
Why I’m Kissing Spotify Goodbye - wyclif
http://nerdgap.com/why-im-kissing-spotify-goodbye/
======
frou_dh
I just wish Spotify could serve up a stream of _recommended_ tracks, based on
your listening history, like Last.fm can.

Spotify's "Radio" feature compounds my dislike of "genres" as a means of
navigating and discovering music.

 _Radio, play me a stream of "Rock / Alternative / Pop / 70s"_

What the ---- does that even mean? Guaranteed you'll be skipping 9 out of 10
tracks it serves up.

I hate genres. Every file in my local music collection has that tag blanked.

~~~
socillion
Have you tried Pandora? It is an absolutely amazing service that has an
uncanny ability to find very similar music, occasionally finding gems from a
different genre. They also have tons of small, high quality bands.

The biggest con is that a specific "channel" can start to repeat the same 50
or so songs, but that is easily solved by making a new one.

It is well worth the $36/year for the paid ad-free version, and the adobe air
desktop app is lightweight and responsive. Nice bonus: you can have up to 2 or
3 computers streaming music on the same account simultaneously.

Seriously, I cannot emphasize enough how awesome Pandora is.

Windows 7 in the US; YMMV elsewhere.

~~~
randallsquared
On Linux and the Mac, the command line Pandora client "pianobar" works really
well, and while API updates break it, it's always been mere hours before it
was fixed, in my experience.

~~~
larsberg
If you're on a mac and want something in the menubar (or whatever they call
the thing on the top), try PandaBar. Very nice, has keybindings, and the dev
adds features requested as quickly as Apple will turn around updates through
the App Store.

------
dasil003
I signed up for premium the day they launched in the US. I cancelled the day
they required a Facebook account.

It may well be that Facebook virality is the only way to grow a music startup.
I can't really critique their strategy. But I'll tell you this: I am willing
to pay for music services that focus on the music and music-playing
experience. I could give fuck all about what track 37 of my friends are
listening to, and it's not like they were just tacking this stuff on, they
have made this a core business strategy, and that will come at the expense of
improving the core experience, which frankly could use a lot of improvement.

~~~
k-mcgrady
If you already had an account there was no requirement to add Facebook. Seems
you just cancelled 'on principle'. And all the social integration within the
app can be easily disabled in preferences.

~~~
dasil003
Yes, I did cancel on principle. I cancelled immediately in the hopes that
there would be a large number of cancellations that very day and it would have
some impact on management.

------
ethank
No one ever said there was one music service to serve all manners of music
consumption. There are many to serve many.

It is a fallacy to assume that everyone consumes or enjoys music the same way,
or that music has the same role in every listeners life. In fact, music could
have many roles depending on artist, genre, song, album, mood, etc.

You can't as a music service do a user experience and interface, business
model, etc that will serve all modalities and particularities of consumption,
fanaticism and enjoyment. It isn't possible. It wasn't possible with physical
media either.

I have the luxury of affording many options, and so I have many options: RDIO,
Spotify and iTunes. All have different uses for me, all fill different roles
in my life as a music listener and consumer.

This is no different than 20 years ago, when vinyl, CD, radio and cassette
tapes all had their place in my life depending on what it was I was doing.

------
psychotik
Since you plan to buy music, and seem to have an extensive catalog, give
Audiogalaxy (<http://www.audiogalaxy.com>) to have free access to your music
from everywhere. It's my startup, so don't let me bias you - check out reviews
on iTunes/Android and the web. I'm pretty sure you'll like it. :)

~~~
lukev
Looks nice. I'll have to give it a try.

Do you have any plans to support automatically backing up music between
devices? Current solutions seem to solve either the "play anywhere" or "keep
your music safe" problems, but not both.

Ideally, I'd like something with the following characteristics:

* Syncs music like Dropbox, except does it peer to peer between my own devices so I don't have to pay for space. My wife and I both buy music on both our computers and both our iPhones, and keeping a canonical repository of it for backup and safekeeping is a huge pain.

* Lets me choose which artists/albums to sync on to constrained space devices, for offline play. It should take me 2 seconds to say "I want Iron Maiden and Blind Guardian on my iPhone while I'm camping this weekend." Lets me do this from any of my devices.

* Lets me stream music without syncing it (like Audiogalaxy currently does).

* Lets me make tracks/playlists available to my friends for streaming (licensing issues around this one are tricky, but of Spotify can do it, it should be possible.)

I would LOVE something like this.

So far, the only thing I've heard of that even comes close to the spirit of
this is iTunes Match, whenever that finally happens.

~~~
psychotik
#2 (marking selective chunks of music for offline playback) is available as a
paid addon. Some of the other items are stuff we're working on, is all I can
say at this point. Stay tuned.

------
jnfr
Spotify, Rdio and all these other sites need to open up their catalog to local
and independent artists. That's one of the reasons iTunes was so popular --
they allowed Youtube singers and other aspiring artists to post their songs
and allow people to purchase them. They tapped into this long tail and both
Apple and these indie artists made money from it.

These companies can't compete with the big players by offering less. No one
cares about the piracy thing, they just want their music, and they want the
music they are looking for. 'Social discovery' can be great and all but if I'm
looking for a very specific, hard-to-find song, chances are I'm going to find
it on Youtube instead and forget about Spotify/Rdio, etc. I think Grooveshark
let users upload their own content, but failed in that aspect because their
catalog ended up being way too messy.

Difficult problem to solve, wonder who will prevail.

/edit typo

~~~
scelerat
At Mog (where I work) we have a highly responsive catalog department. We can
pretty much get anything that is already in digital format. This includes
bands who are distributed solely through CDBaby or other non-label services.
Labels push stuff to us on a weekly basis, but for smaller bands, it may be a
matter of making a request.

Then there's the flip side: bands who don't do digital distribution at all.
Tapes and vinyl. There's nothing a digital music service can do for these.
Unfortunately, a lot of my favorite bands are like this. They'll take
convincing.

~~~
zargon
How do I create a Mog account without using Facebook?

------
Smudge
If Spotify had Grooveshark's interface I would buy a premium account in a
heartbeat. When I first opened Spotify's desktop client I was baffled by how
clunky it felt.

~~~
nroach
I too really wanted to like Spotify. But the Spotify UI always felt like
_work_ rather than enjoyment and exploration. Unfortunately, until and unless
Grooveshark can solve their legal issues and obtain solid licensing, they're
going to remain largely locked out of the iOS market (except for an aging an
increasingly incompatible legacy app).

------
ericdykstra
For me, it seems ridiculous to pay for a subscription music service that has a
paltry catalog with less than half of the albums I want to listen to. That,
and I can't be guaranteed of the quality of the file, if it's transcoded, etc.
I have decent headphones and prefer to use them to their full potential.

For people who just want to listen to albums, buying albums still seems like
the way to go (whether you use iTunes or Amazon, buy CDs or records).

~~~
scelerat
What are the artists that you're not finding on Spotify? Are they available
digitally at all?

------
juliano_q
Until this moment no service convinced me to change my 10-year-old habit of
buy/download the music, organize the tags and put it on my mobile device.
Since I bought my first iPod until today with my Nexus S I am still doing this
and it is very practical to me.

~~~
nosequel
My thoughts exactly. I can buy a cd, rip to flac / mp3, listen to the mp3's
everywhere mobile, and flac in my home theater or on my nice headphones. All
of the cd's I buy still costs me less than some subscription service.

~~~
ChrisLTD
Yes, but you _could_ listen to more music for the same price. Even if there
are only 2 new albums I want to listen to a month, it's break-even to get an
rdio/mog/spotify subscription vs. buying the albums.

~~~
juliano_q
Another difference is that by buying music the albuns are yours _forever_ ,
and with a service like this when you stop paying you got nothing left.

------
md224
I've been using Rhapsody for a while and the selection is pretty solid.

~~~
ubercore
I'm sure it's better now, but Rhapsody lost me by having _the worst web player
I've ever experienced_. It's hard to overstate how bad it was. I just can't
bring myself to go back, even though I realize they've worked on it. It was
_so_. _bad_.

~~~
itsandrew
I was in the same boat. It made the platform unusable. That coupled with some
of the worst and most apathetic customer support I have ever experienced, I
swore to never go back.

------
owlmusic
The argument against the Desktop app seems unfounded, the author states: "I
don’t usually like playlists and I’m the kind of guy who enjoys listening to
whole albums, front to back". I'm of the same opinion, but when finding a new
album to listen to I simply dray this into a new playlist and they become one
and the same. This would also negate the argument against the mobile app as
well.

~~~
kenjackson
I'm using Spotify right now. I just pick the album, click the first song and
it plays the album. Am I doing something wrong? Why do I need a playlist?

~~~
timmaah
This is the way I use it as well.

What I would like is some way to tag or bookmark an album. I find I stumble
upon a new artist or album I like, but then forget what it was later in the
week.

~~~
gunnerb
Why not create a playlist called "bookmarked"?

~~~
thisisblurry
This is exactly what I did. Then it's as easy as dragging the song and/or
album straight to it. That's it.

------
killion
The intro made me snort...

"I’ve just canceled my membership with Spotify and my narccicism makes me want
to tell you all why."

~~~
ajslater
The number of grandstanding blog posts where people publicly declare why
they're not using a particular website is a metric of success.

------
phzbOx
I've tried lots of services and apps, and Spotify is my favorite. Of course,
it's not perfect but it's way better than what the author suggests in this
article.

About the "Playlist a whole album is too complicated"; I'm not sure what he
mean by that as you click on a song in the album and it plays all the album..
this could hardly get more intuitive than this.

Of course, there's not all songs but at least they let you upload your own
local music (Unlike grooveshark for instance).

Unlike the author, I really like the concept of playlist in Spotify.
Basically, it's simply a list of _pointers_ to the real song. So, basically,
if you want to save the album, just create a playlist with the name of the
album.. in fact, it does that for you automatically if you want.

On the negative side, as someone else pointed out, I wish they had a better
"Suggesting new music". Yes, there's a radio but I feel it's not really good.
They always show the same songs and most often than not they're not in my
taste. I mean, I've got 1000+ songs in my playlists, I'm sure they could use
those datas to guess a little better what I like.

A missing feature that I loved from grooveshark was: "Show me a playlist who
contains _that song_ ". It was a nice way for me to discover new
artists/songs. I'm not sure why it's not in Spotify as, unlike guessing a good
songs, this is fairly straightforward to implement.

Another thing that is annoying is how the sync mode works in the desktop app.
Basically, if you're in "online mode", it syncs it.. while offline don't use
internet. The problem with that is sometime I want to "be online" to listen to
the radio or something, but I don't want it to download all songs that need to
be synced. (Say when tethering from my iPhone). Also, in the desktop app, if
spotify starts when I'm not connected to internet, and _then_ get connected,
it will stay in offline mode forever.. there's no way to "turn on online
mode". I have to restart the app and then it notices that I'm on internet. And
yeah, same problem, since I'm on internet it will automatically start to sync
everything.

And, finally, I wish it had a web interface. Yeah, we get it, with the desktop
app you have more freedom to implement whatever you want. But still, a
materialistic web version to listen the radio or your song might be useful..

So, in summary, it's not perfect, but it's the best solution I've found. And,
it's legal :-) (Even though I had to _hack the system_ to get it working in
Canada as Spotify is illegal here.)

~~~
eridius
If you start playing an album by simply playing a song in it, then Spotify
won't stop when it reaches the end of the album. Instead it moves on to
whatever song is listed after the last album song. I'm an album listener too,
and that _really_ bugged me when I was testing out Spotify.

~~~
forza
Just click on the album title first...

------
k-mcgrady
I've been using Spotify since it first launched in the UK a couple of years
ago and have been a premium subscriber for over a year. Spotify's cat log is
excellent. I have an eclectic taste and most things are available. I do find
the odd thing missing but it tends to be classic rock bands which didn't even
allow iTunes to sell their music until recently.

I find the desktop app to be great. It's very lightweight and simple to use.
To add tracks to your library you star them. Simple. You can also star albums
to add those to your library.

The mobile app is the weakest link but not too bad. It has full library access
(starred tracks), integration with the iPod library, full search, and offline
capabilities. The UI isn't great but it has all the features needed.

------
glenstansberry
The reason why I switched back to Rdio? They use your computer as a P2P
network.

[http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/topics/how_exactly_does_s...](http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/topics/how_exactly_does_spotify_utilise_my_internet_connection)

------
lukin0110
Like all products, spotify is a constantly improving product. The desktop app
is not that great, but the fact that i can access a lot of music within a few
clicks without doing anything illegal makes me happy . If you have an exotic
special taste you'll have difficulties with every service i guess. I used to
listen a lot to last.fm ... but i prefer "on demand" music like spotify
offers. The service still needs to improve a lot, but they will get there in
the end ... its the new way of listening to music. It doesn't make sence to me
to "buy" a song on itunes, since everything is moving to the cloud, "owning" a
song really doesnt make sence.

------
nicwest
spotify is generally non hardware/os/file dependant. iTunes is not any of
these things. this is why I'm staying. sure you have to compromise a little on
selection, but to me at least the previous benefits greatly out weigh this
deficiency.

------
grandalf
Is there a way to disable all "sharing" of what I'm listening to? I really
don't want to share that info. It appears that one has to choose "private
listening" whenever starting the app.

~~~
parbo
There is a checkbox in preferences that turns off posting to facebook
persistently.

------
Legion
I'm using Rdio and I've been pretty happy with it.

Before I plopped down my money, I did a comparison with Spotify on the
artists/genres I cared about, and Rdio pretty much matched Spotify blow for
blow.

~~~
ChrisLTD
Rdio was definitely lean at first (they didn't even have the Pixies!) but now
they have a pretty solid US catalogue. Plus their mobile apps and music
discovery features are superior to Spotify.

------
bomatson
Grooveshark 4 life

~~~
kin
I <3 Grooveshark's UI, but every time I see 50 versions of one song I cringe.

~~~
bomatson
Haha true, but I'd always rather see 50 than none

------
prg318
I know that these are fundamentally different services, but if you have a
decent home internet connection and a digital music collection you can easily
set up a streaming server to listen to your tunes anywhere. I personally use
Sockso, which made my mind up to not purchase spotify. I heard Subsonic is
good as well. I only pay for the most basic cable internet package and I have
no issue streaming my tunes anywhere I may happen to be.

------
b3b0p
I wish I could favorite an artist somehow. Am I missing this option some
place? It seems so obvious to me. I like listening to albums, not a random mix
of tracks usually and want to be able to keep tabs on my go to artists.

Right now I have resorted to adding full albums to a new playlist so I can see
artists names as there are times I can't recall every artist I've liked
listening to in the past.

------
kreek
I'm pretty happy with my account, the one downside is that with iTunes my wife
and I could share an account. With Spotify only one account can be playing at
a time. I realize they do this so people don't share accounts with multiple
people, but it would be much better if you had five registered devices like
iTunes allows.

------
jarin
Spotify seems to have fixed the problem where the desktop app sucks up ALL of
your outgoing bandwidth (although it is still bad enough to lag YouTube and
other streaming video), so I started using it again.

However, would it kill any of these streaming music apps to add an equalizer?

Edit: Also, I highly recommend EarBits for music discovery.

~~~
k-mcgrady
I never suffered those bandwidth issues, even on poor connections. Could it
have been a problem on your network?

And why would you be listening to Spotify and streaming video? :)

~~~
jarin
Pause Spotify, watch a streaming video. Spotify continues to serve P2P
connections even if it's not actively playing music.

------
ticks
I like to keep an eye on bands in the metal genre... one issue I noticed is
during (and after) the US launch, quite a few metal bands pulled their music
off Spotify. Perhaps the US launch was a big enough milestone for these niche
labels to decide whether or not to continue using the service?

------
jinushaun
He mentions selection. One of the problems I have with Spotify is region lock
out. I'm American, but listen to a wide selection of music from different
countries and genres. It's frustrating to see music available in one country
not be available in another country.

------
nvarsj
The convenience of being able to _instantly_ search and listen to the universe
of music cannot be understated. It is a killer feature. iTunes Match is a step
backwards compared to this - anyone that thinks otherwise is kidding
themselves.

~~~
kin
I wouldn't compare the two. I'd use both. You can't possibly dismiss iTunes
Match as a killer feature itself could you?

~~~
nvarsj
With iTunes Match, you have a tiny subset of all possible music to select
from. Why limit yourself?

~~~
kin
Well, not that my iTunes library is larger than my online streaming library,
but it has a larger library of songs I listen to than my online streaming
library if that makes any sense to you.

Also, my iTunes library is available offline cross-platform. I'm not limiting
myself, which is why I'd say I'd use both. I'm expanding myself. + my offline
library is more organized. Am I alone in this viewpoint?

------
Laurentvw
So he's going to use iTunes, Grooveshark and Pandora. Now that seems, well,
cumbersome to me.

Too bad Spotify bothers him -- even though it may lack some songs and
features, I don't see why you can't enjoy Spotify for most use cases.

~~~
kin
I think the library is probably the biggest thing for OP. I mean, when I first
tried using Spotify and found out they only had a single track from Blink-182,
I immediately stopped using it. They have their entire catalog now, but, I'd
imagine still not some songs for OP which, if a service doesn't have an
artist/song you want to listen to, why use it?

~~~
barkingtoad
If you own the music, you can add it, and it is then available to you inside
Spotify.

------
muhfuhkuh
So, you cancelled spotify to replace it with 3 other competing or related
products with their own unique interfaces and quirks. I think that somewhat
complicates matters.

Most, I think, will stick to spotify in that scenario.

------
cageface
Try rdio again. The selection is much improved and the interface is better
than spotify. Plus, they don't shove Facebook down your throat.

------
nhangen
For 9 bucks/month, I'm saving more than enough money to justify the service.
When I want to find new music, I use Turntable.fm or Pandora.

------
joelhaasnoot
I don't buy music, don't ever pay for it either. But Spotify has very much
upped the "scam" factor recently, by first cutting from 20 to 10 free hours
per month, and now not even showing how many hours are remaining till you run
out. Also, not until you find and read the long terms and conditions do you
find out the first "6 months" (which already seem to be up for me) are a trial
of premium, after that you get 10 hours a month free, but they won't tell you
till you have 0 minutes left.

