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Does Spotify even try?


C-Man

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Using Spotify makes you realize why being a DJ is an actual job that takes talent. I use it to listen to music, obviously, but going to your liked songs and trying to play them on shuffle is a laughably stupid endeavor.

 

98.9 is a good station in Austin that still uses live DJs. It is mostly very good.

Edited by Pam Cummings
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If I may…I’m growing tired of Sirius XM. 


Sirius has the same problem as radio in that it’s the same 50 songs on repeat. There are a few channels that don’t have this problem. First Wave is great for ‘78-‘88 new wave, post punk, and indie-ish of that era. Deep Tracks and Classic Vinyl are solid.

The one that pisses me off is Lithium. So much potential but it’s the same 10 bands about 99% of the time.

I did use Spotify to build a 2,000+ song playlist of Gen X music: grunge, industrial, trip hop, indie, college rock, alt rock, Brit pop, post punk, post new wave, local scene, etc. I went really deep into the related artists tab to add a bunch of bands I’d never heard before but were from the same ‘80-‘99 era.
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On 1/28/2023 at 12:26 PM, Pam Cummings said:

Using Spotify makes you realize why being a DJ is an actual job that takes talent. I use it to listen to music, obviously, but going to your liked songs and trying to play them on shuffle is a laughably stupid endeavor.

 

98.9 is a good station in Austin that still uses live DJs. It is mostly very good.

Thanks. 
Unfortunately, I don’t live in Austin. 
I’m in the DFW-area where radio flat out sucks. It’s the only thing keeping me subscribed to Sirius XM.

 

 

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On 1/28/2023 at 8:55 PM, Deej said:

KUTX is great. Guy who used to work for me is a DJ there, now. 

 

 

 

 

Big fan of KUTX... always something good to hear.  Have a Sun Radio DJ in our hood... another one.  Austin radio is excellent... lots of options.  Houston was very meh.  

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On 1/29/2023 at 8:25 AM, CooterBrown said:

 


Sirius has the same problem as radio in that it’s the same 50 songs on repeat. There are a few channels that don’t have this problem. First Wave is great for ‘78-‘88 new wave, post punk, and indie-ish of that era. Deep Tracks and Classic Vinyl are solid.

The one that pisses me off is Lithium. So much potential but it’s the same 10 bands about 99% of the time.

I did use Spotify to build a 2,000+ song playlist of Gen X music: grunge, industrial, trip hop, indie, college rock, alt rock, Brit pop, post punk, post new wave, local scene, etc. I went really deep into the related artists tab to add a bunch of bands I’d never heard before but were from the same ‘80-‘99 era.

 

First Wave and XMU are the two stations I spend almost all of my time with. XMU can be a bit repetitive for sure.

 

19 hours ago, NTVTXN said:

Thanks. 
Unfortunately, I don’t live in Austin. 
I’m in the DFW-area where radio flat out sucks. It’s the only thing keeping me subscribed to Sirius XM.

 

 

KXT is pretty good. Nice variety of genres too. I don't listen to any terrestrial DFW radio except The Ticket, KXT with an occasional foray over to The Freak.

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1 hour ago, C-Man said:

First Wave

First Wave comes and goes I find.

 

I listen to the 70s through 90s mostly, with Beatles, Underground Garage, Mosaic, E Street all honorable mentions, and a fair chunk of Classic Vinyl/Rewind and the Spectrum. I'll wander down to Ozzy and Hair Nation every now and again.

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I actually.... don't always find it super simple to bounce around in the "personalized for you" type playlists on Spotify, but I do think that they are fairly decent for giving you a bunch of different flavors of "songs that you have liked with some other similar songs mixed in". I think Spotify is much better if you spend time exploring, which I tend to do by bouncing around to specific artists as well as listening to "artist radio" for when I want to find similar things.

 

image.thumb.png.7ebf3b6e8a25dfc1e6f8cfc9310b98a1.png

there's both not a ton of range in there and not a ton of range there. probably ammo to roast me as well but this kind of mix of mixes in addition to the artist radio stations and stuff like release radar, not bad. I also sometimes have decent luck with Spotify managed playlists if I can find one whose description matches the vibe I'm going for but may contain a bunch of shit I've never heard.

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i blame both of those on being a dad

nada surf is a weird one - both "Let Go" and "Lucky" are albums I visit every so often but I don't know when the last time I did thatwas.

That 4*Town song is actually kinda great. I think Billy EIlish wrote it (this is from Disny/Pixar's "Turning Red") and it's a really great 2000s era boy band song. The lyric is "Never met nobody, like you", the 22 month old has latched on to that movie and sings "No potty, achoo".

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On 1/30/2023 at 11:30 AM, C-Man said:

First Wave and XMU are the two stations I spend almost all of my time with. XMU can be a bit repetitive for sure.

 

KXT is pretty good. Nice variety of genres too. I don't listen to any terrestrial DFW radio except The Ticket, KXT with an occasional foray over to The Freak.

Agreed. KXT is pretty good And I do listen on KUTX when we’re in town for games. 
I guess I just wish I was in college again…LOL and I didn’t even got to UT.

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Put me in the pro Spotify camp. Not sure how having a giant portion of the music from planet earth available right there on your phone can suck.

I keep Shazam as bottom right app on my phone to quickly nab random songs I hear on radio, movies, parties, etc and dig that it integrates straight to a dedicated Spotify list for easy relistening.

And I’ll happily pay $10 a month for Sirius to avoid commercials when in the car. I spin between XMU 35 down to Beatles at like 17. Such a diverse span in between. Plus the comedy and live sports.

The best of what I find via digital tees up select vinyl for what I really want to own.

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Currently using TIDAL. The app sucks. But my main listening station, my computer, has a sound system good enough that I can actually hear the quality difference.

If I were to switch to anything, I'd probably switch to Apple Music, since it's the only streaming service left that lets you upload your own music. And I say this as an Android and Windows user.

Spotify has the best app by far, though. I'm not as fond of their business practices or their audio quality.

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  • 1 month later...

New “DJ” feature is… alright I think. From the Home Screen, click the music bubble up top and it’ll be right there. It takes you through some micro playlists and introduces each one. It still doesn’t understand that I don’t want Disney stuff unless I explicitly ask for it but it played some new stuff and some stuff that I know but haven’t listened to in a bit.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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https://old.reddit.com/r/Jazz/comments/wrhml3/spotify_is_making_fake_jazz_artists/

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/remember-spotify-fake-artist-theyre-still-going-strong-and-still-attracting-scandal/

 

This is apparently pretty old news that happens to be new to me.  Fake artists all over those 'mood' playlists.  So they don't have to pay out to real artists.  

 

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  • 3 months later...
They really need to figure out filtering out what my toddler makes me listen to
IMG_5186.thumb.jpeg.68d5682eb7c54a8db317a7508ae583b9.jpeg
Ha, I'm sadly very careful about what I'll listen to on Spotify because I don't want to fuck up my algorithm. Buddy in our FW office said they have extra spots in our company box at Dickey's on Saturday for somebody named Jon Pardi. I had no idea who that was so my wife hit it up on YouTube to play for me during our walk. About 15 seconds in, I decided going was a hard 'no.' I could've pulled it up on Spotify to find out for myself but wouldn't have dared.
Anyway, I pay for the family sub for this very reason. My kids are older than yours, though, at 15 (soon to be 16) and 18. Maybe set up a family account and peg the kids to a separate device, old phone/iPod/iPad. That is if it's that important to you.
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Does anyone else feel like the autoplay, stations, "made for you" stuff has gone downhill? Spotify thinks that I want to listen to the same 60 songs apparently. I can go to a new album I've been listening to and start a radio and it will just populate it with the same fucking artists over and over again. It plays the same songs over and over again on autoplay after the song I picked finishes playing.

I'm struggling to have it play new music or discover stuff for me. Thinking about finding a new service just not sure what else is out there that works well on android.

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On 12/8/2023 at 10:54 AM, ztejas said:

Does anyone else feel like the autoplay, stations, "made for you" stuff has gone downhill? Spotify thinks that I want to listen to the same 60 songs apparently. I can go to a new album I've been listening to and start a radio and it will just populate it with the same fucking artists over and over again. It plays the same songs over and over again on autoplay after the song I picked finishes playing.

I'm struggling to have it play new music or discover stuff for me. Thinking about finding a new service just not sure what else is out there that works well on android.

That was my initial complaint when I started this thread back in 2019.

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i'm pretty new to spotify, well pay spotify anyway.  i'm loving it.  the one thing i dont like is the daily mixes, which arent so daily for one thing, but mainly they are pretty much just liked songs.  i want to hear something new.  i already have a liked songs playlist, so why do i need them again on daily mix 1, daily mix 2, etc?

one of the cool features i'm digging is once you find an artist you like you can really do some deep diving.  they list tour dates, discography, and playlists that they've submitted of songs that they like.   i find those to  be excellent ways to hear new music.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 1/28/2023 at 9:35 PM, texashorne said:

Remember when we heard a song in the radio and liked it.. we had to drive 15 minutes to Best Buy and pay 15 dollars for a CD that maybe had 2 more good songs on it? Then on the way home you're jammin and you hit a pothole and the MF skips? 

I agree Spotify sucks.

Some record stores used to have a huge (physical) catalog of music that you had to use to learn an artists' discography, or to search by song title. It used to be the only way to search but you needed to know the artist or song title to use it. It existed before the best buys of the world but I'm not sure when it went away and I can't remember what it was called. Absolutely massive though, with a large metal holder that held all the pages together, and stores would regularly be sent pages to add to it. 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Chopper said:

Some record stores used to have a huge (physical) catalog of music that you had to use to learn an artists' discography, or to search by song title. It used to be the only way to search but you needed to know the artist or song title to use it. It existed before the best buys of the world but I'm not sure when it went away and I can't remember what it was called. Absolutely massive though, with a large metal holder that held all the pages together, and stores would regularly be sent pages to add to it. 

 

 

I bought my first cassette, Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, this way. Went into Mother's Music and got out the book. It was like a mega phone book

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I loved it when I would gamble on a tape or CD and it turned out to be full of bangers. Alice In Chains “Facelift” is a great example.

Some record stores had listening stations where you could sit there and listen to a CD before you bought it. That’s right kids, you had to get in your car, drive to the record store, and sit there on an uncomfortable stool with crappy headphones and listen to the paltry selection of CD’s from the preview list on shitty headphones.

I use Spotify every day but I hate a lot about it. I don’t know what the answer is.

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21 hours ago, G650 said:

I bought my first cassette, Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, this way. Went into Mother's Music and got out the book. It was like a mega phone book

I had to phone a friend for the answer. Phonolog. This is how we did it, kids.

550021-40dd81e2-phonolog_allinone_record

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The DJ feature on Spotify is winning me back. It's honestly pretty fucking good. Only thing I don't like is that it arbitrarily cuts out beginnings and endings of songs (like a DJ would).

It does a much better job of scanning my listening history and presenting me with stuff I like but have forgotten about or haven't listened to in awhile. 

It isn't amazing for discovering new music but nothing is going to be perfect. I find it's really good for spinning off of a song into a nice listening sesh. It also does a good job of mixing up genres I like fairly often but not too often. 

I'd recommend giving it a go if you're a Spotify customer. It's a little hokey with occasional AI DJ-voice intros and breaks but you can just skip those to get to the next song. 

On 12/14/2023 at 2:27 PM, thrillhammer said:

i'm pretty new to spotify, well pay spotify anyway.  i'm loving it.  the one thing i dont like is the daily mixes, which arent so daily for one thing, but mainly they are pretty much just liked songs.  i want to hear something new.  i already have a liked songs playlist, so why do i need them again on daily mix 1, daily mix 2, etc?

one of the cool features i'm digging is once you find an artist you like you can really do some deep diving.  they list tour dates, discography, and playlists that they've submitted of songs that they like.   i find those to  be excellent ways to hear new music.

See above. 

BTW - for anyone reading - I had tried it awhile back and thought it was shitty. But tried it again and have had a lot of success. Not sure if they improved their algo or if I just got a bad run the first time.

Edited by ztejas
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14 hours ago, ztejas said:

The DJ feature on Spotify is winning me back. It's honestly pretty fucking good. Only thing I don't like is that it arbitrarily cuts out beginnings and endings of songs (like a DJ would).

It does a much better job of scanning my listening history and presenting me with stuff I like but have f

Go to Settings > Playback > and under Crossfade, make sure Automix is turned off

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I remember coming across a song I liked on the radio (104.1 or 107.5) and then hoping hoping hoping that instead of just fading to the next song fuckin Sam Malone would hop on and say "that was Low by Cracker, got some Gin Blossoms coming up for you next". Because otherwise how the fuck am I going to know what entire album to buy and put into my giant caselogic zipper case in order to hear that one song whenever I want it.

 

I will say - Spotify will play me the same shit over and over again, but it does gradually mix some stuff in and it will accelerate if I hear something I like and then hop over to the "this is [bandname]" station or "[bandname] radio" or start going through the "also appears on" playlists. I mean, I went through a big 90s hip hop thing last year and it quickly got me into a lot of stuff I didn't know.

Edited by Celery Man
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