Spotify - anyone heard of it?

Yes, if you play :30+ of a DW track it should not be recommended to you again...

> On Curtis Mayfield's Curtis Live! (US Release), the track "We Are The People Who Are Darker Than Blue - Live @ The Bitter End, NYC" is from an entirely different concert recorded I would estimate, 15-20 years in the future of the rest of that album.

I noticed this on another streaming platform (Google Play) and assume this is an issue with the files the label provided the streaming corps. Still, somebody at spotify should verify it's wrong by listening to it for a few seconds (it's obvious and horrible) and then gray out the file and ideally ask the label to fix it.

Thanks for the confirmation, glenn. I can't believe how much mental energy I expend on feeding the DW algo correctly. I suppose it's a hobby I enjoy.

Personally, I despise negotiating indirectly with inscrutable algorithms like this, and refuse to do it. Which is why http://everynoise.com/new_releases_by_genre.cgi exists at the other extreme of control, in at least some sense...

Ah yeah, I haven't played with that for a while. It's kind of overwhelming.

I assumed it was the uploaders putting the metadata in the song titles rather than Spotify themselves. Maybe there's a big fancy version of Cmd+F they could do to strip it from the titles and put in an appropriate place.

I'd also forgot about http://organizeyourmusic.playlistmachinery.com which is a great tool for playing about with my Discover Archive

wild stannery from Rogan listeners in the comments here:

A musician would need to generate 23 billion streams on Spotify to earn what they're paying Joe Rogan for his podcast rights (assuming a typical $.00437 payout per stream). In other words, Spotify values Rogan more than any musician in the history of the world. Sound fair to you? pic.twitter.com/zvMdY3mIQA

— Ted Gioia (@tedgioia) May 20, 2020

I'm not a rogan fan, but clearly they value his product more because it is a very different thing than an album of music and is worth more.

A musician would need to generate 23 billion streams on Spotify to earn what they're

ok.. and rogan has 23 billion streams
what is the point of this tweet??

"a musician would need billions of streams to make what Drake makes from Spotify"

Spotify made $7.44 billion dollars in revenue selling other peoples' music to customers in 2019. The two founders have paid themselves billions of dollars. It would be good if musicians saw more of the proceeds of their creativity and labour than Joe Rogan or an executive from a marketing company, imo.

Whether or not Rogan's deal is fairly valued prima facie, the principal being paid out in that deal has been generated by undervaluing the labour of others, and thus removing their access to other forms of revenue.

(The deal also comes at the exact moment when the primary remaining form of revenue for most working musicians has been completely eradicated due to other circumstances, so it bites harder.)

that is well said, and i agree with all of it. ted's tweet is just dumb is all.

Here is a pretty good neutral-party explanation of the issues and complexities in streaming royalties.

https://musically.com/2020/05/05/spotify-should-pay-musicians-more-lets-talk-about-how/

imo platforming Rogan at all is truly reprehensible, especially with that kind of payout for his literal hate speech, and that sentiment stands regardless of any other monetary issues at play

profoundly fucked up on multiple levels

@glenn seems like the best plan is to make a subscription cost more.

Yeah, the Joe Rogan thing is making me think of cancelling and I have been a paying customer since 2011.

I just discovered that many of the Rough Guides are on there. I think some of the reggae, Cuban and African (dub, African rap) ones aren't available, though (if I recall the catalog correctly). But that's cool. Wish they'd keep everything they issued available. Lots of roots music, but I like the dancey stuff.

that is well said, and i agree with all of it. ted's tweet is just dumb is all.

― Morton Koopa Jr. Sings Elvis (Sufjan Grafton), Wednesday, May 20, 2020 6:37 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

why is it dumb

it's not necessarily dumb, it could also be stupid OR dumb

it is dumb because Joe Rogan's terrible show will indeed produce several billions of streams over the years, if you look at average youtube viewership numbers. this is also a deal that involves making the content exclusive. if you want to compare with the deal musicians get, you have to compare it to a deal where a musician makes their back catalog and new releases exclusive (with regular new releases guaranteed). obviously, you need to obtain a new stratosphere of popularity for spotify to make that deal. you also need to own your content to see the full benefit of the deal. And spotify probably doesn't make that deal anyway because music is fundamentally different from a podcast that is frequently churning out new content, capturing DAUs for an extended period of time with many ad breaks and keeping them around for more new content.

The tweet is dumb because it doesn't acknowledge any of these facts, and instead treats us like we're idiots that don't know what's happening here. it's condescending and wrong. sic's post acknowledges what is actually happening instead of giving a poor analysis that arrives at a sensational number (that isn't so sensational anyway) intended to direct outrage toward spotify. so sic otm, though it did take more words than can be squeezed into a tweet. I've no dislike for ted gioia, btw. I just don't like that tweet.

Sound fair to you?

^see what a bad ending this is?

oh no, that one also sounds bad because it is a question I am clearly asking because I presume to know the answer with my smart twitter analysis

Can you give the math behind these facts? Rogan's payout is fair/musicians' payout is fair vis a vis revenue produced?

from businessinsider.com:

Joe Rogan's massively popular podcast will become a Spotify exclusive, the company announced Tuesday. The Joe Rogan Experience, which is downloaded nearly 200 million times per month and makes $30 million annually, will only be uploaded to Spotify starting in September.

one can do some simple math to assess the value of the deal to spotify. I'm not sure the length of the "multi-year" deal. But if it's 3 years, 3*$30 million is close to $100 million. 36*200 million streams is 7.2 billion streams. the per-stream comparison also seems meaningless anyhow. Spotify's market cap has also increased a few billion since the deal was announced, and that's something.

so the problem isn't that spotify erroneously overvalues rogan's bad podcast over its great music. or even that it undervalues the music. the problem is much broader, as sic described. There's plenty of room for outrage toward spotify in the solution, but it should come from a more realistic description of where we are, how we got here, and spotify's own place in a larger issue.

the number involving $30 million is probably misleading, as I don't know the deal w.r.t. advertising $$$ within the podcast. I'm sure spotify cares more about the effect on new user and daily use numbers, since these are the things that seem to matter most in the quarterly reports of an online user data-based targeted advertising business.

a lot of the value is in establishing Spotify as a go-to platform for podcasts, I assume. Like if usually listen to Rogan on Apple or Youtube and have to switch to Spotify, you are more likely to start listening to your other podcasts there.

yes. Going for the "we are podcast netflix" gold ring

They also bought The Ringer for $200 million in order to get Bill Simmons' stable of podcasts, and also to have an in-house sports division. Weeks before sports stopped existing worldwide.

they didn't make them exclusive tho. Not sure why.

a) it's a whole website and suite of podcasts, not a single audio conversation program like Rogan
b) when apparently pivoting your core business, makes sense to try a variety of strategies for customer engagement and assess them all

i listen to bill simmons because he is to sports/pop/meta media capitalism what ryukahr is to super mario maker. i don't really care what he says. i enjoy listening to him talk with somebody like chuck klosterman about survivor because you can feel them working out how to best butter their bread by filling time with meaningless "ideas" peoples' minds can hang on to for a few minutes while they pivot spreadsheets at work. they even joke about people like mike greenberg to distract from the fact that they're blowing the same hot air under the sails of people just trying to distract themselves from their own lives. so they don't really need sports to happen. they just need a flow of income from spreadsheet pivoters, looking for a distraction.

that all sounds a bit "wake up sheeple," and i was invoking the bill/chuck style. But i am admitting myself as part of the sheeple in this case. anything to avoid my own thoughts about real stuff that matters while pivoting these spreadsheets.

the website though

isnt the website mostly about rewatching old movies?

and ranking fast food menu items?

i.e. the expanded version of bill's podcast?

The fuck you talking about?

please read the first 30 words if you don't wish to see this content itt in the future

lol

Glenn, what on earth is the rationale behind the 'RECOMMENDED SONGS Based on the songs in this playlist' thing? It seems to be entirely based on the song/artist names (ie recommending the Frozen soundtrack if you listen to Ben Frost) which seems a fairly unhelpful guide to what someone might want to listen to.

Ha - I don't think that's usually the way it works. It comes up with reasonably sensible suggestions on mine. Maybe Ben Frost gets a lot of listens from kids trying to type Frozen

I started a playlist with the "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" theme and all the recommended songs were Christmas music

and bad boys ost

lol playlist "Snow" by Ben Frost
recommended songs:
Snow Patrol "You're All I Have"
Miike Snow- "Faker"
Hank Snow- "Rockin' Rollin' Ocean"
THe Reindeer Section- "Cartwheels"

Belle & Sebastian- "Fox in the Snow"
Nick Cave- "Fifteen Feet of Pure White"
RHCP- "Snow (Hey)"
Phoebe Snow- "Isn't It a Shame"

clicking refresh until I get "Informer"

Recommended Songs recommends songs based on the playlist title if you don't have any songs in it yet. And it's supposed to switch to recommendations based on the songs as soon as there are any songs, but at the moment it seems to only switch once there are at least 6 of them. But if you add at least 6 and then hit Refresh a couple times to clear out the title-based recommendations, you should get some that make more sense. It works by looking at what other people tend to put on playlists with the songs you have so far, so if you're making a playlist with a strong theme based on something outside of your own head, the recs can be downright uncanny. For that matter, even the title-based recs are sometimes terrific. If you're going for something more personal or particular, though, there's no guarantee it will match what other people have collectively done before.