Spotify - anyone heard of it?

Is he asking for there to be a menu of albums to choose from like when you pull up Netflix?

sounds like a skill issue

i think it's a complaint about the way you _browse_ (not search) for albums being a moving target that is increasingly hard to find and difficult to use.

I guess the idea of Spotify as a browsing service is foreign to me, but I suppose now that record stores are gone it's what's left.

Yeah, I'm not getting his complaint either. Is Spotify supposed to know what he specifically wants to listen to?

And my music tab/home page/whatever will often have recommended albums based on my listening history, which seems like a good thing to me 🤷‍♂️

I see people complaining that it's getting harder to discover new music on Spotify. I don't know if that's true. I mean sure it can be annoying that anytime I listen to an electronic album I can tell it's over because "Xtal" starts auto-playing.

The weird thing is that he has a book about how algorithms are flattening us into passive consumers, yet he's looking for a streaming service to offer up recommendations rather than actively seeking out new music.

But given that his listening history is all Vampire Weekend albums, he probably does need some help.

Lol

And yeah xp

The algorithms occasionally throw up something interesting but most of the new music I discover is the same way it's always been: recommendations from friends, threads on here or other forums, magazine and website reviews/features etc etc

I use Tidal myself, but do keep a (free) Spotify acct, and I think he's putting his thumb on the scale by visiting the "Music" tab... the "All" tab seems to have what I assume he's looking for (Recently Played, Popular Albums, Your Favorite Artists, etc.). The "Music" tab is weirdly anemic for me – it has nine different selections (a grab-bag of playlists and albums, only a few related to what I've liked / listened to). Not a tab I would visit!

also might be "putting his thumb on the scale" by cropping out the search bar and then saying "Spotify is absolutely desperate for me to never seek out the thing I want to listen to"

"I want to listen to a specific album. Why doesn't it magically get suggested to me on the home page?"

The people who don't care that much are the passive consumers, and a minority of people are actively seeking/curating, and I think that's fine? Most people over 25 don't care that much about music.

Also in what imagined past was this situation better? Does this guy miss the monoculture?

I basically only ever use Spotify to listen to specific entire albums, and I'm pretty sure I've never felt "discouraged" in my quest.

performative stupidity, he’s just doing that passive aggressive thing, yknow like people who say “hmmm what does gratuity fee mean? where’s the line for me to put the tip?”

“should I just switch to Apple Music?”

The people who don't care that much are the passive consumers, and a minority of people are actively seeking/curating, and I think that's fine? Most people over 25 don't care that much about music.

Yeah, in the past most people just listened to the radio, how much has really changed? (On the consumption side, as opposed to the remuneration side, of course).

They did finally add the thing to tell you what playlist(s) a song is already in at least.

That's been a big improvement for me. It also makes it much easier to remove an entire album from a playlist when I'm using the mobile app.

keep having thumbnails for shows I listen to a lot not connecting. being told oops can't find that page. rotten set up.

this isn't even the first time that Kyle Chayka had vern

muscle memory that builds up when you use a piece of software every day, like your thumb going directly to the Instagram app button on your phone screen. Spotify had updated its interface and suddenly I was lost. I couldn’t put on the jazz record by Yusef Lateef that I play every morning when I start writing and I couldn’t figure out where to find the songs I had saved by pressing the heart-shaped like button. The sudden lack of spatial logic was like a form of aphasia, as if someone had moved around all the furniture in my living room and I was still trying to navigate it as I always had. Spotify’s new “Your Library” tab, which implied everything I was looking for, opened up a window of automatically generated playlists that I didn’t recognize. The next tab over offered podcasts, which I never listened to on the app. Nothing made sense.

oops...posted too soon

this isn't even the first time that Kyle Chayka has been disoriented by Spotify.

an excerpt from his book:
https://kylechayka.substack.com/p/essay-the-digital-death-of-collecting


"I opened the Spotify app on my laptop a few weeks ago and found that everything I had saved was in disarray. The albums weren’t where I thought they were. I couldn’t flip through them with my usual clicks, the kind of subconscious muscle memory that builds up when you use a piece of software every day, like your thumb going directly to the Instagram app button on your phone screen. Spotify had updated its interface and suddenly I was lost. I couldn’t put on the jazz record by Yusef Lateef that I play every morning when I start writing and I couldn’t figure out where to find the songs I had saved by pressing the heart-shaped like button. The sudden lack of spatial logic was like a form of aphasia, as if someone had moved around all the furniture in my living room and I was still trying to navigate it as I always had. Spotify’s new “Your Library” tab, which implied everything I was looking for, opened up a window of automatically generated playlists that I didn’t recognize. The next tab over offered podcasts, which I never listened to on the app. Nothing made sense."

I like Chayka generally, though I think he's overstating the degree of bewilderment here to make his broader point about how algorithms shape our experience. The book is unfortunately kind of lazy in its argumentation, even as his contentions *feel* right if you are, like him, a longtime internet user who's become recently disenchanted with it.

I really don't understand his thing about these services turning us into passive consumers if even a small app update throws him into an existential crisis. It's like someone throwing themself on the floor at Tower Records because they have to walk past the magazine section to get to the CDs.

I do get that Spotify emphasizing playlists might make some people less likely to play full albums, but to complain so hard about app feng shui is weird.

Looks like they’re reducing royalties by classifying their regular Premium service as an audiobook bundle (after introducing a standalone audiobook tier): https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/spotify-music-audiobook-bundle-lower-royalty-for-songwriters-1235974942/

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek surprised by how much laying off 1,500 employees negatively affected the streaming giant’s operations

Fortune headline

https://fortune.com/europe/2024/04/23/spotify-earnings-q1-ceo-daniel-eklaying-off-1500-spotify-employees-negatively-affected-streaming-giants-operations/

But he says they’re back on track now on a path to long term profitability.

Ugh

what a piece of shit that guy is. it's amazing to me he's even willing to show his face in public!

more amazing that anyone still admits to and / or rationalizes subscribing to this service

It's a go-kart powered by my own sense of self satisfaction.