[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.