I’ve done it. I’ve finally reached my “old man yells at cloud” moment. Why, why, WHY is Spotify adding features straight out of the social media playbook?
Anybody have recommendations for alternatives?
In my head there’s:
YouTube music (google, gross)
Apple music (no way they’re not on a similar trajectory)
Bandcamp (limited, but at least bands see some money from it)
SoundCloud (weird reputation, though haven’t come back around to it in a good 10 years)
Tidal maybe? Would love to hear some recommendations.
Edit: I neglected to mention why I don’t like the messaging feature. I’ve never used it, yet with a few of my friends there are already dozens of song exchanges in the thread. It’s clear that spotify has been using user-specific links for a while now to track who sends what to who. That’s a pretty clear anti-feature for me, and is enough to make me jump ship.
I’m so glad I still just buy and maintain my own local music library.
Same, but I still want some form of a recommendation engine. I also want to discover new music.
Have you tried ListenBrainz?
I have ListenBrainz hooked up to my Navidrome server. Haven’t used it much though, find it a bit confusing.
Can always discover using YouTube Music with an ad blocker. Then add what you like to you local collection. Or use something like last.fm to track everything you listen to, no matter the platform, and get recommendations that way
I do use Spotify for that as I have a family plan for the family, I have also tried Apple Music. Spotify I tried to seed only with the newest stuff I listen to and Apple Music knows most of what I already listen fo.
Both can work but they are both a lot of work before I come up with something I really want to buy. It’s hard to guide them to more obscure stuff, even if you explicitly only train them on that kinda stuff.
I tend to have better luck just with being on subreddits for specific types of music or discussing music with friends. The quality to obscurity ratio can be quite high if a real genre expert shows up and gives a brain dump. Last.fm can be quite useful too.
I’m not sure what kind of music you are into, but if you just make playlists that you would want your kids to listen to, then other kids might get to listen to then anyways. And if you’re kids Hsieh to find them what a gift you will have given them.
I say this as someone who’s musical tastes is knowingly because of my oldest brother. And while I no longer find new music very often because of my brother, I have found a couple other people that now let me introduce new music to my oldest brother, but also I would not have connected with them without my big bro.
Yeah I introduce new music to my kids by playing it in the car. For me Spotify playlists are the same amount of work as just letting the recommendation engine throw stuff at me, I have to go through a lot of stuff to find something I like and then often it’s just one solitary song whereas I like to buy whole albums. I’m not so into one hit wonders.