New qobuz update has added a daily mix into the, um, mix. They don’t seem particularly great so far though
It looks like they’ve fixed scrobbling though, so it no longer records multiple instances of the same song if you happen to pause it, which is good
I had a look at the daily mix today and it had bands that I listen to on it. Progress!
But Scrobbling seems to have stopped working today, so 
That maybe why it’s working for me then, if its going through my 3rd party scrobbler instead of the app. False alarm!
same, grumble
not sure if this is the right thread but I watched this & it seems pretty ominous
basically we’re at a disastrous juncture of AI slop, bot playlists, loop library beats, unrigourous content-ID checks & general ID checks + race-to-the-bottom economics at both the streamer & digital distributor end
seriously makes me wonder how far we are from the streaming ‘economy’ as we know it totally imploding or mutating to something else
Grumpy old man etc but I would be absolutely fine with streaming coming to an end. It’s cheapened music in so many ways.
I broadly agree, though would obviously feel sympathetic toward all of those folks fucked over by having given all their money to spotify et al in return for having no physical or tangible product to show for it
I was actually talking to someone just yesterday about the bubble bursting on the subscription economy as a whole and what that might mean in terms of everyone’s cultural participation having been sort of vaporware for a decade and a half
wonder if it’ll happen
true but also feel like streaming has lead me to more gigs than ever before, since I can go see someone brand new who’s only had an album out for a week or so, but still be confident I like what I’ve heard and its a good use of my money/time
whether bands make anything off gigs anymore to actually make that a worthwhile achievement I dunno, but at least means im showing up to more actual physical cultural events
Streaming has meant that i’ve been able to listen to great music/art that i never would have otherwise heard. Good or bad? Who can say
yeah, it’s absolutely a boon for the try-before-you-buy consumer of other cultural artefacts & events outside of the platforms for sure. You could say the same for the pirate bay/limewire days though and I don’t think they were funding AI drone warfare technologies … or maybe they were I dunno
It’s just this thing of the ‘meter’ always running on your subs and if you don’t pay up every month/year cycle you lose everything, coupled with you accruing more and more each cycle so that there’s even more to lose each time…
I know it’s purely anecdotal but I know a lot of pals in the culture industries who’ve simply not bothered renewing things like their websites or whatever in the last year or two. I haven’t bothered renewing Distrokid subscriptions for my music either - partly because I want it off Spotify but also because it costs so much money and it’s like an addicts trap after all the attractive first year discounts end and all the upselling kicks in. Distrokid have been literally sending me like 5 emails every day for the last year trying to beg me back onto renewing subscriptions. Either they’re desperate as hell or it’s so automated that it costs them nothing to beg. Either way it doesn’t seem healthy
Maybe the streaming economy model has just been unsustainable from the start?
That’s a really interesting way of thinking about streaming — I never feel like I’ve accrued anything or created a library or anything like that when it comes to streaming, which is probably why I feel so comfortable switching streaming platforms. I see it as a subscription to access loads of music, if I’ve accrued anything it’s just a list of albums that I like. I guess if I wanted access to all that I’d have a lot to go and purchase, so I can see what you mean, I’ve just never thought of streaming services like that.
Out of interest, do you feel like that about TV streaming services? Or is it just due to the nature of music (you listen to an album so many more times than you watch a movie)
Isn’t the whole startup model for anything to lose money for the first few years to disrupt the status quo
I think film & TV is a little different because yes, you rewatch things a lot less frequently but also the service has traditionally been more rental based than purchase based. Sure the DVD sales market was a thing with boxsets and Criterion Collection and all of that but the average consumption was always rental going back to VHS - not the predominant thing with LPs for instance where you would own it. (Yeah I know you could go to the library, borrow CDs and tape them/rip them but ultimately that’s another form of ownership)
Also I think we’re aware that the Film/TV streaming services divide up access into seasons, periods etc and thereä’ll be different content on each one with some overlap whereas with music the main digital distributors distribute the same content to more or less all of the streaming services…
so I guess the music streamers compete based on user experience rather than on content like the Film/TV ones. This in turn probably leads to a game of ‘domination’ among the music streamers to be the platform for a user whereas with the visual content people have always been used to multiple channels and so end up with 4,5 or 6 streaming subscriptions/whatever comes bundled with their TV/internet package
not sure what my point is other than that I’m old enough to remember when people had physical libraries rather than virtual libraries of stuff and I can’t help thinking that whether it be a burst of the streaming bubble or a wider breakdown of digital economies, when people look back in 50, 100, 300, 1000 years time there’s gonna be a hole in cultural history where all the digital shit evaporated and left little usable trace
tbh I think Spotify’s market dominance is due to be being ‘first’ (or first to offer free, at least), and there being a huge switching cost.
yeah, they are what myspace once was to social media … or friendster maybe
Don’t think they’re comparable tbh - you can run multiple social media profiles on different platforms, and the content within is pretty varied. The music platforms (currently) run entirely on user experience but I don’t think that many people are going to switch because of ‘better search’ or even ‘better quality audio’. Especially if they are dug in with a tonne of playlists etc.
my point was one about the vagaries of technological change - being dominant is always about being first, quite often not in fact
Spotify became big by piggybacking The Pirate Bay and managing to persuade enough of the major label bigwigs to get on board the technology in order to legitimize and monetize it to push the p2p servers out of the space, rather than trying to resist and shut down the tech as a whole - whcih was what they were trying to do at the time
Spotify began as a p2p network, Ek just convinced they majors to license their catalogues onto it
but it isn’t that anymore. The label content is still there but there are 100,000 new uploads every day - from indie chancers to bots and AI & fake stream stuff and fully half of the content on the platform gets less than 100 plays in a lifetime. It might only impact the casual music fan in a limited way but from the musician/producer side it’s a shakedown economy of pay-to-play from distributors to playlistlers, to algorithm-gaming and plugging in meta-ad campaigns and tiktok conversions and all sorts. Meanwhile all the tech dudes, top 100 artists and massive legacy catalogues are getting obscenely rich by extracting this wealth
It’s highly automated, trickle-up capitalism. It’s horrible.
Yep, don’t disagree with any of that. My point was that it’s not a game of domination to be ‘the’ platform with audio streaming because Spotify have won, regardless of what a shitshow it is. Sadly, 99% of their user base likely couldn’t give a fuck about anything you’ve said, regardless of how true.
fwiw I think the ownership model is the outdated one - I can’t see the world going back to ownership over access. Because for most people, access is all ownership has ever been about.
Had a good chat with Laura aka Mynabirds about the Disarm Spotify movement and other reasons to leave Spotify, we also shared some thoughts on which platform to move to
(Would appreciate any shares of this and engaging with this video in comments, as this is by far the most work that’s gone into a DiS YouTube video and really trying to grow our channel now that I’ve started to get into a new flow with the podcast) (if anyone is a regular on Reddit and could give it a share there, I’d really appreciate it)
