[josephg]

I hear what you’re saying, but Spotify solves a problem I never managed to solve with CDs: it solves discovery. I used to go to music shops and browse albums, and I had no idea which CD would be worth my money because I couldn’t listen to them and find out! Even from a band I like I would often buy their other albums then get home and be disappointed because they didn’t work for me.

In comparison, spotify will find and play hundreds of fresh songs similar to any song I like. And lots of songs I don’t like - but that’s fine, because more music I’ve never heard before is a click away.

I miss owning my music collection, and I’m very frustrated whenever spotify is missing some of my favourite music. But any scarcity of musical variety you feel is entirely artificial, self imposed and ridiculous.

[schwartzworld]

Funny that you say that because I have long thought Spotify kills discovery.

In the 90s, I discovered a lot of great music because it was playing at a listening station at a record store, or because I was browsing through the ska-punk section and liked the cover art, or by flipping through a friend's CD collection. A lot of my early tastes came from gems I found in my parents old records.

It was also really common to buy an album for one or two songs and then "discover" more songs you liked on the album. The scarcity required you to actually give new songs a chance. I feel like streaming caused my music taste to stagnate because there is no reason not to just skip an unfamiliar song.

[UncleMeat]

Cover art has virtually nothing to do with quality (and is accessible on spotify). How much money did you pay for records that you ended up not liking?

It is so easy to expose yourself to new music on spotify. Far easier than relying on whatever handful of records happened to be in the listening station.

[schwartzworld]

> Cover art has virtually nothing to do with quality

Fair enough, and yet I probably never would have listened to "Chocolate and Cheese" without seeing the album in front of me.

> (and is accessible on spotify).

It's not the same. Come on.

> It is so easy to expose yourself to new music on spotify. Far easier than relying on whatever handful of records happened to be in the listening station

I agree, and yet, something about choosing from albums curated by store staff felt better to me than being fed music curated by an algorithm like a goose being stuffed for fois gras.

[UncleMeat]

> It's not the same. Come on.

I never bought records, only CDs. My memory is small and low resolution cover art. Browsing album covers on spotify on anything bigger than a tablet will show the art at a bigger scale with better colors.

[schwartzworld]

It's not the size. It's tangibility. Album art on Spotify is metadata. It's incidental. I don't notice it. On a CD it's part of the presentation.

[arcturus17]

Like I said in a sibling comment, I love Spotify but I think its recommendation and discovery mechanisms are really subpar.

They're merely "good enough" IMO. I can go to "Song Radio" or "Artist Radio", and browse through related artists and the like. But the latter still requires a significant amount of effort on my part, and the autogenerated radio playlists are nothing to write home about. I think it's fine that things like the "related artists" features exist, they emulate to some extent the old ways of discovering music, but they're also obvious and they would be part of a music service MVP nowadays. What I miss are solid automatic recommendations, more intelligent than those that are available.

As I remember, Pandora blew Spotify's automatic recommendations out of the water as far back as the mid-2000's. The idea of analyzing the song itself is so powerful and I think Spotify barely does it or weighs it way too little, favoring instead social aspects (such as the preference of other users). I discovered insane amounts of music with Pandora when I was able to use it, like dozens to hundreds of songs per week. Whereas with Spotify I go through these bad droughts that last weeks where I'm not discovering anything new that really clicks. I'd definitely pay for Pandora if it was available here in Spain.

It's weird to me that Spotify being the kingpin is so far behind Pandora in this regard. Is it that they don't care because users don't know any better or demand it? Or that what Pandora did was a technical miracle and can't be replicated at Spotify scale? Maybe it's some business model decision (eg, intelligent recommendations would stray users too far away from Taylor Swift)?

Maybe someone on HN can shed some light on this. And if anyone has any ideas for music services with intelligent recommendations available in Spain I'd be sure to give them a try.

[awild]

You might find this interesting and depressing at the same time: https://www.reddit.com/r/LetsTalkMusic/comments/c2b20d/lets_...

[arcturus17]

Yea, more depressing than anything, in the sense that it confirms that Spotify relies very heavily on preferences of other users and creates filter bubbles like Youtube.

It's a vastly inferior method to Pandora's song analysis method IMO. I'd definitely use Spotify more if it had that, maybe significantly more - I can use it for 6 hours on a given day but then I often give it breaks because I'm on a discovery rut.

Maybe that's just me, and they know on very certain statistical terms that for most users that's not the case and music filter bubbles work much better.

Or maybe they're completely wrong in their approach and they're making a massive mistake at scale. We've come to develop this bias that tech giants "must know what they're doing" but I think it's often not the case. In ten years we could be reading how a competing service took over by offering the same catalogue with much better recommendation tech or other bells and whistles layered on top.

[awild]

To me Spotify has this vibe of musical ignorance all over it. A friend and I joked about their ceo wearing a t-shirt that had something to the effect of "I love music" on it. Which IMHO no-one that deeply likes music would wear. He also made snide remarks about how musicians should adapt to their platform wrt to publishing more music more often (instead of adapting Spotify to the needs of the musicians)

The story I linked also has a similar feel, the music is basically avant pop and neo soul, and instead of forwarding this cluster to someone with a musical/cultural background, a techbro comes up with their own label that comes off as basically "it reminds me of my favourite thing".

From the outside it seems they are really only approaching it from a purely technical point with a subconscious arrogance, ie they are adding the value not the musicians.

Their programmers probably make more money than most musicians on their platform and that's frustrating as fuck.

[ubercow13]

I think this is an interesting take.

People who might in the past have gotten their new music from such deeply passionate music lovers and experts as John Peel, or any number of other DJs, are now often using algorithms in their place. And there is a sense that those algorithms are created by people with no real love for music or personal investment in it as part of our culture, which is kind of sad.

I think this is a big part of why music discovery through Spotify feels so soulless, especially compared to something like Bandcamp Weekly.

I guess their next step would be to start creating the music itself with algorithms. You would simply turn on Spotify and it would start playing a continuous stream of algorithmically created music to match your profiled tastes.

[Kye]

Pandora repeated the same five songs no matter how many times I skipped them the last time I tried it.

[indigochill]

Yeah, this was why I stopped using it as well. It would fall into musical ruts and just repeat the same handful of songs forever. It wouldn't work to thumbs-down those songs because I did like them, but I also wanted to hear new recommendations.

Spotify by comparison will also often recycle stuff I've already heard, but there's still always some new stuff in their weekly recommendations. Sometimes it's a hit, sometimes not, but at least it's something I haven't heard before.

[arcturus17]

Can't say anything about the state of the tech right now, maybe they've screwed it up, but I remember back when I used it ~15 years ago it went on these very long escapades and very rarely repeated songs...

I wouldn't be surprised if the whole thing collapsed under the weight of some stupid policy of the rightholders (eg, make sure it plays Taylor Swift every 5 songs, or else!) or some other commercial consideration.

[cinquemb]

Soundcloud solves discovery for me. Every week I look through their search for words i filter on and sample all the songs (40-100 songs, maybe takes 1-2 hours at most) and download them if I like them (some weeks none, some weeks more than others), follow the artist if I like more than a couple (and what they are liking and re-posting), and occasionally pay the artist directly for files even if I already downloaded it.

I stream from my computer to my phone when I'm at home over the local network in the browser and thru a cheap vpn from my computer when I'm not (and/or just copy a random sample to my phone when I don't wanna pay for the bandwidth) if I know long enough a head of time.

Deff wont show up in billboards stats… nor have to deal with the misalignment of incentives when listening to music on the soundcloud trying to push a song from their algos an artist/agency paid them to do (or ads).

[temp0826]

I agree with you. SoundCloud is a breath of fresh air pending you don’t mind the underproduction. I’m relatively new to it (and didn’t understand the social aspects of it until recently), but it was pleasant to see this whole world of artists just doing their thing, as opposed to listening to the same regurgitated stuff we’re all used to. I still get a hankering for my old favorites and use spotify often when I’m in that mood- and do find it strange that I consider “that stuff” “old”.

[cinquemb]

> SoundCloud is a breath of fresh air pending you don’t mind the underproduction.

The music I like I can't really find anywhere else to higher degree and ease (occasionally I might find it on youtube, just available on bandcamp, or have to message the artist) so its not really applicable.

> It was pleasant to see this whole world of artists just doing their thing

This is what I like the most, reminds me of FOSS: artists all over the world doing their own thing and occasionally doing it together.

[atoav]

I often get told that my music collection is great by random guests and people. For me music discovery is an active act, so every other month I spend an afternoon to find new things read up on certain scenes etc. E.g. I stumble uppon Iranian 60s rock and roll, find a few artists that are more unique in aound and the way they do "rock", I download things, tag them, sort them, create playlists and store them away.

This way when I play the music (e.g. at a dinner with friends) not only do I know what it is going to be, but I can also tell them a little story about it.

[mackrevinack]

"I miss owning my music collection"

there's nothing stopping you from having both!

I havnt done this yet but im thinking about cancelling my spotify subscription soon and only signing up for a few months out the year just to discover new stuff, then put the rest of the money I would have given spotify that year towards buying the music I want to keep.

I won't have to worry about songs disappearing anymore or my playlists not being downloaded offline and more importantly you are giving an artist some money and not just a fraction of a cent

[m463]

> there's nothing stopping you from having both!

Actually it seems the entire music industry including the distributors don't want sales - they seem to prefer streaming.

I remember when apple music came out and I couldn't listen to my music anymore

[ghaff]

Apple seemingly did some screwy things with Apple Match and so forth and I've had to fix up some things in my library as a result. (I actually have a batch of CDs I need to re-rip.) But what's there today seems to work pretty well separating what I have my own copies of vs. what I only have available via Apple Music.

Though maybe you're saying something differently.

I think the music industry is perfectly happy to sell you music at $1/song and even physical CDs if you like. It's just that, for most people who don't already have large curated collections, it apparently makes sense to subscribe for $10/month rather than buy albums for $10. For me it makes sense to subscribe and occasionally also buy something to add to my owned collection.

[m463]

I believe when apple music came out my music disappeared and I never put music on my phone since. (I just used a usb stick in the car from then on)

I think the music industry doesn't care anymore about selling music - why sell you a song for $1 (that you might copy for your friends) if they can sell you the same song again and again every month?

[indigochill]

Bandcamp admittedly exists to be an exception to this rule, but yeah, they're definitely a buy-music-oriented platform. They're also the most artist-friendly platform there is (among other things, they've been doing "Bandcamp Fridays" all this year where they've foregone their cut of sales to help artists make it through the year).

[awild]

From my own experience, Spotify is better than going in blind but much worse than using RateYourMusic and superficial scanning of music journalism sites. I've started using Spotify the beginning of the year (Before that a mix and match of Vinyl, Bandcamp and piracy; fuelled by friends, a bit of /mu/, RYM and music journalism) and I've discovered a handful of musicians I didn't know before, but it usually just recommends me stuff I already know (and often don't care for). Conceptually I like their mix of the week playlists, but I prefer listening to whole records, so I often just skip through the playlist until I find something that sounds interesting, which isn't much better than RYM/Journalism, but without any menaningful context (so it's worse).

This is pretty much my favorite recommendation by Spotify: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9982wYPPm0

[j0057]

Discovery was a social process not an algorithmic one. The person behind the counter in the record store (and/or your friends) would get to know your taste and recommend new stuff to you. In most stores, you can listen to a CD before you buy it, maybe not the big American retail-style ones but certainly all the smaller record shops.

[ghaff]

>And lots of songs I don’t like

One of my wishes is that I could tell Apple Music/Spotify that I don't want its playlists/discovery to ever play me music from $X genre because I just don't like even if it's considered really good by the standards of the genre.

[maxfurman]

I think you can say "don't play this song again" (the UX has changed a few times so I'm not sure where the button is.) Do that enough times and the algorithm will get the drift.

[joshspankit]

I was lucky enough to have a library with a massive cd collection. Moving fast it would still take me 4-5 hours to flip through and grab ones that might end up being interesting.

That and radio were my discovery processes and it worked great.

[i_am_proteus]

Go to a good used record/CD shop and they'll let you listen to anything that isn't factory-sealed. Great way to spend a few hours.

[Mediterraneo10]

> I hear what you’re saying, but Spotify solves a problem I never managed to solve with CDs: it solves discovery.

For years before Spotify went mainstream – going all the way back to the early millennium! – discovery was already provided by services like Last.fm where you could see what your friends and neighbors were listening to, and filesharing communities where you could then freely download the music.