I work at a large company so get a lot of emails. This could conceivably cutdown on the amount of "Nice job!" type emails that don't really have much substance.
To be fair, Spotify’s recommendation system is the only algorithmic content feed that I feel actually gets me the kind of stuff I want rather than just exploiting my psyche, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Spotify’s AI integration is likewise the only of it’s kind that has real benefit.
… nothing, because people on the internet complain about everything. Every time. I mean, this service isn’t even out yet, so there hasn’t even been a chance to evaluate their music discovery algorithm.
I understand and relate with the frustration regarding the whole “more streaming services, higher fees” thing that’s still continuing in the industry, though. I mean, $20 a month for just music?! There are competing services that offer lossless audio at a lower price. But yeah—streamflation sucks!
Even that’s a fairly new standard for calling something AI. Video Game enemy algorithms have always been called AI, for instance, regardless of their underlying technologies. That’s part of why people tend to use ML (Machine Learning) as an alternative term: AI has meant a lot of things over the years and the term is so general that using it to refer to e.g. LLMs (Large Language Models) is just confusing
IDK I think it’s pretty cool to have a voice that knows my name and tells me the theme of the next few tracks. I really wish I could give it some more feedback but as it is it’s a small but nice addition sometimes that isn’t possible without the recent AI advancements. I wouldn’t pay more for it though.
There’s way too much emphasis on a few songs from each artist that seem to make them more money, or are otherwise pushed by the record companies. AI or not, if it gets me deeper tracks in my daily mixes and artist radios, I’ll pay the extra for that and lossless.
I used to really enjoy the Discover Weekly lists but for the past few years it just pushes what sounds like AI generated music. It’s like a bunch of covers of popular music done by people I’ve never even heard of (who probably cost Spotify less $ per play). I’ve had better luck with stuff like Spot-a-like recommending new/similar music that I actually might like.
There’s a lot of commotion about how so many Jazz tracks that pop up in Spotify playlists come from clearly made up bands with one or two songs, millions of views, and no internet presence anywhere outside of Spotify.
As if Spotify wasn‘t bordering bloatware territory already. Just give me a music subscription service without the dozenth of functions I will never use or „recommendations“ that are clearly just paid ads and don‘t fit my taste at all.
InnerTune is what finally got me to ditch Spotify. It's free, no account required, uses YouTube Music (so imo, a wider range of content) AND shuffle is genuinely random.
So they’re using our data and also getting paid for it
Yeah? Isn't that the point of paying for a music service? I pay, they give me access to music and curate it in a way that would be enjoyable to me. How could they do that without some information about me? This is a prime example of what a company should use your data for.
My comment was in the present tense. I thought that much was self-explanatory.
Tidal offers their “lossless” audio at their lowest tier, for Spotify it’ll cost $20/month. The article we’re all here commenting on mentions how Spotify previously announced and then failed to launch their Hifi service.
Suffice it to say I don’t think this is as clear cut of a case as you’re making it out to be
I’ve had a Spotify sub for 10+ years. I’m getting really close to ditching it because imo the app design is getting worse as prices increase… I was super disappointed in the car thing too. Spotube is a really nice alternative that’s foss. Checkout spotube.netlify.app.
Yesss, it's UX was the main selling point it had over competitors and why I also kept with it. It has slowly started going down hill with all these library and playlist changes they have seemingly made for no reason at all, while they keep ignoring user requested features. Will check out this spotube.
I’ve been using Apple Music for a couple years now and I’m pretty satisfied with it. I moved because Spotify pays artists atrociously and Apple is at least a little better. There hasn’t been much I haven’t been able to find, since there are a lot of services out there that will handle the release of music to multiple platforms easily.
I went from flac hoarding to Apple Music because they have lossless by default, and I love it. I still hoard flacs, but now when I’m not at home I have most all of the songs I love, lossless.
Tidal’s pretty good, they cost the same as spotify but all accounts have access to lossless. The playlists it makes for me are no worse than spotify’s and I can sleep happy knowing the artists I listen to get compensated better than on either Spotify or Apple Music.
I also feel the app’s design helps me see music in the context of the album it was released in instead of as random tracks, which has made me reconnect with some kinds of music I’d grown apart from after I got Spotify.
Reddit, reddit is on fire we don’t need no water, let that mother fucker burn, burn mother fucker. Now when we came out, we told you it was just about 3pa bad treatments, Then spez had to send internal letter with his motherfuckin' opinion about how futile the blackout is. Well this is how we gon' do this
Fuck spez, fuck reddit admins
Fuck any mods that are not protesting ,
And if you want to be down with reddit API decision , then fuck you too.
I think what pisses me off the most is that no matter what happens, Spez will somehow walk away with enough of that sweet, sweet CEO money to fund my life several generations over and will probably get another sweet, sweet CEO position somewhere else to destroy another company because he’s got “experience”.
The fact that Relay can stay free of charge while "exploring subscription options" means Reddit modified their terms with some developers. The original deal announced at the end of May meant devs would incur charges starting July 1, although they wouldn't have to pay for those charges until August. That would mean racking up potentially millions in costs right away.
Reddit said they would work with developers who kept communication open, but then they wouldn't answer emails. If a deal was made with Relay it would have been very last minute and therefore rather unprofessional.
I used Relay but will not reinstall because it is temporarily free. I am done with Reddit. They don't respect their users or recognize where their value derives from.
I also suspect that there were inconsistencies between pricing based on the 3rd party app in question. I don't mean that Apollo was being charged more (in proportion) for having a larger userbase compared to apps like Relay or narwhal, but that Apollo was being charged almost double per unit to access API than Relay or narwhal. I am reading between the lines of articles published two *weeks ago about this because it didn't make sense to me why these smaller apps would be able to afford the business model if Apollo had a $20M bill to pay in August.
What gets my goat is why didn't reddit ever just headhunt Christian or other 3PA developers and bring them into reddit corporate to build out their native app? That's what Google or Microsoft would have done to quash competition. Or, to be truly evil, hired Christian and then never let him work on apps again with both an NDA and a non-compete in place.
Huffman regularly calls reddit unprofitable with a heavy dose of ire, but I think there could have been a way to bring a reputable 3PA dev into the fold to keep the reddit native app at least comparable in UX.
They DID do that, when they bought Alien Blue. Then they promptly destroyed it. Good UX != profits. So they butchered it into some sort of zombie app where everything was designed to make them money. And that’s why they are pushing so hard to make EVERYONE use it.
If anything, they hate 3PA devs because they show users what the experience could be like - how good and clean it could be - if they didn’t have a greedy corporation trying to sabotage everything.
They don’t need to hire anyone to pacify them. Reddit doesn’t gaf what happens to the devs, whether they are pacified or not. It’s like a tiny baby fish cursing the ship that just harvested 120,000 fish in a net. The ship laughs, and sails away.
Hopefully things will be better once federation grows in popularity. I know I’ve been using it daily since this all started. But sadly I have to augment with reddit because there just aren’t enough people here yet.
I usually criticize these journalists for being a step or two behind the actual news with regards to social media movements. In this case though, at least they clearly state they are simply reviewing the past events.
As a result of that one little disclaimer line, this is actually a decent article and a reasonable bit of reporting. Even managed to be pretty impartial. 8/10.
It’s almost like loudly announcing contempt for your userbase is not good for a website where virtually 100% of their value is derived from the loyalty of their users
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