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Are Spotify just shit (as a consumer experience)?

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...

I suspect (but may be wrong) that most people use the app.
 
I mostly use Spotify when I’m out and about, so it’s the phone App. I don’t have any particular quibble with the user interface, although there are some things I’d organise differently.

Most of the music I listen to in the house is on CD, though.
 
I mostly use Spotify when I’m out and about, so it’s the phone App. I don’t have any particular quibble with the user interface, although there are some things I’d organise differently.

Most of the music I listen to in the house is on CD, though.

Why do you do this? Is it a quality issue or do you just like CDs?
 
Compared to per unit physical album sales royalties, yeah it looks bad, but then physical album sales were on the decline way before Spotify came along thanks to piracy. And Spotify and others do at least go a long way to counterbalancing that.

Also, I've long taken the view that Spotify is a lot more like radio than buying a physical album and viewed through that lens it actually pays out more per stream, than a per-listener share of what would be a single airplay royalty on radio 1. I'm sure that's cold comfort to those new artists struggling to pay the bills and getting £20 spotify cheques, but I don't buy that they'd be struggling any less if Spotify etc suddenly disappeared.
 
Can't speak for Danny, but I listen to physical media at home (vinyl & tapes more than CD, but sometimes CD too) because that's what my collection is on. And while it's likely I'd be able to find and stream anything from the collection I want to, the physical act of looking through the collection is often how I choose what to listen to.
 
Why do you do this? Is it a quality issue or do you just like CDs?
It’s the format I’m used to. I listen to albums. My collection is on physical formats, the majority on CD. I’m just happier picking up a physical thing and playing it than finding a playlist. I like to browse the shelves and select something, then play it until it’s finished.

This way of experiencing recorded music comes entirely from the technological culture I grew up in. Buying albums, holding them on your lap while they played, reading the cover notes, collecting your library, organising your library. The excitement of discovery for me is bound up in all of that.

I know that for younger people that isn’t the case. Music comes as streamed songs. The units are tracks and you don’t have to store them on shelves. That fosters a different relationship with recorded music. It’s not wrong, it’s just not the one I have.
 
CDs for me were always more about convenience than anything. Once mp3s and the iPod set a new benchmark for convenience I don't think I've bought a CD since. Not unless it was a mix, or a compilation, or a rare album I couldn't get otherwise, but I'd soon rip it to my iPod after that. Once spotify and smartphones made even carrying an ipod inconvenient, I uploaded everything to Google Music (now YouTube Music) as a cloud based drive, and I've stuck with a combination of that, and spotify ever since.

Not to say I'm not nostalgic for CD/LP album art, sleeve notes, and going to record shops to browse physical products and buying on a whim, but the vast majority of the market that matter, just don't care for that anymore, or even grew up not knowing any different.

I think physical storage is a big factor too. I simply don't have room for shelves or CDs or racks of albums anymore anyway. My entire CD collection from the 90s and early 00's is now in storage kept in big wallets.
 
I am curious why some people of our generation and older have embraced streaming while some haven't - my folks had a very large collection of CDs and vinyl albums, which have long gone to the charity shop in favour of spotify - likewise many of my friends have done the same, while some of us still labour under shelves of dusty records.
 
I am curious why some people of our generation and older have embraced streaming while some haven't - my folks had a very large collection of CDs and vinyl albums, which have long gone to the charity shop in favour of spotify - likewise many of my friends have done the same, while some of us still labour under shelves of dusty records.

Yeah, tbh I would have sworn that I would have been someone to stick to the physical media. The CD collection was a big thing for me. And yet now I'm pretty much streaming only. I'm not quite sure why tbh - partly I think a lot of it was being able to listen to stuff on the move much more easily, but I think also the immediacy of it, being able to go online and find and listen to something new straight away, not having to go out and get a physical copy. For a while I spent a lot of time hoovering up new music that way and I think it broke the attachment to the physical formats a bit.
 
I grew up on CDs. As a teenager they had an excitement to buying them, but they were a silly amount of money. I used to totally over listen to them. It does mean I do have a different relationship with them, but it's not something I'd want to go back to. I travelled round India with a cheap Walkman and listened to the tapes so much they started to sound worn out. My first paycheck I bought a CD burner for my PC and totally embraced Mp3, although that did mostly stick with album format. I do wonder how having access to streaming music would have influenced my tastes as I grew up.
 
I've used it a lot for in the gym. Never had problems. I use the free one so have adverts, but I like adverts anyway.
 
I am curious why some people of our generation and older have embraced streaming while some haven't - my folks had a very large collection of CDs and vinyl albums, which have long gone to the charity shop in favour of spotify - likewise many of my friends have done the same, while some of us still labour under shelves of dusty records.
It's an interesting one. It's really hard for me to part with records, CDs or books. They're almost like an external record of self. Even ones I don't like any more are a physical representation of a time in my life when I did. I had a hard time moving to this flat (been here about a year) because there was a lot of pressure on me to reduce, and I did, but nowhere near as much as my loved ones wanted. I do think it's a psychopathy.
 
I have a teenage daughter who's really into music, and I'm finding the way she finds and listens to stuff pretty interesting. I bought her a record player a couple of years ago and she does buy records, but it seems almost an afterthought to her - everything is discovered, consumed and shared online. She doesn't listen to full albums at all, apart from the albums she's bought... and she cycles through new stuff at a dizzying rate. She talks about listening to songs she was into a couple of months ago as 'nostalgic'.

She's into really good stuff tbh, it's pretty gratifying. None of it stuff I've come across via other means.
 
As well as that, I'd say pop music radio is essentially dead. The only time my kids ever listen to the radio is in the car, and the pop music they're into - it is pop music, in style and content - isn't covered at all by pop radio. They learn about new songs via tiktok, or over some forum/messenger thing they're into called discord - and it's like a completely different network of influence than the one that gets particular pop songs onto the radio.
 
I mostly listen to DJ mixes and rarely listen to anything more than once. Dunno til that’s normal for someone with my tastes or if I’m just a weirdo
 
I recently got one of my technics 1200s out of storage and set it up in my flat with a view to playing more vinyl albums again, but all I've realised it's just a hassle compared to shouting "Alexa, play [name of album]"

The enjoyment I imagined I'd get from pulling vinyl out of a sleeve, setting down the needle, and watching a record spin round just wasn't there.
 
I am curious why some people of our generation and older have embraced streaming while some haven't - my folks had a very large collection of CDs and vinyl albums, which have long gone to the charity shop in favour of spotify - likewise many of my friends have done the same, while some of us still labour under shelves of dusty records.

Good question. I'm 57 so I grew up with vinyl but I was well into my music and shared a room with my brother and between us we had all the clobber, pair of technics decks, mixer, and my thing then was making "live" compilation tapes, so while we were just hanging out, you could just have the tape deck running on record while you flipped between discs so effectively I was part of playlist culture back then.

But I was very into reggae and it was a real singles culture there were very few albums, sometimes compilations of course and a few riddim compilations but they didn't really appear until the CD era ime.

But all my tapes are dead now. Anyway, digital seemed obviously the way to go, mainly for the playlist (and the convenience I guess) but I'm well fucked off with spotify now, I'm obviously not getting back in so all my compiling is wasted time (luckily not too much) so yes I'm pretty wary of online digital, same reason I always find the whole cloud concept suspicious. I just don't trust these fuckers.
 
why are they dead?

Over-played, knackered etc but actually it's a good question, I know I've got some buried away somewhere I should try and dig them out. Loads got nicked which I was quite relaxed about because I could just make more (although when Brian the builder fucked off to Spain with my please-don't-take-this-one perfectly mixed reggae greats I was quite pissed off :snarl: ) but some arsehole nicked a load of my singles at some messy point in my life about 20 years ago :(. The bigger problem now is finding a working tape deck.
 
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.


This is deeply bollocks and illustrates the issues at hand.

How can someone work at becoming a successful musician while also holding down a shitty job?

If you’re just starting to make it, you’re not making enough money to live on from the music, while having to hold down the shitty job and also playing gigs in the evenings, travelling around the country, finding time to rehearse, write, record your music as well as maintain friendships and relationships. A lot of good talent gets lost forever in this trap.

The people who make it are incredibly lucky. It’s a myth that talent will always be succeed (I used to believe it myself before I understood how it works).

There’s a huge amount of lost talent out there, as well as a bunch of mediocre and crap musicians making coin becasue they fit some template.

In my world, musicians are crucial and we do owe them a living.

They’re not more special than any other necessary part of society, but nor are they less special, or less deserving of a decent income. Why do musician have to prove their worth every day of their working life when other workers who benefit us all get a guaranteed contracted wage (yes, I know this is very badly eroded and not really true anymore).

Even successful musicians have a limited time at the top and still have to continue proving their worth. Most musicians are toiling away somewhere in the middle, struggling to find ways to get some kind of remuneration for their work. By your argument they should jack it in and do something else, like Fatima giving up dance to work in cyber.

Anyway, most of those toiling away and making music are making some kind of living at it, or they give it up. But they’re not coining it in, and it’s a very precarious living.

And successful musicians create a huge number of support jobs around them, from road crew to sound engineers to bar staff; plus they give work to other salaried people like accountants and drivers.


I don’t want to live in a world where the only music available is either massively successful commercial stuff that’s supported by multinational cconflomerates, or folk singers at the pub playing for a pint and a pork pie. I want all the stuff that exists in between those extremes, and most of those are lving hand to mouth most of the time



I really hate this attitude that people have to prove their commercial aptitude in order to be considered successful or worthy.


And actually. I do consider musicians special. Because more than any other people on earth, they contribute to my internal private inner life, they enhance all the things that make me uniquely myself: my dreams, emotions, responses, memories and feelings. That might not be true for you. But I know it’s also the case for many others.

Same goes for theatre, books, dance, poetry, painting, all the arts.



Anyway, and also,
Do they owe us a living?
Course they do, course they do
Owe us a living?
Course they do, course they do
Owe us a living?
Course they fucking do
 
In my world nurses are crucial.
Bridge builders are also crucial but we don't pay them royalties every time we drive over one of their bridges.

Of course they’re crucial. So are road sweepers, bus drivers and so forth.

Musicians get royalties because they don’t get paid for writing the song. Or for playing the song, or for recording it. How else are they going to get paid?
 
Of course they’re crucial. So are road sweepers, bus drivers and so forth.

Musicians get royalties because they don’t get paid for writing the song. Or for playing the song, or for recording it. How else are they going to get paid?
Of course they should get paid. I was pulling your leg.
 
Put my money where my mouth is today and forked out for an excellent looking Baba Yaga's Hut compilation on Bandcamp. It's not much but better than Spotify I guess.
 
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.

Parties making money from Spots, past / present :

  • the 3 major labels : owned approx 15 % up until v healthy IPO sell off ( indie sector / merlin got 1 % )
  • Spots Execs World wide, from Daniel Ek downwards ( big stock holdings, big pay packages, from the off, and share holdings value has doubled )
  • Spots curators / creatives / marketing peeps etc - there's a reason the 'talent' flows only go from , eg : R1 > Spots, and that Spots bods rarely leave of their own volition ( and it's not because of the standard tech giant groovy offices / top canteens )
  • global investors / equity funds etc WW : share value was $150 at IPO / launch, now $240
  • the top 0.001 % of artists - 20K tracks uploaded to Spots servers per day, so just a tiny fraction making money, but lots of it, as global music consumption skyrockets
  • Joe Rogan / Podcast producers ( no streaming royalties paid by Spots on podcasts, so the more we stream them, the less ( proportionately ) Spots is paying out to music rights holders
 
Stopped using Spotify on desktop years ago, as they didn't support Asio drivers. Still have a free account but I like Apple Music.
You can just ask your phone to play xyz; the interface is fairly straight forward; it doesn't push stuff at you but you can listen to their DJs choices if you like.I do buy stuff occasionly off 7 Digital and Bandcamp.

I have a small but growing amount of stuff on the streaming platforms and BC. Have made £13 this year, :D
 
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