I’ve done it. I’ve finally reached my “old man yells at cloud” moment. Why, why, WHY is Spotify adding features straight out of the social media playbook?
Anybody have recommendations for alternatives?
In my head there’s:
YouTube music (google, gross)
Apple music (no way they’re not on a similar trajectory)
Bandcamp (limited, but at least bands see some money from it)
SoundCloud (weird reputation, though haven’t come back around to it in a good 10 years)
Tidal maybe? Would love to hear some recommendations.
Edit: I neglected to mention why I don’t like the messaging feature. I’ve never used it, yet with a few of my friends there are already dozens of song exchanges in the thread. It’s clear that spotify has been using user-specific links for a while now to track who sends what to who. That’s a pretty clear anti-feature for me, and is enough to make me jump ship.
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And Duolingo now has chess. What a complete joke; both those corporations and the people using everything uncritically.
At least they went with an intellectual game instead of some brain rot, addictive, pay-to-unlock-levels bullshit.
I’m so confused, if you don’t want to use this feature, just don’t use it?
Also for my money messaging has never been ‘social media’ otherwise we’d have to call MSN Messenger social media and that ain’t right
That is a sound approach until they audiobook the shit out of it and suddenly there’s 90% of screen space showing it on the interface. So far it’s okay but there’s a growing trust issue between Spotify and myself as a user given their track record to make things shittier.
Idk that I’ll use this feature but it makes a lot of sense. I end up sharing links to Spotify tracks across multiple different friend groups multiple times a week. They share with me too.
It’s obvious that Spotify would like to encourage people to stay “within the walls” of Spotify more when sharing this stuff. Some people will love this feature I bet. Idk why anyone would be upset by an optional chat though.
It’s that Spotify has obviously been tracking the songs I’ve exchanged with friends for a while now. I have never used the messaging feature, yet every album I’ve sent to friends is already in the messages thread. They’ve clearly been using unique links to track who sends music to who – covertly, even outside of the app.
Not to support their tracking methods… But if you were building an application that focused on a recommendation engine, you’d probably benefit greatly by tracking what users share with each other to tune the engine better.
The chat feature isnt really changing much for you except for showing you, slightly, how the sausage is made.
Buying and ripping CDs is my way to go. Completely without social media features.
That’s so much effort and clutter when you can just download MP3s or FLACs from the web.
Indeed, with services like bandcamp, Beatport and Trax source, you can download load MP4, WAV and many more.
I was thinking more getting into OPH or RED or using SLSK, but whatever you like to do!
I can guess the application for the last of those but what are the first two?
Orpheus and REDacted! Both private trackers.
Ahhh, lol guess that’s why I didn’t recognize them. I don’t have any contavts to get in to private trackers. They ever do open signups?
I believe OPH has signups sometimes, but I’m not sure. RED is interview only, but it’s not too tough to get into!
The social aspect is talking to the cashier.
They said social media.
Well that’s the CD
What even…
I’m using Qobuz for music streaming. It’s alright.
Last time I checked they pay artists more than the competition, they curate playlists and editorial content rather than pushing AI left and right, and my experience is generally good.
Minus points for lacking API and native Linux client. On desktop Linux the web app works well.
Spotify has been on the way to ruin for a while already. The UI is partly Tiktokified/Instagramified.
Winamp died because the company that acquired it tried to turn it into an everything app.
Winamp died because the jump from 2 to 3 (if memory serves) was a profound hit to system resources… Followed by the dev team apparently fucking off on anything that wasn’t optimization (see above for likely reason.)
Add in a dose of music platforms figuring out streaming and you can put the final nail in that coffin.
Winamp died for our sins :(
Misread that as winamp died for our skins.
This as well.
Winamp died because pirating music mostly died. That’s the only reason.
I recently cancelled spotify and switched to a selfhosted navidrome server to stream my personal music collection.
I’ve done the same thing. Works real nice. Using Symfonium on my Android phone
Bandcamp because you discover music since albums are so cheap.
Qobuz is good IMHO. I’ve heard good things about Tidal too.
Seconding Qobuz. Feels a lot like the best of all of them. Streaming, massive library that captured most of my existing Spotify saved, and I can actually buy music to keep as well when I want an album
I left Spotify for TIDAL a couple months ago. No complaints here!
big fan of qobuz, the only reason i ever dabbled in spotify was to make sharing links easy
spotify started with more social media feel
I’m so glad I still just buy and maintain my own local music library.
Same, but I still want some form of a recommendation engine. I also want to discover new music.
Have you tried ListenBrainz?
I have ListenBrainz hooked up to my Navidrome server. Haven’t used it much though, find it a bit confusing.
I do use Spotify for that as I have a family plan for the family, I have also tried Apple Music. Spotify I tried to seed only with the newest stuff I listen to and Apple Music knows most of what I already listen fo.
Both can work but they are both a lot of work before I come up with something I really want to buy. It’s hard to guide them to more obscure stuff, even if you explicitly only train them on that kinda stuff.
I tend to have better luck just with being on subreddits for specific types of music or discussing music with friends. The quality to obscurity ratio can be quite high if a real genre expert shows up and gives a brain dump. Last.fm can be quite useful too.
I’m not sure what kind of music you are into, but if you just make playlists that you would want your kids to listen to, then other kids might get to listen to then anyways. And if you’re kids Hsieh to find them what a gift you will have given them.
I say this as someone who’s musical tastes is knowingly because of my oldest brother. And while I no longer find new music very often because of my brother, I have found a couple other people that now let me introduce new music to my oldest brother, but also I would not have connected with them without my big bro.
Yeah I introduce new music to my kids by playing it in the car. For me Spotify playlists are the same amount of work as just letting the recommendation engine throw stuff at me, I have to go through a lot of stuff to find something I like and then often it’s just one solitary song whereas I like to buy whole albums. I’m not so into one hit wonders.
Can always discover using YouTube Music with an ad blocker. Then add what you like to you local collection. Or use something like last.fm to track everything you listen to, no matter the platform, and get recommendations that way
Deezer is my streamer of choice, nearly identical with artists, OK discovery. Premium includes high def and you can currently stream to multiple devices, like, say, play on sonos for the Kids and listen to yourself without one device stopping
You can also rip music files from deezer into .flac
I had Tidal, but sending music to my home Sonos devices was too much of a pain in my butt so I reverted back to Spotify.
Just don’t use the feature. Not everything is screech worthy.
That’s a fair response to the original post. Made an edit to expound.
My problem with it is that I’ve never used Spotify messages, yet there’s already a few threads on my account with dozens of “messages”. My best guess is that the thread tracks unique links that I’ve sent to friends outside of the app and they’ve opened while logged in with their accounts. I don’t like that.
I like streaming music, I dont need to own it, but I have been struggling to find a good music streaming service.
I used Spotify for years but the amount of garbage they keep adding made me cancel my subscription. The last straw was when “smart shuffle” kept automatically turning itself back on.
First I switched to YouTube Music but the user experience is honestly trash and I moved on pretty quickly. The separation between video and music service was ridiculously inconsistent.
I used Tidal for a few months and I appreciated the simple UI. However, the recommendations are insanely bad. Not once have I found a new, good track on the daily mix to add to my library, it was driving me crazy.
I started using Qobuz only a few weeks ago. The track radio is honestly pretty bad so far. I start the radio on a lofi track and start hearing video game ambience noises 5 tracks later. Literally bird sounds with whitenoise from an OST album. I havent tried the daily/weekly queue a lot yet, but I hope its decent because I dont know what to try next.
I wish Spotify hadn’t entshittified, it had the best recommendations/radios by far but its just not usable for me anymore.
Funny that i switched from YT music to Spotify for a while and found its recommendations much worse. The app was cool and flashy though, especially on tv
I think what helped my Spotify recommendations a lot was the option to “exclude from taste profile”. I might listen to lofi for 12 h straight but I dont want any lofi recommendations at all, so that feature was nice.
Also I never pressed “like” on anything, I only ever disliked things in order to keep recommendations more open. It felt like Spotify understood the assignment while e.g. Tidal kept blasting me with a genre that I accidentally listened to one track of and kept “disliking” every single artists.
I’m content with tidal for now. I mainly listen to music on my desktop, and I like that it’s just music. No podcasts or things I don’t want to see.
