Spotify - any good?

Placidcasual79

robinbowes said:

Currently £17.99 per month. For that 6 people can use the service. You set up a main account (the one that pays) and send invites to everyone else.

R.

Much appreciated @robinbowes - thats really helpful. I understand some of the ethical concerns but that sounds ideal for my situation

darthed1981

I've set up premium accounts for the kids and Mrs using Spotify Family, but also an extra one for the echo speakers downstairs, so people randomly using them doesnt bugger up my recommendations and playlists..

robinbowes

darthed1981 said:

I've set up premium accounts for the kids and Mrs using Spotify Family, but also an extra one for the echo speakers downstairs, so people randomly using them doesnt bugger up my recommendations and playlists..

This is a 1st-world but nonetheless very real problem!

My account got screwed several years ago through kids playing their faves on my account. It's also significantly affected by my listening to songs on repeat while learning them for various bands over the years.

Spotify has recently added the ability to "exclude items from your taste profile" which I've yet to investigate fully but which seems very useful.

darthed1981

...you also get Spotify Wrapped once a year... which tells you your top 10 songs or artists each year and how many hours you've listened for in a cool little presentation.

RobDavies

Spotify is brilliant.  

I don’t worry about what a musician is earning from it as 90% of my listening is stuff I’ve already bought once in the 70’s, 80’s or 90’s…. In some cases I own CD and vinyl of the same album so the artist is effectively getting paid three times for the same product.  

If there’s a new act I like, who need a bit of support, I’ll buy the CD direct from them, and I’ll always go to gigs.  

James from HellRipper paid his bills for a year just from Spotify streams alone - and that’s just one streaming service.  So it is possible to make money….

As for the bigger bands… I’m fairly sure Steve Harris and Kerry King don’t need my money anymore. 

LPManic

Yes, streaming music is convenient and necessary for most of us but they are all terrible. I jump from one to the other when offers come up. I paid 4 out of 12 months last year.

Placidcasual79

RobDavies said:

Spotify is brilliant.  

I don’t worry about what a musician is earning from it as 90% of my listening is stuff I’ve already bought once in the 70’s, 80’s or 90’s…. In some cases I own CD and vinyl of the same album so the artist is effectively getting paid three times for the same product.  

If there’s a new act I like, who need a bit of support, I’ll buy the CD direct from them, and I’ll always go to gigs.  

James from HellRipper paid his bills for a year just from Spotify streams alone - and that’s just one streaming service.  So it is possible to make money….

As for the bigger bands… I’m fairly sure Steve Harris and Kerry King don’t need my money anymore. 

thats a good point @RobDavies - I'd imagine a good 70/80% of stuff I'd listen to would likely be things I'd bought before - I think its important that you buy records/tickets for newer things your getting into. I think if I did something similar I might feel a little less guilty about coming over to the dark side 

ewal

darthed1981 said:

...you also get Spotify Wrapped once a year... which tells you your top 10 songs or artists each year and how many hours you've listened for in a cool little presentation.

Yeah it's great having a computer to tell you things like that! I remember years ago me and my mates used to go to the pub on Christmas Eve and try and remember what our favourite music from the year was. Such a waste of time! Much better to have an algorithm doing the legwork!

Philly_Q

ewal said:

darthed1981 said:

...you also get Spotify Wrapped once a year... which tells you your top 10 songs or artists each year and how many hours you've listened for in a cool little presentation.

Yeah it's great having a computer to tell you things like that! I remember years ago me and my mates used to go to the pub on Christmas Eve and try and remember what our favourite music from the year was. Such a waste of time! Much better to have an algorithm doing the legwork!

Blimey, it's just a bit of fun.  It's not stopping you and your mates from going to the pub on Christmas Eve and trying to remember what your favourite music of the year was.  You can have both.

Litterick

Christmas is the time of year when your Spotified friend reveals he spent much of the year listening to Taking Back Sunday.

ewal

Philly_Q said:

ewal said:

darthed1981 said:

...you also get Spotify Wrapped once a year... which tells you your top 10 songs or artists each year and how many hours you've listened for in a cool little presentation.

Yeah it's great having a computer to tell you things like that! I remember years ago me and my mates used to go to the pub on Christmas Eve and try and remember what our favourite music from the year was. Such a waste of time! Much better to have an algorithm doing the legwork!

Blimey, it's just a bit of fun.  It's not stopping you and your mates from going to the pub on Christmas Eve and trying to remember what your favourite music of the year was.  You can have both.

I know. Sorry. It's been a useful thread. I need to spend a bit of time looking for a way of listening to music that suits me. Spotify is great, absolutely no doubt about it. It's great what they can do with your listening data, in terms of recommending things, Spotify Wrapped, etc.

But it's made me lazy, it's quanity over quality. I need to sort that out. It's not Spotify's fault - it's a streaming service, more akin to smart radio. I shouldn't criticise it for being something that it isn't.

thecolourbox

In fairness, Spotify wrapped normally has got the same top 2 artists or songs that i was expecting, but from 3 downwards it's usually quite unexpected results. Also it's not the same as your favourite music necessarily, just what you've listened to the most. So for learning songs perhaps, or other stuff like that. Also you might say to your mate in the pub that something is your favourite but was only released last week, whereas something else was released in January so has had lots more listens. Different horses for different courses

ewal

I'm checking out the various music player options - reckon I'd get along with a player that is excellent at cataloguing my collection of media files, with files stored on Google drive and player versions available for Android, macOS and Windows. I think there's been a discussion of Plex on an old thread - might resurrect that instead of commenting on Spotify here - it is horses for courses - it's a slightly different use case.

Kurtis

There's a documentary/drama on Netflix called "The Playlist" that might be of interest. 

Jo-to-po

Spotify as a company has led the way in legitimising the idea that music is fundamentally not worth paying for - it's more-or-less a legal, 'guilt-free' version of the various file-sharing apps that appeared in the early 2000s - and I'm genuinely surprised to see a forum of musicians singing its praises so much!

thecolourbox

^^ it's a fair point, but in a similar way I hate the way that animals are treated and killed for us to eat but I couldn't give up eating meat as I like it. I think it's a similar thing. 

That said, I buy pretty much the same amount of new music now as I did before I used it - I don't buy as much as I did in the mid 00s because I was young then and had literally no music collection to listen to so had to start somewhere. Now it's largely only new acts or new albums from existing acts that I'm going to want to buy, not really many legacy acts that suddenly appear out of nowhere that I'm going to like and need to buy stuff of (though it has happened, albeit largely with acts who are either already minted or dead or both)

Philly_Q

Jo-to-po said:

Spotify as a company has led the way in legitimising the idea that music is fundamentally not worth paying for - it's more-or-less a legal, 'guilt-free' version of the various file-sharing apps that appeared in the early 2000s - and I'm genuinely surprised to see a forum of musicians singing its praises so much!

Your suggested alternatives?

darthed1981

Jo-to-po said:

Spotify as a company has led the way in legitimising the idea that music is fundamentally not worth paying for - it's more-or-less a legal, 'guilt-free' version of the various file-sharing apps that appeared in the early 2000s - and I'm genuinely surprised to see a forum of musicians singing its praises so much!

Oh not this nonsense again.

Especially in a post that mentions what ACTUALLY created the perception that music is not worth paying for... the file-sharing apps of the early 2000s.

Spotify etc. monetised the convenience and digitisation of music into a multi-billion pound revenue stream that saved what was left of the traditional industry.

In the meantime, a new industry based on direct engagement with fans, building a following and so on emerged - it's now perfectly possible to become a genuinely popular musical act and never go near a major label (look at the Reytons for example) while some choose the major label route, and have massive impact (Wet Leg, Last Dinner Party)... let's not forget as well, we are living in the era of one of the biggest pop stars of all time, with Taylor Swift having the first BILLION dollar tour!

If you want the villains in the music industry, look at the major labels, who increased coked-up drummers to the GDP of small nations in the 70s seemingly at random, while 99.9999% of acts never got anywhere near success, while making far more money themselves out of everyone.

The people who still charge wastage to the artist... on digital distribution.

They make artists too young and stupid to know better sign "pay for everything, own nothing" deals, and in the early 2000s signed up countless legacy acts to penny-in-the-pound digital revenue deals that mean they get virtually none of the significant revenue streams of their songs produce.

I'm personally very much in favour of FAIRER distribution of digital revenues to artists, ideally with a user-centric model, and of much fairer deals from major labels for their (valuable) marketing expertise to be given to artists.

...but the industry changed, significantly, like many others, with the rise of the Internet.  The (really a bit arrogant) belief that musicians deserve a living from music without meeting the commercial threshold to make it so is challenged by the fantastic success of musicians who have embraced social media (Chappers, Rabea, Mary Spender, Frog Leap etc) and the sheer power of platforms like TikTok (that Canadian lass who was at the Brits).

As we have said above - feel like your favourite artist needs more support?  Google their official store and pick up a t-shirt and a signed vinyl - nothing is stopping anyone doing this.

PotentialDonkey

If you will indulge me, I will share my 2c

I am not going to add to the debate about whether there is a moral issue with how much streaming services pay an artist. That's been done to death.

The reason why I don't use Spotify is... convenience! I will caveat this with two things:

1. I don't have anything against Spotify and

2. I have, in the past, used Spotify.

The story goes something like this.

The year is 2011.

I have a sizeable CD collection.

I have a smart phone, a HTC Incredible S.

I also have some music I've bought on iTunes. I also have an iPod Touch.
Android phones at the time weren't exactly big on the whole music player thing. Very basic. Music on a memory card. Simple player app...

I dropped my iPod Touch and shattered the display.

Around the same time my HTC developed a problem (crashing/restarting, lag, and all that fun stuff)

With no devices left I paid off the remainder of my phone contract on the HTC and decided to forego fixing my iPod, and got a iPhone 4 instead.

Convenience.

Apple Music gives you virtually all the content Spotify has, plus all your purchased music from iTunes, and, if something is not on Apple Music you can use the iCloud Music Library feature to sync files ripped from CDs to Apple Music and have it available everywhere.

Plus, if you use iCloud Music Library in Apple Music you can also modify all the data on your saved albums i.e. it really bugs me that "Saints & Sinners" by Whitesnake has a typo in the title on Apple Music, it has "Saint's & Sinners" so I can just tidy it up and I've got it everywhere... (CD, and any device I'm at)

Spotify doesn't let you do that (at least not to have it available everywhere, it will pick up files from local machine folders and let you play them in the player I think? But you can't sync stuff that's not on Spotify to Spotify and have it available to listen to everywhere...)

Basically, Apple Music is a great option.There's family plans available for that too.

Grumpyrocker

We do have Spotify Family Premium. The kids use it a heck of a lot and wouldn't be impressed if I stopped paying.

But one thing really does hack me off about it. The terrible curation of artists that means you often get wrong music under artists of a similar name. One of my favourite bands is the Dutch group The Gathering, and there's all manner of shite under their library that's nothing to do with them.