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Are Spotify just shit (as a consumer experience)?

co-op

But....but cLoWnFiSh....
So I've never really bothered much with online streaming because I couldn';t be arsed but about 3 or 4 months ago I looked up a tune, couldn;t find it anywhere and then got some spotify link - so I got lured in and over a few long evenings, separated quite often by a week or 3 of not checking in at all, I "curated" myself a few little playlists which took a bit of work using shazam etc to track down tunes off playlists etc.

Anyway, I've always found the whole platform to be really user-unfriendly - really hard to find the various basic function buttons, like the only way I've managed to log in is by cutting and pasting the url at the top and keeping it on a word document and then c & p ing it back in - if I try to just get in from the home site, I can't.

Anyway, latest is that tonight, after a couple of drinks with friends I get home and want to listen to music on my spotify lists and the cunting thing (a) won't let me in - why? I have no fucking idea but click on change password and now (b) it's denying ever having known me - doesn't know my email address, some bullshit about the account being dormant,

I know I'm pretty crap with tech but this seems abnormally shitter than average. I have to decide whethre to fight to get back in and redeem my playlists - I fucking knew I should have had them stored on my computer just as a word document - or just give up. There doesn't seem to be any contact point on the website.

Has anyone else had this? Resolved it? Or should I just fuckign forget this online bullshit like I fucking always used to?
 
I've found the app and website relatively stable but the Windows app does seem a bit crap. I tend to use MusicBee as my main software for proper listening which is very stable and well supported via it's forum.
 
I like it. Always found it fine. Apple too. Both very easy to use. Wish Spotify had the lyrics thing, though.

Amazon's music app on the other hand is wank.
 
This.

And all the musicians and others I know in the biz use it too, despite having their souls torn out by it on a daily basis,
I don't get the 'poor musicians' thing. They're not special. The world doesn't owe them a living. If they're any good they'll make a living. If they're really good they'll do better, as is the case with most trades.
 
I use it to listen to things that either a) I wouldn't buy or b) I already have (usually pirated tbh) so even if artists only get pennies from my contribution it's more than they otherwise would.
 
I use it for more or less all my listening now tbh, except for a few mixes that I might listen to on Soundcloud. I think that's very common now. And while I obviously wouldn't buy everything I listen to on Spotify if it wasn't there, so I guess some artists are making a net gain of fractions of a penny from me, I would buy a lot more. As I say I think that's pretty normal now and I don't think artists are benefitting from it at all.
 
I use it to listen to things that either a) I wouldn't buy or b) I already have (usually pirated tbh) so even if artists only get pennies from my contribution it's more than they otherwise would.
they wouldnt even scrape 1p from your listens, the cuts are so low (iirc)
 
As an experience for me I absolutely love Spotify and use it every day. However I am really disturbed about the explotation going on. For artists I really like I buy their stuff from band camp.
 
I never found it useful for the music I’m interested it. Used it occasionally to do a deep dive into, eg Parliament/Funkadelic, but it wasn’t worth the tenner a month, so I binned it
 
A friend of mine produces music and I was surprised that he managed to earn £300 last year from Spotify. That seemed like a lot. <hollow laugh>
(He made £3000 from Bandcamp)
 
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From a friend on Facebook, with some figures from streaming plays:

I have mixed feelings about this stuff tbh.

That $7 billion figure is turnover, not profit. It's fine to say 'look at this enormous amount of money' but without knowing the amount of plays - and that's going to be an enormous figure - then it doesn't tell you much about their income per play. How much should a musician get per play on Spotify and why? What's the reasoning for it beyond '$7 billion is a really big figure.'?

That's not to say everything is great with Spotify or that artists shouldn't be paid more but I think if you went into the figures too much you'd find that there's no way a small monthly payment divided by as much music as you care to listen to translates to a big payment to artists.
 
I dumped it once they wouldn't let me use it as a student account anymore. I've found it was ok, but constant UI tweaks used to do my head in, things that took 2 taps (such as putting an album on repeat) would suddenly take 4.

No matter how hard you try they basically want to shove shit down your throat after what you've listened too is 'finished' I guess this is due to some labels/artists paying more to be highlighted. Remember when Drake's last album came out? I don't think I've ever listened to Drake, yet someone every playlist being pushed to me featured him.

My biggest gripe was not being able to just shuffle your collection. At least since switching to Apple Music (because they let me pay student prices) you can shuffle all the content you've added to your favourites and not have any other curated shit it's AI thinks you should listen too.
 
I have mixed feelings about this stuff tbh.

That $7 billion figure is turnover, not profit. It's fine to say 'look at this enormous amount of money' but without knowing the amount of plays - and that's going to be an enormous figure - then it doesn't tell you much about their income per play. How much should a musician get per play on Spotify and why? What's the reasoning for it beyond '$7 billion is a really big figure.'?

That's not to say everything is great with Spotify or that artists shouldn't be paid more but I think if you went into the figures too much you'd find that there's no way a small monthly payment divided by as much music as you care to listen to translates to a big payment to artists.

It's an interest POI.

I mean, when I paid for albums back in the mid 90s at say £15 a pop, I'd listen to those albums god knows how many times over. It would be interesting to work out just how much an artist got paid per play that way, obviously album sales rack up and not everyone will listen to an album over and over as much as I did back then, even if I was paying £15 a pop now, I'm not sure I'd listen to an album as many times over.Taking into account the shop and label also got a cut of that £15 I guess.

I've listened to Bruce Springsteen's latest 5/6 times this week and I'm already ready to move on, so I guess in the olden days £15 a pop was more profitable.

But then, even in the mid 90s, would you make a lot of money unless the song became huge? Is it all horses for courses and just because it's easier to actually publish music these days everyone 'thinks' they should be making tons.

And while we can argue Spotify creates none of the content, they do provide the platform, which costs money, all that dev time, storage and bandwidth isn't free.
 
I have mixed feelings about this stuff tbh.

That $7 billion figure is turnover, not profit. It's fine to say 'look at this enormous amount of money' but without knowing the amount of plays - and that's going to be an enormous figure - then it doesn't tell you much about their income per play. How much should a musician get per play on Spotify and why? What's the reasoning for it beyond '$7 billion is a really big figure.'?

That's not to say everything is great with Spotify or that artists shouldn't be paid more but I think if you went into the figures too much you'd find that there's no way a small monthly payment divided by as much music as you care to listen to translates to a big payment to artists.
well they say they make no profit, but just paid a hundred million dollars for one guy's podcast, so I guess there must be money to pay the talent somewhere... Fact is, some people are getting very rich off streaming, and for the most part it isn't artists. Maybe a more equitable share of the cash wouldn't actually be that much once it's divvied up: in that case, ok. But it's obvious that it isn't shared fairly now, and it's reasonable for that to be a source of anger.

FWIW I think the music industry has changed permanently, and the kinds of livings that were briefly available in the mid & late 20th century for musicians as a result of royalties from record sales is gone - except for the very very successful - and not coming back. I think most musicians are adjusting to that reality - everyone I know who makes music has another job, without exception. They seem happy enough, and keep making albums and touring when allowed... but while this is probably the the new reality whatever the structure of Spotify's payouts, they still need to be structured better.
 
I was against for years, but now my MP3s sit unloved. Only really use the app. At home to a Chromecast audio and in the car to Bluetooth. It's £12 per month for two accounts. The bit I really like is how it suggest other things, tried Amazon's one which I get with prime, but was terrible in comparison. It's also better the Google Podcasts and although I could get them else where, they make it quite handy.
 
This article by one of the guys from Hey Collossus (who works as a postman to pay the rent) touches on a lot of the changes for bands in recent years - think I've shared it before, but it's definitely worth a read if you haven't seen it

 
I'd say about 75% of what I listen to on Spotify I have already on physical copy, so in a way they are getting double bubble from me.
But I realise I'm an old fuddy duddy who thinks all new music sounds the same etc so may not be very representative
 
I did once read an article, or maybe a twitter thread, about artists who "blew up" on Spotify and now made a decent living where it would have been difficult for them to achieve that success in a non digital world due to the nature of their music. Stuff that would never get any promotion in reality.

I'll try and dig it out - the Internet is a small place, shouldn't take long

Edit: found an article about that thread which was started by trip hop curmudgeon Geoff Barrow
 
Maybe a more equitable share of the cash wouldn't actually be that much once it's divvied up: in that case, ok. But it's obvious that it isn't shared fairly now, and it's reasonable for that to be a source of anger.

I'm not telling anyone they shouldn't be angry or feel they're getting ripped off of course.

I think the thing is though that what this, and the comment you've quoted above, does is assume that there's a great big pot of money and that a few people at Spotify are creaming it off. I'd say what this leaves off is that what Spotify does, and how they're in such a strong position in the market, is actively force down how big that pot is. I think that's why artists are making less rather than the cut taken (their cut is probably a lot less than used to be taken off a physical sale once it's been through retail etc as cybershot says).

Changing that means pushing up the amount people pay IMO. That might not be popular (look at the response to Tidal - there might have been some dicks involved but they weren't wrong) but nothing is changing substantially without it. It might be a bit perverse seeming but maybe part of the answer is that Spotify need to turn over even more, although I'd rather an alternative model came through.
 
It sounds like most people posting here were using the pay version, I was on the freebie, maybe they just try and make that so shit that you are pushed into the premium version?


But locking me out completely seems an odd way of doing that...
 
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