[daghamm]

I actually like the Spotify app.

For things I am (and maybe most normal users?) interested in, it works really nice: choose a song, listen to it, listen to the bands other songs, listen to their "radio" with similar songs, find new interesting bands, repeat.

[joecot]

I tried to leave Spotify. I tried to switch to Tidal, which boasts better sound quality, and most importantly, better payments to artists.

I switch between listening on my phone, my computer, other computers, and my google home devices all day. With Spotify, I can choose which device to choose to from anywhere, and I can also control it from anywhere. I can play music from my laptop, then change songs from my phone, then send it to my google home speakers whenever I'd like.

Tidal didn't have that. Didn't even have google home integration. Didn't even have a desktop app on Linux. I switched back in less than a day. As annoying as Spotify's app can be sometimes, it's the service that works across all my devices, and can switch between all my devices.

[miningape]

Yeah for me this is where spotify shines over their competition - how easy (and accurate) they make discovering new music. But I suppose 1 amazing feature doesn't make up for loads of cruft.

[arrowsmith]

Are we talking about the same app? My experience of Spotify is that it's terrible for discovering new music - "artist radio" just gives me the same few songs and artists over and over, so if it's a genre where I already know most of the big, popular bands then very little of it is new or interesting.

How do you use Spotify to discover new music? What am I doing wrong?

[KomoD]

> My experience of Spotify is that it's terrible for discovering new music - "artist radio" just gives me the same few songs and artists over and over

Fully agree, they personalize the radios so heavily that I just get the same garbage over and over again (this is why I use spoqify.com, not a typo)

[piva00]

I usually do:

1. Start a "song/artist radio" from one I like, listen to the artists I don't recognise.

2. When I find something interesting I add it to a playlist (my playlists are a bit thematic with genre/feeling, if it doesn't fit with any playlist I have an "inbox" one to sort later)

3. When I have collected a few songs (5-15) in a playlist, enable "enhance" and listen to the recommendations from artists I do not recognise (used to do it with "playlist radio" but it's been removed in favour of enhance/smart shuffle).

4. Rinse and repeat with other radios (artist radios for the new artists I found, song radio for some songs/tracks I gelled with).

Been doing that for many years, discovered a lot of music this way.

[petercooper]

Have you got the automatic Discover Weekly playlist? The Daily Mix ones are good and customized to you too, but tend to be things you already know.

[spiderfarmer]

Same. There are a lot of apps way, way worse than Spotify, including Apple Music.

[_rutinerad]

I think Apple Music (on iOS, on Mac it’s quite bad) is really good. But even if it wasn’t, I still would use it just for ratings and complex smart playlists.

[frizlab]

Honestly it works great now and is, I feel, better than Spotify (it was not the case a few months ago; let’s be clear).

Anyway it’s a complicated subject. I read somewhere nobody wants the same out of their music app and that’s why most of the time they end up being weird pieces of software in order to try and satisfy everybody.