrote a blog post about his Curio tool, with some recollections about working on Spotify Wrapped: https://www.furia.com/page.cgi?id=498

https://i.imgur.com/idLdNmx.jpeg

i can never see playlist info. if the curator took the time to write extra info about the playlist, i wanna see what they said dammit.

(yes i'm also bitter that no one can read the stuff i wrote on mine)

https://bsky.app/profile/everynoise.bsky.social/post/3lfzttejtzk2k

Every Noise at Once
Spotify seems to be quietly removing genres from the API now. I'm going to wait and see where this goes before I change the everynoise.com/research.cgi connections. NRbG is not affected.

straw that broke the camel's back for me. i hate this company and have felt like a hypocrite for holding on to my subscription for so long. time to be done

https://pitchfork.com/news/spotify-hosts-trump-inauguration-brunch-and-makes-150000-donation-to-ceremony/

Very on brand to cheap out even on bribery.

lol

Just had a very depressing exchange with the developer of sortmytune.com, a playlist tool I absolutely love using. He thinks it's the beginning of the end for the Spotify API when it comes to tools like his. If they go then the only thing keeping me from jumping ship is Spotify Connect, though to be be honest that's quite a big thing: AirPlay is just not the same.

not sure about that but my plan is to use spotlistr to convert the playlists i want to keep into text. i've been enjoying making playlists in itunes again and especially like that i can make edits of tracks and other things along those lines. so i'm hoping that this will be better for my listening, make me more organized, more intentional, etc. it's pretty easy to link my phone to laptop and add a few new things for when i need to be in the car or whatever

I tend to listen to a series of podcasts interwoven with music tracks between them. Which I can just about manage to set up on my desktop.
It looks like the designation of what a podcast queue and a series of music tracks is totally different on my phone.
Is this somehow intentional. Just seems counterproductive or meaningless.
Like intentionally dysfunctional.
What gives?

https://i.imgur.com/IhSSQzo.jpeg

yer totes otm spotify. i ♡ 9aa006e57eed452d977a3600bec1a388!

In the future each band will be assigned one universally unique identifier and this is the only way by which they will be referred

"in the future"

Appears to be down atm

Certainly un-useable trash for me in the last hour or so.

duckduckgo was down about an hour ago too. is something happening?

Come back when you're ready for peace.

running now.& I thought earlier.
I keep hitting signal blockers while listening to things I think.
Had definitely had my podcast listening stopped in a local supermarket a few weeks ago,& had a similar stop and removal of queue happen a couple of times since.
Which is a drag

lol glenn

I have an Android Smartphone, but I saw this on Product Hunt:

App Only for Apple:

pickupnote
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/pickupnote

pickupnote makes it easy to record music thoughts and reviews. Link your notes directly to songs from Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube. Capture inspirations or deep reflections—pickupnote is your private space for every listening memory.

pickupnote
https://pickupnote.com
An App for Collecting your favorite music

https://www.change.org/p/demand-spotify-remove-andrew-tate-s-harmful-courses-on-how-to-traffic-women

so if / when they refuse to remove this disgusting shit, will that finally be the last straw for you guys or nah

they know

We’re aware of some issues right now and are checking them out!

— Spotify Status (@SpotifyStatus) April 16, 2025

Yeah, it was very spotty for me this morning during my commute.

have they genuinely unticked every episode I've listened to, sounds a bit childish.

new feature:

Spotify’s new ‘Upcoming Releases’ hub highlights future albums you may like
https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/21/spotifys-new-upcoming-releases-hub-highlights-future-albums-you-may-like/

seems useful, but clicking the "new releases" icon on mobile doesn't do anything for me. is the feature actually live?

yes, on Android - Go to Search in the bottom navigation, then navigate down the screen you then you will come to a Browse all section:

it's on the right hand side "Upcoming releases" right next to "Made For You"

yes that's what I'm looking at. I'm saying that when I click it, nothing happens.

on Android there are separate sections for "New Releases" and "Upcoming releases".

check to see if there is a Spotify update on "Play Store" - mine updated 2 Hours ago.

Same here xp

(and mine updated today too)