Spotify - anyone heard of it?

Spotify will then try to match up your mp3s with its library. All your mp3s should then show up in the Local Files playlist.

surely other ppl have thought seriously about how to organize/reference/backup their digital music collections?

There is at least one thread about it.

any way to set it to warn you when you're adding something to a playlist already in that playlist?
― Mordy, Sunday, August 19, 2012 10:33 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark

you can alphabetize the playlist and see if the song is in there twice

RE: Local files, I'm a fan of the "top lists" and I've noticed it doesn't count any music from local files.. so if you have half of an album on mp3's (or if half of the album is spelled differently than on spotify) Top tracks/albums/artists will only count the songs that were streamed. (I mostly care about "top lists" because my friends read them and vice versa)

Last year its “cost of sales,” which includes licensing fees and distribution expenses, was $229 million, or 97 percent of revenue.

On top of that it had more than $30 million in salaries, and more than $30 million for various other expenses. That is how you lose $57 million on $236 million in revenue.

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/pandora-and-spotify-rake-in-the-money-and-then-send-it-off-in-royalties/

more than $30 million in salaries!!!

sounds like a solid business model. i feel totally confident that my music is safe on the spotify cloud.

new media companies don't exist to make money they only exist to be purchased by an even dumber, bigger company and then quietly "sunsetted" 3 years later.

sounds like a solid business model. i feel totally confident that my music is safe on the spotify cloud.
― Mordy, Monday, August 27, 2012

well that's the thing: you're just renting! It's not "your music" any more so than that netflix disc is your movie. In some ways, spotify is a step toward relinquishing physical ownership of the music and embracing MUSIC as a utility with fees to be charged for access.

While being a happy Spotify subscriber, I'm always aware that I "own" nothing and there is no guarantee of how long the service will continue to exist.

Certainly all valid concerns, but it's also worth noting that many Internet startups that proved the most successful lost money for the first few years - i.e. Amazon.com didn't turn a profit until 7 years after it incorporated.

But yeah, music-related services have a bad track record. I think in order to be successful, someone will need to figure out how to profit with a service that allows ppl to listen to a nearly limitless selection of music for free. A seemingly impossible task, but per-listen royalties, advertising revenue, social-networking tools and blogs, trending charts, optional-service subscription fees, and other such tools can be harnessed to build revenue. Thus far, Spotify has come closest to putting it all together.

obviously i understand that i don't OWN the music - after all, i'm pretty resigned to losing a bunch of it when spotify goes poof. but from my POV there isn't really a difference between having the music constantly available to me and owning it. i mean, i'm sure there are legal differences (and part of the difference is that i give up getting to complain if spotify disappears) but practically all that matters to me is having the music available at any given time. so from a purely selfish perspective, i have the music now. if spotify fails, i will no longer have it. at that point i will be waiting for a freeleech weekend legally purchasing all the stuff i had previously enjoyed but no longer have access to.

back up everything you own and then eat it. that's what i do.

I keep obscure music locally; the big hits can live in the cloud (or my backup drives). I'm fairly certain I can get it all back and together again should I need to schange music services, such as if Spotify fails.

I hate whatever recommendation engine drives Spotify artist- or song-based radio stations. I set up a DJ Shadow station, feeling in the mood for eerie trip-hop, and instead I get Vampire Weekend, M83 and Crystal Castles, as though the engine is thinking "Oh, you're the kind of corny motherfucker who likes DJ Shadow? Well you'll probably like this other corny-ass bullshit too."

i'm pretty sure it's just based on what people who listen to dj shadow a lot also listen to. i think if you choose any lower profile trip hop act you'll get a better mix

The Radio thing works better if you seed it from a playlist, rather than one particular artist or track. Spotify radio seeded from my "Starred" or "Current Favourite Albums 2012" actually does a pretty good job.

OTOH a Supersilent station is giving me EXCLUSIVELY stuff on Rune Grammofon

weirdly it seems that if an album is in a playlist, even if for whatever reason (regional, otherwise) it won't come up in searches, you can listen to it?

i don't understand why some songs from an album will be on spotify while others won't. right now only two tracks from "the seer" by swans are up, the rest are grayed out, which seems like they're offering those two tracks as a sample or something. but four tracks from "the infamous" by mobb deep are grayed out, would it be because of sample issues or because someone involved in those tracks didn't approve them for spotify or what?

Are those tracks generally the longer ones on the albums? If so, it could be automatically carried over from digital purchasing services, where longer tracks are often "album only", ie not separately buyable as tracks. I've read label executives conceding this doesn't really make sense in a streaming environment, ie it may be mostly a temporary technical rather than a policy issue.

They do it because they want to give people a teaser of the album and then go out and buy it. It happens a fair bit for new albums.

Dunno what the deal would be for the Mobb Deep album, it might be the record label holding out on the whole album for the same reason even though the album itself is ancient.

I think I need to get Spotify premium because they keep playing this AWFUL Durex ad that promises to solve every gender's essential genital problems. I mean yuck. Plus I have been listening to a lot of standup comedy and Steve Reich and both of those listening experiences are massively fucked up by condom ad interruptions.

I noticed the same thing as n/a with The Infamous, assumed it was a sample issue.

I have access to all of the Swans record though, maybe it just took a few days?

Yeah it popped up the next day, maybe they were in the process of adding it when I looked the first time.

You can hear the entirety of Swans' THE SEER on Spotify now...

Is there any way to get Spotify to actually say how long a playlist is once you pass the 59-minute barrier. Saying everything from 60 to 119 minutes is '1 hour long' is not useful

http://tapeop.com/blog/2012/08/11/why-and-how-spotify-managed-get-such-low-royalty-r/

the guy whose band i'm in ran the numbers: anytime someone streams his entire 10-song album on spotify, he gets paid 5.5 cents. they've paid between $0.0006 and $0.0141 per single song stream.

there are a variety of reasons why individual songs might not be available on spotify (and rhapsody and mog and sometimes itunes). it's different from case to case. but for starters,m i'm pretty sure that every publisher that has even a small piece of a song has the right to say no, so if there are a lot of songwriters and a lot of samples, that increases the odds someone's going to do so. also, you'd be amazed how often the record companies simply screw up and make songs and albums unavailable by mistake. it's a ridiculously (and needlessly) complicated business.

The only thing I can say in favour of the low Spotify royalty rates is that more often than not I'm streaming stuff I already paid for on CD, but don't have on my hard drive, so the musicians are being paid a second (admittedly paltry) sum on top of what they already got when I bought their album, purely because of laziness on my part.

I've bought 52 new CDs this year, and all but a handful were trialled on Spotify before purchase. However, even after purchase, most plays are still via Spotify, which does beg the question "so why buy the CDs in the first place". I have my reasons!

is it me or does no-one ever say what the royalty rates should (as specifically as possible) be for a service like this? does anyone actually know?

ve bought 52 new CDs this year, and all but a handful were trialled on Spotify before purchase

This too, actually--I've bought a heap of CDs since I got spotify, because of hearing them there

Have to say my CD/download purchasing has lessened as a direct result of Spotify and I'm spending less overall so there's no way that can be good for artists on average. I'm more likely to buy something if it's *not* on Spotify. That said, I've discovered a bunch of artists through Spotify that otherwise would have received £0.00 from me and now have my undying affection and occasional purchase.

i'm mostly using spotify the same way I used listening booths in record stores

I haven't bought a CD in years, but have completely transitioned to Spotify from illegal downloads.

I haven't bought a CD in years, but have completely transitioned to Spotify from illegal downloads.

i like to make hard-copy versions of some of my playlists, so i'll end up looking on itunes/amazon/boomkat for the mp3s if i don't already own the songs in some other format.

I wish you could search playlists on Spotify, like a playlist that has certain artists. I mean, when I search "goth" I get a lot of goth music I don't like.

It needs more Boolean operators for sure.

I wish you could browse by label

If you use the This Is My Jam app, you can click on songs and see all the people who've jammed that song (and thereby see a playlist of all the other songs they've jammed). Not quite the same, but good.

I wish you could browse by label

You can do this by entering "label:________" in the search field. It's not perfect.

http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d195/richhunt35/harveysidfasterspotifylol.jpg

Easy ROFLs are too be had. I'm not complaining too much, if you like dicking around with databases, it's fun.

I want a search based on song length.

While I'm working, I try to listen to a big mix so the next song surprises me enough to listen and keep me wondering what will come on next. That said, If the next song is eight minutes long and I don't like it, it's not fun anymore obviously.

I came up with this playlist of 26 songs all around 2:18 or so, which is 12 seconds short of an hour. Not every song on that list is a winner, but it doesn't ever drag on you either.

I'd like to make more lists like that. I'm also aware that there are 36 matches on the floor, 36 matches.

Do a search for every song that begins with the letter "T" in it and save all of the 2:18 ones. Repeat with every letter of the alphabet.

You can do this by entering "label:________" in the search field. It's not perfect.

I notice you can do this with genres as well. I know nothing of Boolean searches, so this is all new to me. Where do you find how stuff is catalogued by Spotify?

Here's their list of genres https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=psnjFY3R2itsqjinSs9hkZw

Disappointed by the lack of coverage in "genre:yodeling". Only three albums!