spotify takedown would be better framed as a post on ethical listening it's great to have access to a network of music like spotify, but we should recognise that it's far from the only network this is internet music K1 Kardashev music
spotify is bad for artists
https://thequietus.com/articles/33544-spotify-plans-changes-to-royalties-payout-model https://thequietus.com/articles/33611-spotify-royalties
from a ux perspective it also sucks. not the ux of listening to a song, but of long term musical development and exploration.
i found an article that said most people stop listening to new music around their mid twenties, fosislizing their musical tastes
that seems bizarre to me - i love discovering new music, why would i ever want to stop?
spotify's value proposition is that it can offer you basically everything you're likely to listen to, basicqlly instantly, in as good a quality as you're lilely to want. music for the masses! it even has features like mixes and radios which will compile losts of songs it thinks you'll like, based on what you've already listened to, and what your friends have listened to.
but contains the seeds of its own hoisting; it is predicting what you'll like, with what you've already listened to. this flies straight in the face of what makes discovering new music so fun in the first placd, which is the curveballs.
UI changing the action of 'like' from a heart to explicitly adding songs to a playlist called 'liked songs'. it seems most likely to me that this is how it always worked under the hood, but has only recently been made obvious on the frontend.
the physical formats of yesteryear developed the EP and LP formats, informing what we now call an album - an ordered collection of music, ordered with intent by the artist to express a narrative
the notion of a 'no-skip' album is new: a complimentary thing to say, that each song was worth listening to, but it seems a bit backhanded? for me, when I'm listening to an album i am listening specifically to that album, not the songs individually. how frequently do i watch individual scenes from films, instead of the whole thing?
albums too, are 'playlists' in spotify's eyes. by default, it will continue to play music after the end of an album, based on your existing tastes and the album which just finished.
i think this has the effect of devaluing the album format?
instead of songs i like, i have a playlist which is my liked songs. instead of an album, i have a playlist containing the tracks thereof. i fear the ubiquity of spotify is pslushing its playlist-centrism to the fore of music listening, and doing so silently and posibly even unintentionally? is this lock-in?
adele open letter album shuffle button https://theconversation.com/adele-has-successfully-asked-spotify-to-remove-shuffle-from-albums-heres-why-thats-important-for-musicians-172301
listening modes endurance/escapism * exercise * tattoos * travelling
why are we so ready to disengage with the world around us? - cars are soundproofed boxes - we listen to music while travelling - escapism media in general?
mixes based on what Spotify sees as one's taste are really jist regurgitating it back to you with no care for what made it valuable to you in the first place. very much relating to the interpolation problem of generative ai
https://coryd.dev/posts/2024/renting-your-music-means-accepting-that-it-will-disappear/ https://coryd.dev/posts/2024/the-amount-of-money-spotify-makes-should-be-close-to-zero/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedpress.me&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+coryd https://blog.raed.dev/posts/goodbye_spotify
An old man in Calcurra would walk to get water from a well every day. He'd carry a clay pot and lower it by hand slowly, all the way down, careful not to let it hit the sides of the well and break.
Once it was full, he'd raise the pot slowly and carefully again. It was a focused, time-consuming act.
One day, a traveller noticed the old man engaged in this difficult task. More experienced with mechanics, he showed the old man how to use a pulley system.
"This will allow the pot to go straight down quickly," the traveller explained, "the fill with water and come back up, without hitting the sides. It's much easier and the pot will be just as full with much less work."
The old man looked at him and said, "I think I'm going to keep doing it the way I always have. I really have to think about each movement and there's a great deal of care that goes into doing it right. I'd imagine if I were to use the pulley, it would become easy and I might even start thinking about something else. If I put so likttle care and time into it, what might the water taste like? It couldn't possibly taste as good."
Is Spotify really the focus of what I want to express? Or is it a care study to illustrate it?
BBC News - Why do concert tickets now cost as much as a games console? - BBC News https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2kdxlv8x05o