
Spotify Introduces Video Clips, Podcasts, and Activity-Based Playlists - areski
http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/20/spotify-introduces-video-clips-podcasts-and-activity-based-playlists/
======
disposition2
I feel like Spotify is regressing in terms of music discovery and usefulness
in general. It's still nice to be able to stream (almost) any album but the
radio and shuffle have _always_ been terrible and the removal of useful music
discovery (which is also terrible on Spotify...Rdio & LastFM both destroy
Spotify in this realm) applications in a recent past updates only made it
worse. Now, they are adding these 'features' that have little to do with music
and more to do with marketing and corporate relationships.

I'll most likely continue to be a subscriber because as I mentioned the
ability to stream (almost) any album is great but it would be nice to see some
progress related to music or music discovery rather than these gimmicks. Stop
trying to be a universal storefront for everyone's media consumption (video
clips from ABC, who wants that in a music app) and do one thing right...

In the meantime, I'll continue to subsidize Spotify with useful music
discovery services (and self made hacks) and just use Spotify as my "I know
exactly what album I want to hear and don't need shuffle" music application.

~~~
mjs7231
I feel the opposite. I subscribe to Spotify specifically for music discovery
in the form of listening to playlists other people (not algorithms) created.
IMO these tend to be much better than anything I've seen a computer come up
with.

I'm also pretty excited about podcasts and news. Podcasts, because it may
eliminate another app on my Phone that I always felt Spotify should have been
able to do all along. News is exciting because I really don't know any other
way to stream on-demand audio news into my phone (and car). Maybe there is
already an app for that? I looked around lightly and never found anything.

I feel the direction they are taking isn't 100% music albums, but more the
audio-everything on the go. I listen to Spotify 99% of the time on my commute,
and love the focus on audio-only.

~~~
lepht
>News is exciting because I really don't know any other way to stream on-
demand audio news into my phone (and car). Maybe there is already an app for
that? I looked around lightly and never found anything.

I agree with pretty much everything you said, but thought I'd point out NPR
One is great for this purpose: [http://www.npr.org/about/products/npr-
one/](http://www.npr.org/about/products/npr-one/)

------
afandian
Great to hear there's something shiny for the developers to work on, but as a
paying user, there are some massive regressions they have introduced and
apparently won't fix. Their twitter customer service is particularly glib.

Want to find a track in your a playlist? Or go to an artist page and find a
track within that? They removed the filter functionality ages ago and are very
opaque about communicating updates.

[https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Desktop-Bring-
ba...](https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Desktop-Bring-back-search-
inside-Playlists-amp-Songs-tab/idi-p/1039674)

By co-incidence, it looks like they announced something on this ticket today.
But it doesn't excuse their past attitude.

~~~
sgloutnikov
Finally, at least they listened. The decision to take out searching within a
playlist baffled me (or I guess it was more of a oops we forgot it).

~~~
afandian
No, I think they implemented a whole new view, probably more extensible, to
allow future features (IIRC the look changed a bit). They just didn't
prioritise fixing the regressions they introduced.

------
hyperbovine
Surprise this article makes no mention of the elephant in the room, namely
Apple's imminent "Spotify killer" ([http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-
beats-spotify-killer-wh...](http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-beats-
spotify-killer-what-we-know-2015-3)). Spotify have evidently concluded that
they need to be more like iTunes, which is unfortunate.

~~~
mkr-hn
Apple is not going to kill anything unless they suddenly learned how to make
competent software for non-Apple devices.

~~~
kaolinite
They've been hiring Android developers recently to work on the Beats music
app, which is likely to become the Apple streaming service, so there's a good
chance it'll be on Android too. No idea whether it'll be any good, of course.

I suspect the main thing that will limit Apple's streaming service is
availability: iTunes Radio is only available in the US and Australia. I think
they're being punished a bit by the record labels, after Apple took over the
digital downloads market, much to their displeasure.

That said, if Apple's streaming service comes to the UK, I know I'll drop
Spotify in a heartbeat. I couldn't be more disloyal to Spotify: I only use
them because they're the only service with the exact combination of features I
need (besides Rdio, who I don't use because their desktop app is - incredibly
- even worse than Spotify's).

------
collias
This is Spotify trying to differentiate themselves from other music streaming
services ahead of Apple's announcement, I think.

As it stands now, most music services are basically at feature parity with
each other: Spotify, Rdio, Slacker, etc. They all offer listening to whatever
album or song you want on-demand for a price, as well as algorithmically-
generated radio stations based on artists or whatever for free.

The only thing any of them can compete on anymore is how well their app works
and how they can exploit their given niche (on-demand for Spotify and Rdio,
curated radio for Slacker, market share for Pandora).

------
eatonphil
It's hard to care about anything new they are adding when their existing
software is so inadequate. I mean, I love the desktop client. But Linux has no
desktop client so km forced to use the web client. The web client is months if
not years behind the desktop client. It is missing folders, drag and drop just
to name a few. The web experience is just so awful compared to the desktop. I
wish they would focus on what they have deployed instead of half baking this
crap. /rant

But as a subscriber, I do still really love the desktop client when I have the
option to be on a Mac or PC.

~~~
blfr
There is a Linux client and there has been one since I remember. They even
have a proper .deb repo.

[https://www.spotify.com/en/download/previews/](https://www.spotify.com/en/download/previews/)

~~~
GeorgeHahn
Sadly practically unusable on high DPI screens

------
ende
How about they bring back third party apps?

~~~
ToastyMallows
For the life of me I don't understand why they removed 3rd party apps. I used
Classify, SoundDrop, SongKick and others all the time, they were so useful.

I understand that they wanted people to use their Web API and SDK, but it was
so nice and convenient to have them embedded inside of the Spotify desktop
client.

------
wehadfun
The running feature is interesting. It detects how fast you are running and
delivers songs that match your pace.

------
Splendor
I'm excited for this. Discovery is an area that can definitely stand some more
work.

------
clemsen
Did anybody find out how podcasts are integrated into Spotify? What interests
me is if there will be a dynamic playlist of unlistened episodes. This would
be great, as I don't know any good podcast applications for Windows.

EDIT: Spelling.

~~~
monty5811
It isn't quite a Windows application, but PocketCasts' web app works well for
me (and syncs with my phone):
[https://play.pocketcasts.com](https://play.pocketcasts.com)

------
corobo
I've not yet been able to find: Anyone know if they're hosting the podcasts
(or even caching them) or are they just streaming them as any other podcasting
app?

Will this break the already minimal podcast statistic tracking?

------
Dewie3
> For example, in the morning, a user might see playlists like “Wake Up Happy”
> or “Sunrise Run”

I don't know what the Hell names like that are supposed to tell me. I guess
there is some specific kind of music associated with 'wake up happy' and
'sunrise run'...

