Should you keep drinking from an increasingly contaminated stream?
August 8, 2024 2:45 AM Subscribe
Why I Finally Quit Spotify The platform interface has gradually made it harder to find the music I want to listen to. With the latest app updates, I’d had enough. [Kyle Chayka for the New Yorker, ungated]
Bonus track: Enshittification by Jack Hewitt, from his newest album Melburn Bitter. Please recommend more tracks about the decay of the internet below.
Bonus track: Enshittification by Jack Hewitt, from his newest album Melburn Bitter. Please recommend more tracks about the decay of the internet below.
"there were a few songs in my library, mostly vintage jazz recordings, that Spotify licenses and Apple does not. If I truly want to hold on to those tracks and make them easily accessible, I should really download them for myself and listen to them using an open-source MP3 player."
It's always the conclusion to any reasoning about those music streaming platforms. I'm so glad I never took the bait, managing a big mp3 library is a PITA but it beats the alternative.
posted by SageLeVoid at 3:21 AM on August 8 [32 favorites]
It's always the conclusion to any reasoning about those music streaming platforms. I'm so glad I never took the bait, managing a big mp3 library is a PITA but it beats the alternative.
posted by SageLeVoid at 3:21 AM on August 8 [32 favorites]
... it doesn't even have to be an open-source MP3 player (though always preferable). Maybe he meant "standalone".
He didn't mention anything about Spotify's record of platforming alt-right stuff and paying artists minimally, which tracks. It's usually injuries to personal material comfort that get people to takerise up and overthrow a government switch digital habits.
posted by trig at 3:35 AM on August 8 [8 favorites]
He didn't mention anything about Spotify's record of platforming alt-right stuff and paying artists minimally, which tracks. It's usually injuries to personal material comfort that get people to take
posted by trig at 3:35 AM on August 8 [8 favorites]
Jesus dude, if I was going to list the reasons not to use Spotify, "confusing UI" couldn't possibly rank higher than #8 or so. I mean, congratulations on leaving the service but for the dumbest of reasons. It's as if the headline was, "I quit smoking and now I gain so much space in my trashcan without all those butts!"
posted by Rhomboid at 3:38 AM on August 8 [44 favorites]
posted by Rhomboid at 3:38 AM on August 8 [44 favorites]
The music quality sucks. In terms of sound. Try Apple Music or any lossless streaming service on good headphones and notice the difference.
Also, I’m a 40 man who listens almost exclusively to metal and hardcore music. Why the fuck am I being recommended the latest in pop trends?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 3:44 AM on August 8 [7 favorites]
Also, I’m a 40 man who listens almost exclusively to metal and hardcore music. Why the fuck am I being recommended the latest in pop trends?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 3:44 AM on August 8 [7 favorites]
Also please let me know good alternatives for families.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 3:44 AM on August 8 [1 favorite]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 3:44 AM on August 8 [1 favorite]
I realize that it sounds curmudgeonly to complain about software updates.
I don't know if I've hit this update yet on Spotify, which I use every day and find reasonably cromulent (from a usability standpoint, anyway), but what's the alternative? Leaving a perfectly good interface in place for years without changing it? We can't have that!
posted by cupcakeninja at 3:57 AM on August 8 [4 favorites]
I don't know if I've hit this update yet on Spotify, which I use every day and find reasonably cromulent (from a usability standpoint, anyway), but what's the alternative? Leaving a perfectly good interface in place for years without changing it? We can't have that!
posted by cupcakeninja at 3:57 AM on August 8 [4 favorites]
MisantropicPainforest: I switched to Tidal Family plan earlier this year and have not looked back.
posted by rocinante at 3:58 AM on August 8 [4 favorites]
posted by rocinante at 3:58 AM on August 8 [4 favorites]
Haven't read the piece, but from comments already posted, it sounds like it misses the mark.
We had been talking about ditching Spotify for awhile when Neil Young went after them. We share a family plan with my wife's parents, and having the best of all Boomers recommend it gave us a lever to move them with.
It really does blow my mind how many people keep giving Spotify money, and for me it really does come down to "Why would I ever give any of my money to Joe Rogan?" That dude is a corrosive force in the cultural noosphere.
Anyway, we use Tidal now, which we really like. The only downside is that nobody else seems youto use it, which is definitely a little frustrating sometimes.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 4:06 AM on August 8 [6 favorites]
We had been talking about ditching Spotify for awhile when Neil Young went after them. We share a family plan with my wife's parents, and having the best of all Boomers recommend it gave us a lever to move them with.
It really does blow my mind how many people keep giving Spotify money, and for me it really does come down to "Why would I ever give any of my money to Joe Rogan?" That dude is a corrosive force in the cultural noosphere.
Anyway, we use Tidal now, which we really like. The only downside is that nobody else seems youto use it, which is definitely a little frustrating sometimes.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 4:06 AM on August 8 [6 favorites]
I listen to a lot of classical music and opera, and the Spotify UI on mobile makes it almost impossible to find recordings. For instance, I have favorited a famous recording of the St. Matthew Passion on Spotify. When I go to the album page to select a certain song, the title will read: "St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244, Pt. 1, No. 1" and maybe the first two letters of the actual aria or chorus title. Yes, I certainly love Pt. 2, No. 13 of the St. Matthew Passion.
On other occasions, some movements are broken up into multiple tracks for no apparent reason: I saw a 1956 recording of the Beethoven Chorale Symphony conducted by Furtwangler with something like thirty-six tracks instead of the usual four. Also, and this is a little more amusing, live recordings of classical concerts will sometimes have a separate track for the Applause, in case you wanted to favorite a particularly good piece of applause.
However, I doubt other services are much better, some of this is just down to the quirks of how individual classical pieces are titled.
posted by fortitude25 at 4:10 AM on August 8 [9 favorites]
On other occasions, some movements are broken up into multiple tracks for no apparent reason: I saw a 1956 recording of the Beethoven Chorale Symphony conducted by Furtwangler with something like thirty-six tracks instead of the usual four. Also, and this is a little more amusing, live recordings of classical concerts will sometimes have a separate track for the Applause, in case you wanted to favorite a particularly good piece of applause.
However, I doubt other services are much better, some of this is just down to the quirks of how individual classical pieces are titled.
posted by fortitude25 at 4:10 AM on August 8 [9 favorites]
I tried to make the switch to Apple Music from Spotify last December, but I couldn't find a reliable way to bring my favourites over from Spotify. Paid for a couple of plug-ins to no avail and I have thousands and thousands of them from over the years.
posted by Captaintripps at 4:23 AM on August 8
posted by Captaintripps at 4:23 AM on August 8
I left Spotify over the Joe Rogan covid denier boosting and investment into Israeli military tech.
I'm on Apple Music which is OK....
It does have the one benefit that I now have one library with all my mp3s and streaming era stuff together. But on the other hand the search is TERRIBLE.
Recently for instance told me they had no music by "Frank and Tony" (deep house FWIW). Instead had to search for Frank & Tony. Just basic facepalm stuff - really inflexible search.
Spotifty at least when I used it was pretty great from a UX perspective. I also really miss the Release Radar playlist, which was just essentially, new releases by artists you've played. Really basic omission.
Does feel like Spotify is undergoing the inevitable enshittification.
posted by treblekicker at 4:28 AM on August 8 [5 favorites]
I'm on Apple Music which is OK....
It does have the one benefit that I now have one library with all my mp3s and streaming era stuff together. But on the other hand the search is TERRIBLE.
Recently for instance told me they had no music by "Frank and Tony" (deep house FWIW). Instead had to search for Frank & Tony. Just basic facepalm stuff - really inflexible search.
Spotifty at least when I used it was pretty great from a UX perspective. I also really miss the Release Radar playlist, which was just essentially, new releases by artists you've played. Really basic omission.
Does feel like Spotify is undergoing the inevitable enshittification.
posted by treblekicker at 4:28 AM on August 8 [5 favorites]
I used Songshift, @CaptainTripps, which seemed to do the job re: Spotify transfers?
posted by treblekicker at 4:33 AM on August 8 [2 favorites]
posted by treblekicker at 4:33 AM on August 8 [2 favorites]
My children would murder me if I ditched Spotify, and while I yearn for the sweet release of death, they'd make it painful. Any other platform would soon be just as enshittified. In a perfect, or at least better, world, musicians would organize their own platform on a non-profit model, but anyone who's ever been in a band will know that squabbling makes that astronomically unlikely.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 4:37 AM on August 8 [11 favorites]
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 4:37 AM on August 8 [11 favorites]
I hate Apple Music's interface, and their discovery is extremely shit. But their catalogue is very large and the sound quality is excellent. If you know what you're looking for, Apple Music is probably your best bet. But don't go there and expect the algorithm to give you a seeded radio station that doesn't suck.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:51 AM on August 8 [4 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:51 AM on August 8 [4 favorites]
I've found Apple Music to be pretty good at showing me stuff I like, but it did take some time. At some point over the years, I have found that any prog rock album with an incredibly pseudo-deep title like "All of Yesterday's Tomorrows…" and a profoundly dorky and amateurish-looking CG art cover is almost certainly going to be Completely My Shit and it's gotten pretty good at surfacing more stuff like that for me over time, in the "Home" tab (which is separate from "Browse" and "Radio"!)
Also separately if there are tracks you can't get on streaming, Apple Music does let you upload your own music from your computer, to have available from other devices through your subscription.
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:03 AM on August 8 [1 favorite]
Also separately if there are tracks you can't get on streaming, Apple Music does let you upload your own music from your computer, to have available from other devices through your subscription.
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:03 AM on August 8 [1 favorite]
No Spotify for me because Rogan.
No Tidal for me because Dorsey.
No Apple Music for me because the interface is shit and it won't stop playing me music when the music I choose ends. Why? Why does it do this? When I play Album X by whoever, I do not want to listen to Album Y by someone I've never heard of. I have not tried it in a while but the last two times I sampled it, it was still doing this and had no way to disable it. Have they fixed this yet?
posted by dobbs at 5:09 AM on August 8 [4 favorites]
No Tidal for me because Dorsey.
No Apple Music for me because the interface is shit and it won't stop playing me music when the music I choose ends. Why? Why does it do this? When I play Album X by whoever, I do not want to listen to Album Y by someone I've never heard of. I have not tried it in a while but the last two times I sampled it, it was still doing this and had no way to disable it. Have they fixed this yet?
posted by dobbs at 5:09 AM on August 8 [4 favorites]
I subscribe to YouTube music, which means I have to use a different platform for podcasts because for some reason their support for that is extremely shit. But it's rare to look for a track and not find it. And because it scoops in uploaded YouTube tracks, there's a fair amount of obscure out of print material that shouldn't be available but technically is. I don't love giving more money to Google, but my musical tastes and experiences have broadened a LOT since subscribing. I just can't afford to buy stuff album by album anymore.
posted by rikschell at 5:13 AM on August 8 [2 favorites]
posted by rikschell at 5:13 AM on August 8 [2 favorites]
I'm so glad I never took the bait, managing a big mp3 library is a PITA but it beats the alternative.
I don't find managing an mp3 library to be that much trouble (once you get tags whipped into shape initially). I just keep mine on my desktop PC and sync to my phone with FreeFileSync. I used to also use a cloud storage service that automatically synced, but I don't need to anymore.
When you just keep your own library there is no enshittification to deal with.
I've always been an album listener rather than a radio type. There was a sad period between the end of hard disk MP3 players (I miss my Zune 120), but phones didn't quite have adequate storage or battery life. Cars had Bluetooth though, and that pushed me to try streaming. I disliked Spotify intensely but subscribed to Google Play Music for a while. It was... kind of OK except for favorite albums disappearing unannounced a few times.
For filling up that library, I mainly use Bandcamp. I'm never short of new music to discover, and I and a lot of my fellow synth nerds publish their stuff there because they make it easy and relatively fair to musicians. A fair amount of that is free or pay-what-you-want.
posted by Foosnark at 5:16 AM on August 8 [14 favorites]
I don't find managing an mp3 library to be that much trouble (once you get tags whipped into shape initially). I just keep mine on my desktop PC and sync to my phone with FreeFileSync. I used to also use a cloud storage service that automatically synced, but I don't need to anymore.
When you just keep your own library there is no enshittification to deal with.
I've always been an album listener rather than a radio type. There was a sad period between the end of hard disk MP3 players (I miss my Zune 120), but phones didn't quite have adequate storage or battery life. Cars had Bluetooth though, and that pushed me to try streaming. I disliked Spotify intensely but subscribed to Google Play Music for a while. It was... kind of OK except for favorite albums disappearing unannounced a few times.
For filling up that library, I mainly use Bandcamp. I'm never short of new music to discover, and I and a lot of my fellow synth nerds publish their stuff there because they make it easy and relatively fair to musicians. A fair amount of that is free or pay-what-you-want.
posted by Foosnark at 5:16 AM on August 8 [14 favorites]
I find Spotify discovery interesting because they hired the EchoNest guy, some people rave about it, but MisanthropicPainforest’s comment makes it sound like it hasn’t improved at all in the decade since I tried it after Rdio shut down. No matter what I started with, the recommendations or stations would converge back to top 40 in a couple of tracks, which I think factors into the explanation of how uneven their royalties are for most smaller artists.
I settled on Apple Music - easy since I had 50GB of existing tracks in their Match system - and while the recommendations aren’t as good as Rdio was they’re decent, and the collection is good and notably better quality than Spotify’s was when I surveyed the options (Rogan means I would no longer consider them), and the cycle of finding something I like and buying the album either through iTunes or Bandcamp is easy enough.
posted by adamsc at 5:21 AM on August 8
I settled on Apple Music - easy since I had 50GB of existing tracks in their Match system - and while the recommendations aren’t as good as Rdio was they’re decent, and the collection is good and notably better quality than Spotify’s was when I surveyed the options (Rogan means I would no longer consider them), and the cycle of finding something I like and buying the album either through iTunes or Bandcamp is easy enough.
posted by adamsc at 5:21 AM on August 8
Shout out to Shepherd for maintaining our massive Plex server, which is contains ALL of our music (current entire music catalog runtime is over 400 days if we played everything straight through), as well as our all movies and TV shows. We have playlists by artists/bands, our own dorky bespoke serotonin playlists, playlists by genre (the reggae-rocksteady-first wave ska playlist gets a lot of love), and any new music purchased goes right on the server.
I have tried Spotify before and wasn't impressed. It was fine, but not everything is for me!
posted by Kitteh at 6:14 AM on August 8 [4 favorites]
I have tried Spotify before and wasn't impressed. It was fine, but not everything is for me!
posted by Kitteh at 6:14 AM on August 8 [4 favorites]
For me, that's a long article that is really just saying "I wasn't served exactly what I wanted on a plate, and don't have the time or inclination to learn how to find things for myself". Maybe I'm being harsh
So I haven't had muuuuch of a problem using Spotify, except I agree that it's hard to get exactly what I'm looking for, but this article set off alarm bells for me about how, it turns out, it feels like the slow crawl of other platforms toward extremely prioritizing algorithmically-chosen content instead of user-chosen content. And in that regard, the article didn't seem like "It's a design change I didn't like," it seemed like, "This is a design change that's part of a 180 degree change from information-service to attention-exploitation."
posted by entropone at 6:16 AM on August 8 [8 favorites]
So I haven't had muuuuch of a problem using Spotify, except I agree that it's hard to get exactly what I'm looking for, but this article set off alarm bells for me about how, it turns out, it feels like the slow crawl of other platforms toward extremely prioritizing algorithmically-chosen content instead of user-chosen content. And in that regard, the article didn't seem like "It's a design change I didn't like," it seemed like, "This is a design change that's part of a 180 degree change from information-service to attention-exploitation."
posted by entropone at 6:16 AM on August 8 [8 favorites]
Last line in the article: "If I truly want to hold on to those tracks and make them easily accessible, I should really download them for myself and listen to them using an open-source MP3 player."
Fuck no. If you actually care about music why would you be listening to MP3 files?? Just goes to show, even a magazine with the best writing in the world doesn't always understand its subject matter.
posted by Dean358 at 6:28 AM on August 8 [2 favorites]
Fuck no. If you actually care about music why would you be listening to MP3 files?? Just goes to show, even a magazine with the best writing in the world doesn't always understand its subject matter.
posted by Dean358 at 6:28 AM on August 8 [2 favorites]
Articles on how bad Spotify is are pretty common, but im amazed that no one ever seems to mention Pandora.
Maybe it’s because I don’t stream albums but I find Pandora to work really well for stations and music in general.
I get that that there are likely reasons for not using it, but to never even mention it seems really odd.
posted by oddman at 6:28 AM on August 8 [3 favorites]
Maybe it’s because I don’t stream albums but I find Pandora to work really well for stations and music in general.
I get that that there are likely reasons for not using it, but to never even mention it seems really odd.
posted by oddman at 6:28 AM on August 8 [3 favorites]
I find a combination of radio.garden, nts.live, and, aham, soulseek, to be a *much* better method of music discovery and collection than whatever it is Spotify has been doing 'for me' this past while. Just let my subscription lapse.
+1 for the above Plex recommendation. I just moved house so haven't set up the home server yet, but I am a fan of the control I have over everything this way.
posted by jpziller at 6:28 AM on August 8 [5 favorites]
+1 for the above Plex recommendation. I just moved house so haven't set up the home server yet, but I am a fan of the control I have over everything this way.
posted by jpziller at 6:28 AM on August 8 [5 favorites]
Maybe it's just me but I kind of like the new "DJ X" thing that popped up recently. Between the automatic cross fading of songs combined with the goofy LLM-generated speech between sections that come off a bit like Perd Hapley ("coming up next is a song that has music in it!") it's goofy enough to keep my interest.
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:33 AM on August 8
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:33 AM on August 8
Hey it's not like they are forcing you to listen to fake AI generated music yet, oh wait, no they are doing that.
posted by Lanark at 6:52 AM on August 8
posted by Lanark at 6:52 AM on August 8
I ditched Spotify after Joe Rogan. Could be the best quality and all the songs ever, but I ain't contributing one cent to Joe. Rogan.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:00 AM on August 8 [4 favorites]
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:00 AM on August 8 [4 favorites]
If you actually care about music why would you be listening to MP3 files
Piffle. In one double-blind study after another, listeners have been unable to reliably distinguish MP3s with a good encoder and high-bitrate vs. lossless audio.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:09 AM on August 8 [15 favorites]
Piffle. In one double-blind study after another, listeners have been unable to reliably distinguish MP3s with a good encoder and high-bitrate vs. lossless audio.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:09 AM on August 8 [15 favorites]
If I truly want to hold on to those tracks and make them easily accessible, I should really download them for myself and listen to them using an open-source MP3 player.
This shouldn't be the last sentence.
posted by hypnogogue at 7:15 AM on August 8
This shouldn't be the last sentence.
posted by hypnogogue at 7:15 AM on August 8
I moved to Apple Music a few years back, and the streaming quality is so far beyond Spotify. What’s worse is discovery - I have never felt so misunderstood by a service. So I spend a little time each week reading about music that interests me, doing the research. Apple Music also has an excellent classical search lens (a separate app called Apple classical, but it’s really the same thing in a different wrapper). I’m tempted by qobuz or tidal but neither of them other a specific focus on my favourite genre, so I stick with Apple + research.
posted by The River Ivel at 7:17 AM on August 8 [1 favorite]
posted by The River Ivel at 7:17 AM on August 8 [1 favorite]
I also bolted from Spotify during the Rogan kerfuffle, partially due to Rogan's perfidious influence on the culture, but also because it reminded me that Spotify was spending my monthly subscription fee on multimillion-dollar podcast exclusivity deals instead of PAYING THE MUSICAL ARTISTS I was actually listening to. I switched to Tidal (which also has its less-savory capitalistic aspects) purely because their payout structure for artists is better than basically every other service out there. I still treat the service as a "try before I buy" opportunity, where I use it as a way to find artists that I want to buy music from directly instead of merely renting it from a middle-man.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:19 AM on August 8 [2 favorites]
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:19 AM on August 8 [2 favorites]
Stuff like this reminds me about how at every opportunity, Steve Albini would describe his work as a recording engineer as being a "music historian" and point out that a) most musicians don't develop a fanbase while they are active, b) all digital formats are at great risk of not existing in the future, and c) the only way to ensure that one makes a persistent archive of music is to have an analog version.
I'm vaguely intellectually prepared for the day when we can't summon the world's information (especially art!) at the click of a mouse, but I am not physically prepared in any meaningful way - beyond a handful of cassette tapes leftover from high school.
God, imagine if the internet ended and the only music I had for the rest of eternity were my HS mixtapes full of songs dubbed off the radio, missing the first several seconds and with a DJ talking over the outro...
posted by entropone at 7:25 AM on August 8 [7 favorites]
I'm vaguely intellectually prepared for the day when we can't summon the world's information (especially art!) at the click of a mouse, but I am not physically prepared in any meaningful way - beyond a handful of cassette tapes leftover from high school.
God, imagine if the internet ended and the only music I had for the rest of eternity were my HS mixtapes full of songs dubbed off the radio, missing the first several seconds and with a DJ talking over the outro...
posted by entropone at 7:25 AM on August 8 [7 favorites]
Piffle. In one double-blind study after another, listeners have been unable to reliably distinguish MP3s with a good encoder and high-bitrate vs. lossless audio.
Yeah, but none of those studies used the special digital cables or ripped the CD after smearing the rim with a blue highlighter.
posted by mph at 7:33 AM on August 8 [8 favorites]
Yeah, but none of those studies used the special digital cables or ripped the CD after smearing the rim with a blue highlighter.
posted by mph at 7:33 AM on August 8 [8 favorites]
I use LivexLive (I started with Samsung's music player back then, and it eventually morphed into LXL) and, less often, Pandora. The kid wants the Glee Gal and me to switch to Spotify for the family plan, because she doesn't want to pay for it, and she's currently piggy backing off of a college friend's family plan.
I also have a MP3 (well, AAC) collection, but after I finished ripping my CD collection into iTunes, I blew well past my phone's 128 gig storage, and haven't pruned it to fit, yet. (My old Android phones used memory cards, so storage wasn't an issue, but just about no one uses those any more.)
LXL lets me easily favorite songs, to buy them later. Pandora sorta lets me do it, but not for channels I don't "own." Supposedly, there's a way to do it, but it's inobvious. I like trance and occasionally hit a song where there's 15 versions in the Apple Music store, and it's hard to determine which one's what I heard, and which one's 3 minutes of drum machine before I get to the good stuff. Sigh.
posted by Spike Glee at 7:49 AM on August 8
I also have a MP3 (well, AAC) collection, but after I finished ripping my CD collection into iTunes, I blew well past my phone's 128 gig storage, and haven't pruned it to fit, yet. (My old Android phones used memory cards, so storage wasn't an issue, but just about no one uses those any more.)
LXL lets me easily favorite songs, to buy them later. Pandora sorta lets me do it, but not for channels I don't "own." Supposedly, there's a way to do it, but it's inobvious. I like trance and occasionally hit a song where there's 15 versions in the Apple Music store, and it's hard to determine which one's what I heard, and which one's 3 minutes of drum machine before I get to the good stuff. Sigh.
posted by Spike Glee at 7:49 AM on August 8
For Dobbs and anyone else who finds that apple music keeps playing once the playlist is exhausted, there is a way to turn that off, it's just hard to find. In the queue view, where the shuffle and repeat buttons are, there is a little infinity button next to them. Click that off and it'll stop doing the thing you don't like.
posted by dbx at 8:04 AM on August 8 [5 favorites]
posted by dbx at 8:04 AM on August 8 [5 favorites]
a) most musicians don't develop a fanbase while they are active, b) all digital formats are at great risk of not existing in the future, and c) the only way to ensure that one makes a persistent archive of music is to have an analog version.
The bad thing about this is that for most artists from the analogue days, making a CD or record doesn't guarantee it will be available in digital format, nor does it guarantee that the analogue format will last long. My city's public library has already dropped all their CDs, the local CD stores in a major metro have less selection than the college town had when I was there for college, 30 years ago. Who knows what happened to all those disks - the trash I assume.
My kids have some CDs, but they don't put in anymore effort to listen to them than I do to mine, digital format has a lot of advantages even if the supposed fidelity is less: Portable, album artwork, lyrics, etc, more tracks available (even if it's your own mp3s on a memory stick) at the click of a button. My oldest kid carries her Amazon echo dot thing with spotify from bedroom to bathroom to outside to phone on the way to school for private listening, something it's just harder to do with physical media.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:19 AM on August 8
The bad thing about this is that for most artists from the analogue days, making a CD or record doesn't guarantee it will be available in digital format, nor does it guarantee that the analogue format will last long. My city's public library has already dropped all their CDs, the local CD stores in a major metro have less selection than the college town had when I was there for college, 30 years ago. Who knows what happened to all those disks - the trash I assume.
My kids have some CDs, but they don't put in anymore effort to listen to them than I do to mine, digital format has a lot of advantages even if the supposed fidelity is less: Portable, album artwork, lyrics, etc, more tracks available (even if it's your own mp3s on a memory stick) at the click of a button. My oldest kid carries her Amazon echo dot thing with spotify from bedroom to bathroom to outside to phone on the way to school for private listening, something it's just harder to do with physical media.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:19 AM on August 8
Given: Spotify's algorithms are shit, and its "radio" option for any given pop song/artist cycles through the same basket of artists tagged in the same overly general ways that clump the same songs together always.
That said, the user-made playlists can be excellent. There's one, for example, of songs plucked from David Johansen's Sirius show, and several that are built on tunes played on BBC Radio 3's Late Junction that are go-tos for me both because of the terrific tunes and of the size of the playlists (which ensures few dupes over a noticeable span of time). And I can read an article in The Wire or MOJO or wherever and find that new or catalog album by artist X right away. That kind of immediate gratification is worth having to ignore the interface, algorithms and everything else. I'd even pay more for it if I had any confidence that the $$$ were going to artists.
Also given: Spotify's greediness is, to me, much more offputting and rage-making than its shitty algorithms. I downgraded from Premium Individual to Basic Individual after Spotify hiked up the price this year. I don't know how much more nudging it'll take to get me to jump ship, but I can live with the price at this point. However, Daniel Ek is firmly on my list of billionaires who could profit from a knee to the junk.
posted by the sobsister at 8:21 AM on August 8 [2 favorites]
That said, the user-made playlists can be excellent. There's one, for example, of songs plucked from David Johansen's Sirius show, and several that are built on tunes played on BBC Radio 3's Late Junction that are go-tos for me both because of the terrific tunes and of the size of the playlists (which ensures few dupes over a noticeable span of time). And I can read an article in The Wire or MOJO or wherever and find that new or catalog album by artist X right away. That kind of immediate gratification is worth having to ignore the interface, algorithms and everything else. I'd even pay more for it if I had any confidence that the $$$ were going to artists.
Also given: Spotify's greediness is, to me, much more offputting and rage-making than its shitty algorithms. I downgraded from Premium Individual to Basic Individual after Spotify hiked up the price this year. I don't know how much more nudging it'll take to get me to jump ship, but I can live with the price at this point. However, Daniel Ek is firmly on my list of billionaires who could profit from a knee to the junk.
posted by the sobsister at 8:21 AM on August 8 [2 favorites]
I had been star-rating and heart-favoriting tracks in iTunes since the beginning, and (to me) that seems to have influenced Apple Music recs over time. Between the Favorites mix, the Heavy Rotation mix and the Chill mix, it's got a good read on what I like. The weekly New Music mix is the one where I need to fine-tune things.
The big reason I don't use Spotify is that Spotify URLs aren't human-readable, while Apple Music URLs aren't entirely mystery meat.
posted by emelenjr at 8:22 AM on August 8
The big reason I don't use Spotify is that Spotify URLs aren't human-readable, while Apple Music URLs aren't entirely mystery meat.
posted by emelenjr at 8:22 AM on August 8
In one double-blind study after another, listeners have been unable to reliably distinguish MP3s with a good encoder and high-bitrate vs. lossless audio.
I think you mean more modern lossy codecs. High bit-rate MP3 is generally good and has held up quite well for a 90s codec but there are certain sound patterns where a sudden loud change occurs like striking a cymbal which get smeared by the blocking scheme MP3 uses, which was a design goal for newer codecs to improve.
You don’t need to go full lossless and the high-rate/bit depth stuff can rapidly hit audiophile territory but it’s not all bunk. I would also note that there’s a difference between an A/B test using someone’s fastidiously tuned MP3 encoder and the files most users are served which were compressed with the defaults and, especially for streaming services, optimized to lower their bandwidth usage rather than for audio quality. Newer codecs like AAC are often a win simply because they have better default performance at lower bitrates - AAC-256 out of the box will be very hard to tell apart from lossless, but MP3 will often need to go up to 384 to reach that point.
posted by adamsc at 8:35 AM on August 8 [4 favorites]
I do not have the same complaints about Apple Music as have been aired in this thread—the music it recommends to me is excellent to the point that I found most of my favorite new bands/artists of the last half decade that way.
But one thing I can't stand is that Apple Music won't distinguish between two bands that have the same name. For instance, I have a lot of Leggy and the Residents in my library, and it often shows me music by the wrong Leggy or Residents. I'd think the fact that the different artists have different identifiers in the URLs would prevent this!
posted by ejs at 8:40 AM on August 8 [1 favorite]
But one thing I can't stand is that Apple Music won't distinguish between two bands that have the same name. For instance, I have a lot of Leggy and the Residents in my library, and it often shows me music by the wrong Leggy or Residents. I'd think the fact that the different artists have different identifiers in the URLs would prevent this!
posted by ejs at 8:40 AM on August 8 [1 favorite]
Spotify has the same name problem.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 9:16 AM on August 8 [2 favorites]
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 9:16 AM on August 8 [2 favorites]
Oh…and a shuffle playback of the aliased artists can have hilarious results, depending on how dissimilar their respective styles might be.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 9:20 AM on August 8 [1 favorite]
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 9:20 AM on August 8 [1 favorite]
Fuck no. If you actually care about music why would you be listening to MP3 files?
I care profoundly about music. I'd say roughly 75 percent of my listening is via Mp3s (stored locally on my laptop, or via a portable player). But when it really matters, and when I have the time and circumstances, I'll put on a slab of vinyl or a CD, or if the situation demands it, I'll get the old Nakamichi hooked up. And if richness of sound is truly imperative, I'll smoke some marijuana.
I've never used Spotify. My online listening is generally either Youtube or Bandcamp (excellent streaming there) or Mixcloud, which is where a pile of my mixes and radio shows can be found.
posted by philip-random at 9:22 AM on August 8 [1 favorite]
I care profoundly about music. I'd say roughly 75 percent of my listening is via Mp3s (stored locally on my laptop, or via a portable player). But when it really matters, and when I have the time and circumstances, I'll put on a slab of vinyl or a CD, or if the situation demands it, I'll get the old Nakamichi hooked up. And if richness of sound is truly imperative, I'll smoke some marijuana.
I've never used Spotify. My online listening is generally either Youtube or Bandcamp (excellent streaming there) or Mixcloud, which is where a pile of my mixes and radio shows can be found.
posted by philip-random at 9:22 AM on August 8 [1 favorite]
n one double-blind study after another, listeners have been unable to reliably distinguish MP3s with a good encoder and high-bitrate vs. lossless audio.
I can absolutely tell the difference between loseless music streamed on Apple Music, and must streamed from spotify.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 9:35 AM on August 8
I can absolutely tell the difference between loseless music streamed on Apple Music, and must streamed from spotify.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 9:35 AM on August 8
I stopped using Spotify a few months ago and set up a self-hosted music streaming server. If anyone else is interested, here are my suggestions for how to go about it:
Discover new music via Sonemic/RYM
Set up a Gonic server with your music library, which runs on the open source SubSonic protocol.
Open up a port on your router to expose it to the internet. I used 443 for HTTPS. Forward it to the corresponding port on your server. You may also need to configure a static IP and/or dynamic DNS to make sure your external IP is always the same.
Set up an nginx reverse proxy server to direct port 443 traffic (or whatever port you used) to local port 4747 (the Gonic server). You will need to get an SSL certificate and set up a hostname if you want to stream from the Internet. This is unnecessary for local network streaming, where you can just direct the client to your local IP.
Synfonium is a beautiful Android client for streaming from a SubSonic server. It is one of the best pieces of software I have ever used.
For desktop clients, I have been using Strawberry, though I'm on the hunt for a more attractive alternative. This works well enough though.
I strongly recommend using beets for managing your library's metadata. Again, this is one of the most practical and well-made pieces of software I have ever used.
If you're a scrobbling nerd like me, Gonic supports server-side scrobbling so you do not need to configure it on every client machine.
If you enjoy podcasts, you can also import RSS feeds to Gonic and stream podcast episodes. I love this feature.
I pay about $5/yr for an SSL certificate, which is the only associated cost and is far cheaper than a streaming subscription. If you're more network-savvy than me, you could even bypass this cost by making your own SSL certificate.
I hope this information is helpful to someone who is interested in self-hosting.
posted by gunwalefunnel at 9:36 AM on August 8 [14 favorites]
Discover new music via Sonemic/RYM
Set up a Gonic server with your music library, which runs on the open source SubSonic protocol.
Open up a port on your router to expose it to the internet. I used 443 for HTTPS. Forward it to the corresponding port on your server. You may also need to configure a static IP and/or dynamic DNS to make sure your external IP is always the same.
Set up an nginx reverse proxy server to direct port 443 traffic (or whatever port you used) to local port 4747 (the Gonic server). You will need to get an SSL certificate and set up a hostname if you want to stream from the Internet. This is unnecessary for local network streaming, where you can just direct the client to your local IP.
Synfonium is a beautiful Android client for streaming from a SubSonic server. It is one of the best pieces of software I have ever used.
For desktop clients, I have been using Strawberry, though I'm on the hunt for a more attractive alternative. This works well enough though.
I strongly recommend using beets for managing your library's metadata. Again, this is one of the most practical and well-made pieces of software I have ever used.
If you're a scrobbling nerd like me, Gonic supports server-side scrobbling so you do not need to configure it on every client machine.
If you enjoy podcasts, you can also import RSS feeds to Gonic and stream podcast episodes. I love this feature.
I pay about $5/yr for an SSL certificate, which is the only associated cost and is far cheaper than a streaming subscription. If you're more network-savvy than me, you could even bypass this cost by making your own SSL certificate.
I hope this information is helpful to someone who is interested in self-hosting.
posted by gunwalefunnel at 9:36 AM on August 8 [14 favorites]
I think you mean more modern lossy codecs. High bit-rate MP3 is generally good and has held up quite well for a 90s codec but there are certain sound patterns where a sudden loud change occurs like striking a cymbal which get smeared by the blocking scheme MP3 uses, which was a design goal for newer codecs to improve.
It’s true that MP3 is an outdated format, but I don’t think you’re going to get untrained listeners who aren’t specifically attuned to the known flaws in the algorithm to distinguish 320 MP3 from lossless in a blind test.
posted by atoxyl at 9:38 AM on August 8 [1 favorite]
It’s true that MP3 is an outdated format, but I don’t think you’re going to get untrained listeners who aren’t specifically attuned to the known flaws in the algorithm to distinguish 320 MP3 from lossless in a blind test.
posted by atoxyl at 9:38 AM on August 8 [1 favorite]
Amazon Music Unlimited claims to have lossless (Ultra HD) audio, heck if I can tell with my blasted-out eardrums. The apps are ... serviceable for casual listeners; Amazon was never known for its UX chops. You can import playlists via 3rd-party service but it's not guaranteed all songs will make it over.
All of the music apps seem to have gotten more anti-social which sucks. I miss blip.fm where you could collaboratively DJ a set consisting of random MP3s from around the web.
posted by credulous at 9:58 AM on August 8
All of the music apps seem to have gotten more anti-social which sucks. I miss blip.fm where you could collaboratively DJ a set consisting of random MP3s from around the web.
posted by credulous at 9:58 AM on August 8
I am sticking with my Edison gramophone and wax cylinders, thank you very much.
posted by briank at 10:02 AM on August 8 [2 favorites]
posted by briank at 10:02 AM on August 8 [2 favorites]
I'm on Apple. Anyone in my house should be able to play music in any (or all) of the 5 rooms w/ speakers reliably in under 20 seconds. ejs the music meta data comes from the labels - and anytime I notice it I just open a help ticket. In my experience it takes them a few business days to sort it out. If you have downloaded tracks with erroneous info you'll likely have to delete those and re-load them to get the corrected data.
posted by zenon at 10:10 AM on August 8 [1 favorite]
posted by zenon at 10:10 AM on August 8 [1 favorite]
I listen to a lot of classical music and opera, and the Spotify UI on mobile makes it almost impossible to find recordings. For instance, I have favorited a famous recording of the St. Matthew Passion on Spotify. When I go to the album page to select a certain song, the title will read: "St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244, Pt. 1, No. 1" and maybe the first two letters of the actual aria or chorus title. Yes, I certainly love Pt. 2, No. 13 of the St. Matthew Passion.fortitude, Apple Music Classical (which is a separate app from Apple Music) claims to have solved this problem. I cannot assess whether they actually have solved this problem or not, but it might be worth a try.
posted by Jeanne at 10:14 AM on August 8 [1 favorite]
It’s true that MP3 is an outdated format, but I don’t think you’re going to get untrained listeners who aren’t specifically attuned to the known flaws in the algorithm to distinguish 320 MP3 from lossless in a blind test.It’s pretty easy for classical or jazz fans to notice – not something you’d hear in the car but if you have headphones in the $100+ range it’s not especially challenging – but also we’re talking about streaming services where they’re not spending more money on every transfer unless people leave. Spotify goes as low as AAC 24kbps and defines normal as 96kbps, and at those low bitrates the artifacts are easier to notice.
posted by adamsc at 11:19 AM on August 8 [2 favorites]
I listen to a lot of classical music and opera, and the Spotify UI on mobile makes it almost impossible to find recordings. For instance, I have favorited a famous recording of the St. Matthew Passion on Spotify. When I go to the album page to select a certain song, the title will read: "St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244, Pt. 1, No. 1" and maybe the first two letters of the actual aria or chorus title. Yes, I certainly love Pt. 2, No. 13 of the St. Matthew Passion.
I’d sign up for the Apple Music trial and use their Classical app. It’s purpose built to display those well and I’ve also found it does a great job of surfacing new recordings I like, probably because it picked up the hundreds of tracks in my library which I hand-corrected years ago.
posted by adamsc at 11:33 AM on August 8
One thing I hate about spotify is how it's always trying to force shit on me because of where I live.
This inspired me to write a userscript to remove annoying sections from the spotify web client.
Customize this part to suit your own pet peeves:
posted by signal at 12:18 PM on August 8 [4 favorites]
This inspired me to write a userscript to remove annoying sections from the spotify web client.
// ==UserScript==
// @name Remove Spotify Shelves
// @namespace http://tampermonkey.net/
// @version 0.1
// @description Remove shelves containing specified keywords on open.spotify.com
// @author You
// @match https://open.spotify.com/*
// @grant none
// ==/UserScript==
(function() {
'use strict';
// Function to remove shelves containing specified keywords
function removeShelves() {
const keywords = ['podcast', 'tendencia', 'reggaeton'];
const shelves = document.querySelectorAll('section.Shelf');
shelves.forEach(shelf => {
const textContent = shelf.textContent.toLowerCase();
if (keywords.some(keyword => textContent.includes(keyword))) {
shelf.parentNode.removeChild(shelf);
}
});
}
// Run the function once the DOM is fully loaded
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', removeShelves);
// Observe changes in the DOM to catch dynamically loaded content
const observer = new MutationObserver(removeShelves);
observer.observe(document.body, { childList: true, subtree: true });
})();
Customize this part to suit your own pet peeves:
const keywords = ['podcast', 'tendencia', 'reggaeton'];posted by signal at 12:18 PM on August 8 [4 favorites]
I scanned this whole thread and am surprised nobody mentioned Pandora. I don’t use Spotify much so can’t compare the libraries but Pandora usually finds the song / artist I want & the interface is pretty simple…
posted by TDIpod at 12:45 PM on August 8 [2 favorites]
posted by TDIpod at 12:45 PM on August 8 [2 favorites]
misanthropic painforest: Also please let me know good alternatives for families.
French site Qobuz.com, has both streaming and download store, family accounts, wife range of classical and new studio masters in high detail.
Flagged gunwhalefunnel's post as Fantastic, great detail for how to do this.
Me, I buy a phone that can carry a big SD card and run SyncThing to keep laptops and the USB in the car updated with changes to the music library.
posted by k3ninho at 12:50 PM on August 8 [1 favorite]
French site Qobuz.com, has both streaming and download store, family accounts, wife range of classical and new studio masters in high detail.
Flagged gunwhalefunnel's post as Fantastic, great detail for how to do this.
Me, I buy a phone that can carry a big SD card and run SyncThing to keep laptops and the USB in the car updated with changes to the music library.
posted by k3ninho at 12:50 PM on August 8 [1 favorite]
I subscribe to Youtube Music and I don't really have complaints about it, it has all the music I search for and gives me a decent amount of control over what it plays, like when I play an album I can select an option to stop at the end or have it algorithmically choose music for me. The one thing I wish it would do is give me a notification that an artist I listen to is going to have a concert in my area so that I can buy tickets.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:04 PM on August 8 [1 favorite]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:04 PM on August 8 [1 favorite]
I agree that Spotify is a bit obsessed with shoving playlists down your throat, but at the same time, it is still possible to browse releases as artists intended them. You just have to click the Browse button next to the search bar (or click the search bar itself), scroll down a bit and click the "New Releases" box, then click "Show All." You then get an infinitely scrolling list of albums, EPs and singles.
Also, the author of the article said they couldn't find albums by Bill Evans Trio, but all you have to do is click the "Albums" filter after typing the artist name in the search box, and you'll see all albums that match the search. Also, if you click the artist name, you really don't have to scroll down very far to find the Discography section. So I think the author wasn't really trying very hard, because it's extremely easy to browse an artists' back catalogue on Spotify.
Nevertheless, I can understand that if you're a paying subscriber, Spotify's spammy playlist approach would be intensely annoying. I've only ever used the free tier so it's never bothered me too much, I just ignore most of it.
Does anyone know if Spotify is unique among music streaming platforms in offering an ad-supported free tier? I've never really liked the idea of renting music, if I really like something I'd much rather own it.
posted by mokey at 2:22 PM on August 8
Also, the author of the article said they couldn't find albums by Bill Evans Trio, but all you have to do is click the "Albums" filter after typing the artist name in the search box, and you'll see all albums that match the search. Also, if you click the artist name, you really don't have to scroll down very far to find the Discography section. So I think the author wasn't really trying very hard, because it's extremely easy to browse an artists' back catalogue on Spotify.
Nevertheless, I can understand that if you're a paying subscriber, Spotify's spammy playlist approach would be intensely annoying. I've only ever used the free tier so it's never bothered me too much, I just ignore most of it.
Does anyone know if Spotify is unique among music streaming platforms in offering an ad-supported free tier? I've never really liked the idea of renting music, if I really like something I'd much rather own it.
posted by mokey at 2:22 PM on August 8
I will never get rid of my HD of music and the backups.
While I have subscriptions, I use soulseek to find and collect music and clementine to play it.
posted by garbhoch at 2:31 PM on August 8 [1 favorite]
While I have subscriptions, I use soulseek to find and collect music and clementine to play it.
posted by garbhoch at 2:31 PM on August 8 [1 favorite]
Spotify sent me an email this morning threatening to cancel my subscription if I didn't verify my address. I thought I had my I own subscription I guess I was still on an exes or something? I doubt she even knows.
Anyway, I'll get around to sending them money sometime. But at the moment the service they offer is not so essential that the threat of suspension really carries much weight.
In the meantime, check out your local record store and get the bands you like more than half a cent per song. I got a a brand new Kid Dynamite record for a fucking song last week.
posted by East14thTaco at 2:31 PM on August 8
Anyway, I'll get around to sending them money sometime. But at the moment the service they offer is not so essential that the threat of suspension really carries much weight.
In the meantime, check out your local record store and get the bands you like more than half a cent per song. I got a a brand new Kid Dynamite record for a fucking song last week.
posted by East14thTaco at 2:31 PM on August 8
I use YouTube Music mostly. Partly because their interface is fairly simple, but mostly because they pay the most per stream to artists. Or that used to be the case, anyway, I don’t know if it’s still true.
Oh, and their free service streams the same ads as on YouTube, which tend to be less annoyingly loud than Spotify ads.
posted by Kattullus at 2:36 PM on August 8
Oh, and their free service streams the same ads as on YouTube, which tend to be less annoyingly loud than Spotify ads.
posted by Kattullus at 2:36 PM on August 8
Pandora usually finds the song / artist I want
I like Pandora but I don't use it that way; I use it to find new music I like in a given genre. I "seed" a channel with a few representative artists for it to use to find similar artists/music, and continually prune it by using the thumbs-down button when it plays tracks I don't like. After I went through at one point and undid any thumbs-up I'd clicked, in order to try to keep it from playing those same tracks over and over, I started getting more variety...though I still have to click "I'm tired of this song" pretty often. But basically I think I'm not using it the way it was designed to be used, so I'm constantly having to curate it to coerce it into doing what I want.
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:42 PM on August 8 [1 favorite]
I like Pandora but I don't use it that way; I use it to find new music I like in a given genre. I "seed" a channel with a few representative artists for it to use to find similar artists/music, and continually prune it by using the thumbs-down button when it plays tracks I don't like. After I went through at one point and undid any thumbs-up I'd clicked, in order to try to keep it from playing those same tracks over and over, I started getting more variety...though I still have to click "I'm tired of this song" pretty often. But basically I think I'm not using it the way it was designed to be used, so I'm constantly having to curate it to coerce it into doing what I want.
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:42 PM on August 8 [1 favorite]
Hi, I’m a musician who will be playing for 1/6th of the tip jar Saturday night. We’re about to release an album on vinyl, CD & Bandcamp. I hope 10 or 15 people buy a copy!
Fuck Spotify.
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:03 PM on August 8 [5 favorites]
Fuck Spotify.
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:03 PM on August 8 [5 favorites]
Another one for Pandora here (anyone remember when it was the Music Genome Project?). I dont pay for Spotify nor any other streaming music service. I will use them to discover a new artist or pre-listen to an album, and when I like it I'll buy it (from the artist's website if I can) and attend a show when they come to town.
Yes I am that person who is still buying CDs, then ripping them onto my computer for transfer to my iPhone. They are my hard-copy backup (I have seen it here that the quality degrades over time, but I have yet to see that, even with CD's from 20+ years ago). I recently bought a used car that has a CD player and I've been enjoying going through my burned CD's from highschool which are a bit cringe and full of angst, but have held up well.
posted by LizBoBiz at 10:02 PM on August 8
Yes I am that person who is still buying CDs, then ripping them onto my computer for transfer to my iPhone. They are my hard-copy backup (I have seen it here that the quality degrades over time, but I have yet to see that, even with CD's from 20+ years ago). I recently bought a used car that has a CD player and I've been enjoying going through my burned CD's from highschool which are a bit cringe and full of angst, but have held up well.
posted by LizBoBiz at 10:02 PM on August 8
Spotify sucks ass in a number of different ways. I use Apple Music, but just for storing/organizing/playing mp3s, not for randomized streaming. If I want to listen to something new, I go on Bandcamp and look up an artist I know but maybe haven't heard all their albums, or search through it by genre/subgenre and try something that looks promising. If I listen to an album a couple times in a row, Bandcamp says "Hey, do you maybe wanna buy that?" The popup is dismissable, no pressure, but I often do go ahead and buy it. If it's near the first friday of the month, I'll hold out til then because the bands get 100% of the money on Bandcamp Friday. If the artist is selling the album on tape, I'll definitely buy that, because I love tapes.
I don't want to come off like I'm trying to shame people who use streaming services. But, like, if you want good music, the people who make good music have got to get paid. Pay the dang artists.
posted by rifflesby at 11:30 PM on August 8 [1 favorite]
I don't want to come off like I'm trying to shame people who use streaming services. But, like, if you want good music, the people who make good music have got to get paid. Pay the dang artists.
posted by rifflesby at 11:30 PM on August 8 [1 favorite]
Accidentally clipped my thought in the first sentence. It should continue with: ", chief among them being that they don't pay the musicians jack shit."
posted by rifflesby at 11:37 PM on August 8
posted by rifflesby at 11:37 PM on August 8
Re: the self-hosting suggestion above, self-hosting and Subsonic and whatnot are great but “open a port on your router to expose your home network to the internet” is wildly irresponsible advice. It’s also completely unnecessary for use on just the local network. If you want to access it from anywhere, rent a VPS or use Tailscale.
posted by sinfony at 3:41 AM on August 9
posted by sinfony at 3:41 AM on August 9
Sinfony, I advise in my comment to use HTTPS with a signed SSL certificate, a password protected server portal (Gonic requires this), and a reverse proxy. If you only set up port forwarding for 443 and enforce HTTPS, then shouldn't this setup be ruggedly secure?
posted by gunwalefunnel at 6:05 AM on August 9
posted by gunwalefunnel at 6:05 AM on August 9
It’s true that MP3 is an outdated format, but I don’t think you’re going to get untrained listeners who aren’t specifically attuned to the known flaws in the algorithm to distinguish 320 MP3 from lossless in a blind test.
And that's part of why it's such an evil format for music, atoxyl. Yes, if you do a simple A/B comparison between a 320 MP3 and an uncompressed digital file they often seem identical at first. But keep listening and the MP3 file becomes fatiguing. And the longer you listen to MP3s the less one connects emotionally to the music.
Engineering issues aside, MP3 files don't ever pass the "it's 2:30 AM, I need to go to sleep, but I must hear one more song" test. At least for me.
posted by Dean358 at 6:07 AM on August 9
And that's part of why it's such an evil format for music, atoxyl. Yes, if you do a simple A/B comparison between a 320 MP3 and an uncompressed digital file they often seem identical at first. But keep listening and the MP3 file becomes fatiguing. And the longer you listen to MP3s the less one connects emotionally to the music.
Engineering issues aside, MP3 files don't ever pass the "it's 2:30 AM, I need to go to sleep, but I must hear one more song" test. At least for me.
posted by Dean358 at 6:07 AM on August 9
Engineering issues aside, MP3 files don't ever pass the "it's 2:30 AM, I need to go to sleep, but I must hear one more song" test. At least for me.
They sure do for me, alas.
Is Bandcamp still the same? It got sold last year to a company that then gutted its recently unionized workforce
posted by trig at 7:02 AM on August 9
They sure do for me, alas.
Is Bandcamp still the same? It got sold last year to a company that then gutted its recently unionized workforce
posted by trig at 7:02 AM on August 9
Why I Finally Quit Spotify: One day, I went to play a saved track — I think it was some "extended version" of one of the Interstellar soundtrack songs — that I'd played the night before. It was greyed out.
A week prior to that, an entire album of something I was listening to on somewhat heavy rotation was greyed out. The month before that, it had happened three times.
So, when this track that I had played literally the night before evaporated, I just stopped paying them. By the following day, I had a fully-automated -arr / jackett / Plex / qBitTorrent stack running.
Spotify was the straw that broke the camel's back. Not Netflix, not some other enshittified streaming thing. Spotify. They're the ones that made me decide "y'know, fuck it, I pay these middlemen and they're fucking me over; we're going local media only just like the olden days."
I get that they went on to start trying to be in the music promotion business rather than the music playing business, and then they went into, like, podcasts or something? I couldn't give two shits about podcasts or promotion-driven "discovery", so I'm extremely glad I missed this whole era of Spotify's self-immolation.
posted by majick at 7:33 AM on August 9
A week prior to that, an entire album of something I was listening to on somewhat heavy rotation was greyed out. The month before that, it had happened three times.
So, when this track that I had played literally the night before evaporated, I just stopped paying them. By the following day, I had a fully-automated -arr / jackett / Plex / qBitTorrent stack running.
Spotify was the straw that broke the camel's back. Not Netflix, not some other enshittified streaming thing. Spotify. They're the ones that made me decide "y'know, fuck it, I pay these middlemen and they're fucking me over; we're going local media only just like the olden days."
I get that they went on to start trying to be in the music promotion business rather than the music playing business, and then they went into, like, podcasts or something? I couldn't give two shits about podcasts or promotion-driven "discovery", so I'm extremely glad I missed this whole era of Spotify's self-immolation.
posted by majick at 7:33 AM on August 9
Hey everyone, at least the CEO of Spotify is making more money than giving royalties to artists!
posted by Kitteh at 7:45 AM on August 9 [1 favorite]
posted by Kitteh at 7:45 AM on August 9 [1 favorite]
And that's part of why it's such an evil format for music, atoxyl. Yes, if you do a simple A/B comparison between a 320 MP3 and an uncompressed digital file they often seem identical at first. But keep listening and the MP3 file becomes fatiguing. And the longer you listen to MP3s the less one connects emotionally to the music.
a 'simple a/b comparison' is literally 'is it phsically possible for a human to tell the difference between these two things' lol
if audiophiles were serious they'd be able to point to an actual difference
posted by Sebmojo at 2:04 PM on August 9 [1 favorite]
a 'simple a/b comparison' is literally 'is it phsically possible for a human to tell the difference between these two things' lol
if audiophiles were serious they'd be able to point to an actual difference
posted by Sebmojo at 2:04 PM on August 9 [1 favorite]
Is there any self hosted solution that does a reasonable job of multiroom audio, and is not Sonos? As in, keeps the endpoints in sync, has usable transport controls…
I currently use Spotify because it works with Amazon multiroom audio, with echo devices doing the playback. The voice control isn’t great but at least pause/resume, volume control, and speaker group switching works, when the backend service isn’t acting up. For which there is no support…
(When I care about fidelity, I listen directly on my living room stereo, using a Muscial Fidelity USB to SPDIF converter.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:39 PM on August 9
I currently use Spotify because it works with Amazon multiroom audio, with echo devices doing the playback. The voice control isn’t great but at least pause/resume, volume control, and speaker group switching works, when the backend service isn’t acting up. For which there is no support…
(When I care about fidelity, I listen directly on my living room stereo, using a Muscial Fidelity USB to SPDIF converter.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:39 PM on August 9
« Older There is something hopeful about writing a review | The great cloud built form of the Giant Newer »
posted by pipeski at 3:08 AM on August 8 [12 favorites]