Music discovery is the primary reason that I've moved away from Apple Music. It's become difficult to explore their music catalog, almost as if it's by design. I've made the move to Spotify and it's been wonderful.
I agree that discovery is way better with Spotify. I feel like Apple is still hoping people will continue to buy music.
Lately I've been using https://www.jqbx.fm . Which is a more a turntable.fm approach but hooks into your Spotify account so you can save things for later and DJ from your existing playlists. Definitely helped me discover a lot of new stuff I wouldn't have found otherwise.
Interesting. I've been thinking about switching to Apple Music to have a bit more control over my music. Spotify puts out some amazing curated playlists that are constantly being updated, but then after a few weeks those playlists suddenly turn to shit.
My theory is that they have a few people manually curate a list with good songs for a while to train an AI, but when they finally turn control over to the AI it falls on its face and starts adding shitty cover band music to the list.
You will appreciate Every Noise at Once[0] maybe. It's all AI, but uses data from a massive set of users. It maps all chartable Spotify genres, and groups them into 3 playlists each. So for the genre, say "classic french pop"[1], you'd click in and see all the associated bands within that genre and see Spotify playlist links – they are:
The Sound of Classic French Pop – A sampling of music that defines the genre
The Pulse of Classic French Pop – Music that is often played by people who listen to lots of Classic French Pop
The Edge of Classic French Pop – New or obscure music recommended for people who like Classic French Pop
It's an incredibly deep web of playlists and music recommendations that has completely changed the way I experience Spotify. Highly highly recommend.
This is fantastic. As someone who loves digital crate digging and to explore Discogs's world of niche releases and subgenres I was always disappointed with the rather superficial discoverability in larger, more popular music services.
> My theory is that they have a few people manually curate a list with good songs for a while to train an AI, but when they finally turn control over to the AI it falls on its face and starts adding shitty cover band music to the list.
A curated playlist (not discover weekly or release radar for example) is editorially curated and driven by a human. Doesn't involve an AI for now.
Even your own playlist go rotten. They periodically change song order or (presumably because of rights being negotiated or something) songs disappear. I got so paranoid I took a screenshot to help convince me of sanity. I may not be sane but orders change and songs go missing.
Personally I'm both a nomad and a hoarder. About once a year I'll go on a week long spree finding new music and creating new playlists. The rest of the year I just listen to all those playlists plus my old ones. Neither Apple Music nor Spotify have a workflow specifically designed for this. Am I that unusual?
I'm a nomad & hoarder on Google Play Music, and I find it's fairly well-suited to my habits. I have a large library of songs I like, and when I'm in the mood to discover something new I'll
a) Pick an artist and listen to "<Artist> Radio", which will quickly compile a playlist of music by and similar to that artist.
b) Sample some "Stations", which are usually themed around a genre, mood, or activity.
As I'm listening to the above, I'll Thumbs Up songs I like, which adds them to my library for more frequent listening later, and helps me to "bookmark" a new artist to browse the rest of their songs later if I want.
What is wrong with switching between playlists you have created and the discovery options in Spotify today? This sounds like my workflow, but I haven't been frustrated by the UI.
I've found it pretty hard to just say "I like this song, show me more like it" and then to be able to listen to each one, and conveniently add ones I like to one of a small set of playlists.
Instead, I have to right-click a song and choose "play a radio-station-thingy based on this song" (which usually is a stretch anyway and most of them are nothing like what I'm looking for), and for the few songs I do want to keep, I have to right-click them, find the "add to playlist menu", find the submenu item for the right playlist and click that, and try to re-find my place again in the song queue to start this all over again with the next song.
Maybe it's because I'm used to 90s software still and so I just don't know where the right buttons are, and I'm just clicking the wrong things, who knows.
Why not just add them to a playlist? At the bottom of the playlist, it will start generating suggestions based on the other songs already in it, that you can continually refresh
On the other hand, Apple Music has a much wider selection than Spotify (at least in the genres that I typically listen to). I'll often read a review in Pitchfork, and go check out some of the bands they name drop. I have yet to find missing records in Apple Music, but Spotify was horrible in this regard.
What are you listening to that you cannot find on there? I have a pretty eclectic taste and have been shocked at the amount of small time stuff that Spotify actually does have
When noise pop came through SF I was checking out a bunch of the bands, and many of them had very incomplete discographies on Spotify. Even Ty Segall, a pretty mainstream act, had almost 3/4 of his releases missing from Spotify.
Beyond Discovery being objectively better on Spotify, curating new playlists from discovered music is a breeze. My discovery of new artists is a primary reason for my use of these services anyway, and I suppose it's possible that simply isn't something Apple prioritizes.
I've been using Spotify since 2008, but lately the app on iOS has become a massive battery hog. I usually start playing music when I leave home and continue playing a few hours at work. But after about an hour at work my phone is burning hot and the battery has drained massively. It's ridiculous and makes me want to move back to Apple Music.
Did you switch to Bluetooth headphones at some point? I've noticed battery performance is much worse when using Bluetooth, yet that is the trendy thing these days.
Nope. Always wired when the phone heats up like a frying pan. Playing podcasts does not drain the battery. Did not have the problem on iPhone 6, only noticed after switching to iPhone 7, and only really the last few weeks, but I see their support forum is full of complaints dating back a while.
I would move to Spotify because of this same reason but I've never fully been able to understand what they do with your own music that you bring to the library.
I have some live recordings for example, how do I get them in my library so that they are available on Computer #1, Mobile Device, and Computer #2 always and forever (a la iTunes Match and now Apple Music).
Google Music allows you to upload your own music, and has a near seamless integration of personal library and streaming. GM at least covers the use case of personal music across all devices, mixed with streaming. Not sure about iTunes Match as I've never used it.
Co-sign on Google Music. I've started adding all new music I find this way, from albums (one-click torrent download), to singles (youtube/soundcloud-to-mp3 sites).
The Google Music Manager can be set to monitor your download directories and uploads any new music to Google Music automatically (even if they are ZIPed).
The mobile app is pretty slick too: syncs automatically, and has a 'store music locally' option for when you don't have a good connection.
Spotify does support local files and can even synchronize them across multiple devices. I noticed today that some of my local songs were available on my work laptop.
The process of adding and synchronizing your local music is not the easiest and most intuitive, but it's possible.
Lately I've been using https://www.jqbx.fm . Which is a more a turntable.fm approach but hooks into your Spotify account so you can save things for later and DJ from your existing playlists. Definitely helped me discover a lot of new stuff I wouldn't have found otherwise.