Spotify - anyone heard of it?

that's the thing it's not even like i'm asking for new features from spotify. i'm asking for old features + functionality that they used to provide!

All I want to do is listen to my local files of Xaphoon Jones Mixtape Vol 2, in a playlist in the correct order. There is no easy way to do that through spotify anymore. When my local files load (if they load and don't crash the app), I can search them, but there is no way to sort or drag them to a playlist.

why are you even using spotify for something like that, just download winamp (the old version, before it bloated)

he wants to listen to his library on his mobile away from home iirc, using Spotify's interface

"all I want to do is use this copy of Microsoft Word to organize my documents without to pretend to save a doc first to access my file system"

it's a bummer ; i have certainly listened less to albums I really enjoy (Bjork's Vulicura, Chordslayer's Maxo, the Aphex dump) just because they're more difficult to add to and listen to on a secondary player. Loading local stuff to spotify has proved useless.

that part I get -- I've been lucky in that vulnicura is not exactly something you want to listen to walking around running errands

When you listen to stuff on Spotify, the artist gets a bit of money, however small, that they wouldn't get by you listening to something from your library.

is there any credible school of thought to suggest that streaming is going back into the bottle? i.e. what would have to happen for the vast majority of catalogue to disappear from easy and reasonably cheap access in 2035?

as a mass, no. but it's credible -- and my guess would be it's getting more credible the way that people are vying for "exclusives" of material that is both imperfectly exclusive and easy to dead forever -- that SOME of the catalogue would disappear from easy or reasonably cheap access, or for that matter any access, in 2035.

it's not only the issue of exclusives. it's that music rights in general remain incredibly complicated, and it's always possible that any individual song or album or catalog could disappear at any time. and as copyrights revert from labels back to artists, or to artists' estates, over the years, there's no way of knowing what those artists or estates will choose to do, or will be able to do. so if you're really going to want that whitesnake album in 2035, you might want to hold on to your mp3s, just in case.

on the other hand, even if they disappear from the streaming world 20 years hence, i'm sure there'll still be a way to buy a used/bootlegged/3d-printed/teleported copy for one or two cents, assuming the concept of one or two cents still exists.

xp wish i had it there when i needed to fetch a handful of pumice dust and lost dream teeth from the caves of Vatnshellir Cave in Snæfellsnes; had to settle for Rascall Flatts and it just wasn't the same

Outside of listening on my phone, I use Sonos to listen to Spotify most frequently. Sonos has decent local file integration, allowing me to search for a song and either play it from Spotify or my local / network drive but it too has limitations. I can only have 75K local files. I have many times that many and I don't want to create another library for just stuff that isn't available on Spotify. Although, if somebody wrote an AppleScript to match what is on Spotify vs. what's on my HD and create a playlist of the unique files, that would be useful.

the sonos interface needs a lot of work, but the basic idea is great. it does a good job of erasing the distinction between your local library, your spotify library and any other subscription libraries you might have.

Yeah, Sonos needs work but mostly it's great. I don't now of a better system for multiple zones pulling from multiple sources right now. I do wish there wasn't a delay when I played my vinyl through Sonos. Currently when I play a record, I can send to the 3 different zones, but the zones outside the main zone where the turntable is located get out of phase pretty quick.

The other thing about the theoretical whitesnake album is that it might get remastered next month and the remaster is garbage and becomes the only version on streaming. In that case you would be glad to have saved its prior iteration on your hd

xp:

it's not only the issue of exclusives. it's that music rights in general remain incredibly complicated, and it's always possible that any individual song or album or catalog could disappear at any time. and as copyrights revert from labels back to artists, or to artists' estates, over the years, there's no way of knowing what those artists or estates will choose to do, or will be able to do. so if you're really going to want that whitesnake album in 2035, you might want to hold on to your mp3s, just in case.

― fact checking cuz, Tuesday, May 12, 2015 1:18 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this too, otm

that leaves the question of how easy it will be to keep computer files for 20+ years, though. anybody still info from computer disks from 1995 easily on hand?

still have info from...

I do but it's fucking awful

(that said, unless a new audio format emerges, mp3 files are pretty easy to transfer for as long as you're willing to transfer hard drives, it's not like you have to deal with compatibility unless you're in the realm of, like, realaudio)

but that's the thing - we're talking about decades of evolution in computer tech, from an industry that's fond of changing your drives, formats, etc

basically my point is that if you wanna keep that whitensake album handy i might consider hunting down a physical copy rather than transferring that mp3 throughout the decades

forgive the obvious but in simple terms of access to music we're all kind of ignoring the elephant in the room that is torrenting; that's the most likely way to find the hypothetical non-remastered whitesnake album and anything else that disappears into the copyright ether. it's the only pseudo-service that has shown longevity and consistency.
or more to the point, it seems likely that (barring an unknowable gestalt shift) any music that is widely available now will never become unavailable, it's just likely to become commercially / legally unavailable. that may be a "yeah doi" comment for most, but for those of us who remember a time before the internet it matters.

thing about torrenting is that like any form of piracy, it's heavily beholden to what the torrenters and people torrenting actually like. going back to high school desperately trying to find more than one track off (for instance) a sandra record is not my idea of access to music. not to mention the document I keep that keeps growing of things that you simply cannot find online anymore. they're gone, they're over, maybe someone will join the world of the internet or someone, hopefully you, will find a CD in a haystack

the latest entry on that doc, btw, is -- in the kind of irony that gobstops me that it even exists - "god saves the internet," a pro-net neutrality track recorded by kay hanley, michelle lewis and jill sobule

I would love to see that list in some form

private trackers unlock a lot of that stuff kat... but your point is certainly valid: there's lots of stuff out there that is inaccessible for general access or requires crazy hunting to find. But less that there's ever been in any other time in history!

the day I am both financially solvent enough to afford and sociopathic enough to even consider hiring a private investigator to track down a fucking mp3 is the day I need to join a convent or something

as for "less than there's ever been in any other time in history" that's inherently untrackable. I mean, probably it is, but we really have no way of knowing, let alone knowing what it'll be like 20 years from now

Private trackers are generally run by private investigators, it's true.

apologies, I misread, I don't actually torrent anything

that said, from what I know of private link-sharing communities and the like, they are very unlikely to have significant overlap with the sort of music I'd be looking for.

xxp inherently unprovable maybe but colloquially it rings accurate to my own brief stay on the historymobile
the idea of a premium "song finder" service where you have taskrabbit hunters to hunt down mp3 copies of the obvious and obscure for immediate play sounds like a business plan whose time has come

(xp) yeah, there's a LOT missing from the digital world, everything from doo-wop records that are now owned by this label that bought that label that bought that other label that merged with those other seven labels, none of which gives a rat ass about doo-wop artists whose last minor hit came before anyone who worked for any of those labels was born, to small punk pressings that have never made the leap from vinyl to any digital form, to god knows what else we can't see, because we can't actually see the thing that we can't see. it's amazing to me how many relatively mainstream artists continue to be forgotten by the passing years, internet or no internet.

btw, i am going to look into getting you a copy of god save the internet

a lot of CDs with pop artists' debuts that were shipped to radio but clearly never took off enough to become ubiquitous, a lot of indie, particularly when not from the US -- I have the vague feeling that either I or my tastes are being made fun of here, but still.

that said, from what I know of private link-sharing communities and the like, they are very unlikely to have significant overlap with the sort of music I'd be looking for.

curious now about what music you like that's so obscure that the major private sharing community wouldn't have it. like what.cd isn't complete but of things i want to hear that aren't on spotify they probably have like 75%.

do we have a thread for like -- most obscure/hard to find/oop album you have?

it's not a matter of obscurity, it's a matter of genre. the people who subscribe to these services generally deal either in the music canon or the nerd canon. so if things are like they were back a few years ago (or now, if you try the google track), you can easily find every Bob Dylan and/or DragonForce one-off but not, say, stuff from teen-movie soundtracks or europop or female singer-songwriters who aren't the canonized ones.

i think maybe you aren't familiar enough w/ these services. i've found tons of super obscure 60s-70s female singer-songwriter albums.

yeah, I'm not talking 60s-70s, I'm talking 80s-on

the closer in time to now the more likely it's available - give me the name of the most obscure 80s female singer-songwriter you can think of. i'm curious to see if i can find it online.

(because '60s-'70s female singer-songwriter albums have a place in the canon, they're either laurel canyon-ish or chartdigging finds or margo guryan. but someone like sandra lockwood? that one I DO have -- because someone I knew bought the CD and was kind enough to send me a rip)

you may have found a niche to service katherine. time to call the angel investors

for fuck's sake, I'm not trying to prove that I am ~*more obscure than you*~ or claim that I am somehow uniquely affected by this, this is just the part of my musical interests that I have to go out looking for in the first place

RFI Sandra Lockwood

can't find her. she has a last.fm scrobble page which reminds me of the last time i was looking for an album that was super oop and only had one person who had scrobbled it ever. so i contacted them and asked for a copy - success!

kat, i'm being serious! I'm not really looking for that stuff so it's outside of my purview; i wouldn't notice that it's eroding because i didn't know it was there in the first place. you would almost certainly be a welcome addition on any private torrent for just that reason.

yeah, sometimes asking people on last.fm works. sometimes they haven't used last.fm in years, just kept it scrobbling away, and don't visit the site let alone answer stuff in their inbox. sometimes it pisses them off, which having been on both sides of this equation I understand

fwiw, i am facebook friends with sobule so i will let you know what i hear

kat i just sent you a webmail