How Spotify's algorithm is destroying the music industry

I find articles and takes of this sort to be kind of "storm in a glass of water", not really an issue if you just take a step back, and with somewhat made-up problems, e.g. pop songs used to go on for 3 or maaaybe 4 minutes, now the author complains they are just 2 mins - but the format never was conductive to "telling a proper story" at all.
If someone thinks Spotify is that bad, idk just stop using it? I've never used it and I'm doing just fine. There's plenty of other ways of discovering and accessing and living with music.

I used to really enjoy spending one afternoon a month spending my absurd grandfathered-in emusic quota on weird new folk and adjacent stuff.
Then they changed the deal and I switched to streaming. It's just not the same.

Frank Zappa put it this way [paraphrased]
In the 1960s the music execs were into Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington. They had no idea what was going on, so they just threw money at any band that came along. You had a wide variety of music.
The first set of execs hired young guys who 'knew what the kids want.' Those guys played it safe, so in the 1970s you had stadium rock and disco.
Now AI 'knows' exactly what people want.
- The story of how Zappa and the Mothers got a contract is amazing. Basically a label guy walked into a gig as they played Trouble Every Day, their only song ever with conventional commercial potential, and signed them on the spot.
  Once they got to the studio and started playing some tremendously weird stuff it was too late to stop them.
- exactly like yes Spotify is bad but are they thinking we had some natural occurring perfect system for music before?
  The bigger issue is are artists being compensated, no they're not.

I feel like the oldest man in the thread with about 100gigs of self-ripped music to which I still own the CD's... Also with the signature look of superiority, of course.
- Right there with you…I still rock one of these.
  
  I have that same CD player. Like having my own streaming server. LOL

I don't use Spotify. It feels kind of soulless.
Bandcamp was the best, I think. They're still around, but their future is uncertain after being bought and sold. They have human written posts about like "the best doom in Texas" or "what's new in punk".
Whenever I talk to people that say they like music, and I suggest they buy albums instead of renting them from Spotify, they look at me like I'm crazy. They'd rather sell their soul for a little convenience. (And these aren't poor people or teenagers with no money. I worked in tech and all my peers were six figure salary. They can afford to buy three albums a month for $18. Which frankly isn't much more than a subscription, but then you get to keep something and eventually have a huge library)
- the artist's website (or actual indy label), bandcamp then piracy in that order for me. if i can pay the artist, i'll pay the artist. then it goes on my jellyfin server. bandcamp and the brooklynvegan have had some great lists. my kid has recently discovered music is more than background noise in video games and thinks vinyl is cool though. he's hooked hard on rise aginst so i've had to add the local record shop then ebay into the mix. my bank account isnt happy and i will likely buy badtimerecords entire vinyl catalog for myself now. dont let your kids get into vinyl folks its a fucking trap!
  
  Adding to your list I still buy CDs and rip them too, although rarely nowadays. The independent music shop I went to as a teenager still exists (Schoolkids Records), although in a different location and they’re down to only 1 store.

Songza, followed by its post-purchase rebirth as Google's Play Music, was the pinnacle. We need to bring back professionally human curated playlists.
- Qobuz has professionally curated playlists, often from actual artists or experts on that genre. It's also French rather than American, and they often the highest payer to the artists.
  
  Plus the audio quality is sooooo much better than other services and they pay the artists 3 times more than all the other services.
  They have 99.9% of Spotify's library. So transferring your playlist over is super easy.
  
  Oooh, that looks good. I'll try them out.
- I'm just going to follow Four Tet and wherever he posts his playlist, whatever the hell it's called.
- They still exist in the piracy world...

If this is a topic folks are interested in, I'd highly recommend Liz Pelly's new book Mood Machine. She did a lot of research in this area and really lays out how Spotify is destroying discovery and music community in the name of profits. Honestly it's horrifying, way worse than most people would assume.
An excerpt was published in Harper's too.
She also did an interview with Anthony Fantano, but I haven't watched it.

soulseek is the new napster
sail away
- It's only newer than napster by like 2 years. Napster started in 1999 and Soulseek in 2001. I wish I'd known about Soulseek back when I was fucking around with Kazaa and Limewire and shit after Napster died.

I use Spotify to conveniently stream an album to decide whether or not to download it into my ipod. Imo offline devices are, were and will keep being the best option (while on an airplane, on a road trip with no signal) and I get the feeling to own my music and to know the context of the artist I am listening to.

Without reading the article:
Spotify is shit. I’m paying for a family plan for other while I find good songs everywhere else. I haven’t found a good song in 3 months using Spotify’s playlists. Even the weekly mix is shit. everything sounds the same. I want a mix of hard, heavy, slow and steady. Give me a Disney Song back to back with Black Sabbath.
I’m back to pirating and purchasing music, depending which is easier for a specific track. My songs are on an android device I only use for music.
- Yes, I feel like Spotify's algorithms have become good at giving more of the same but worse for discovery. I don't find as many new artists as I used to. And some songs just come up again and again, which I guess are paid promotions.
  I've mostly switched to Qobuz, which doesn't have as many auto-generated playlists as Spotify, but can auto-play similar music once your selection has played. Qobuz's emphasis is more on listing albums you might be interested in and having you choose which ones to listen to. I'm discovering more new music this way than through Spotify.
  
  Spotify's algorithms have become good at giving more of the same but worse for discovery.
  To be fair, I use it for new drops and almost nothing else. New artists have to get to me through the word of mouth first, for people like me it's alright. I don't pay for it though so I can't complain that much.
- This is exactly how I've been feeling about it recently. Use it to discover new music but now it just repeats all the same things over and over. Playlist of over 1000 songs in it? What if we just played 32 of them. Smart shuffle? Good in theory but Plexamp does this so much better. I wish the smart shuffle worked like the Plexamp DJ tools.
  But don't worry, they'll increase the price (again) to "better the experience"... The lie detector determined that was a lie.
- Honestly I used Pandora since it was Beta and I still think it's algorithm is one of the best I've seen. Even if you don't pay for their service, just get a free account and explore. Then if you want to use some other program to build a playlist, at least you've got something working for you.

Well, one thing I can say about YouTube Music is I've never heard any nameless Lo-Fi beat tracks. Every artist it's ever played for me is real.

I'm the opposite of everyone here. Spotify is so good for discovery. My discover weekly consistently finds me awesome little bands I never would have found anywhere else. The mixes and playlist generation are terrible. The service is good. Offline mode is terrible.
I still send music I think is cool to my friends and vice versa. Being able to see what your friends are listening to is also great.
I'm still switching to my own music library using listenbrainz for discovery. Hopefully i can still find good music.
- Yep, same here. The difference is, you need to use Spotify for some time so it learns what to show you. I consistently find amazing obscure bands out there.

Imo music discovery on Spotify is best done by pursuing playlists posted by musicians you like or just hopping by related artists/album features.
The article hits the nail on the head when they say to listen to human curated content - whether it be curated by yourself or someone else, it's the best way to find something new/good.

I think algorithms overall are affecting music and how it reaches people. The rise of songs as background music for things they have nothing to do with is becoming blatant. "Messy" came out of know where and suddenly everyone knew about it and it was in tons of videos. I had never heard of that woman before (which could be for a number of reasons) but suddenly, boom, it's everywhere. Now it's "Anxiety." I used to (naively) think that people were just naturally coming across music and things were just popular. But without the charade of people "calling" in to request a song, the act of discovering music feels very soulless. It's like, "here, please choose your new favorite song from these preselected songs."

The only good thing about Spotify is that you can control the algorhythm with a bit of work instead of the other way around.
I'm feeding off the weekly recommendations that are filled with the 6-8 genres I like. I don't get any mainstream garbage in my recommendations, and am finding New Songs every week.
I bet those articles come from the 3 big Labels
- I used to like some of the old bittorrent clients seeing what other users were seeding. You would see someone with a lot of known killer music and something you had never heard of. It was a great way of finding new music.
  
  that was limewire and kazaa, also cheers for bringing back a memory that I didn't know I had lol
- For me the recommendations have been circling the drain for a while. It's just the same songs over and over again, and it seems to have decided that I only like ambient electronic music and indie pop, both of which I actually find quite boring. No matter what I do, and no matter how much I like songs in other genres, that's what it serves me, along with the occasional '80s hit because it has figured out I'm old. It was good for a few years but then seemed to get stuck in a rut.
  
  So you have
  Discover Weekly
  and
  Release Radar
  and
  daylist which generates vibe based playlists every 4 hours
  and
  An endless search of all songs and artists and playlists matching any number of random playlists featuring random songs across all genres
  limited to your imagination
  and going back to the beginning of recorded music
  and then at the bottom of those playlists you have recommended songs based on the playlist
  then if you click on any of those songs you get more songs by that artist
  then if you click smart shuffle it'll inject songs related into the playlist
  It's kinda hard for me to sympathise but I have heard this complaint a few times now
  For me the biggest complaint against spotify I have is payola
  
  More or less same, or random bands with the same name, I mostly use bandcamp for discovery these days, for now it's still great being able to follow small labels, bands and user tags.
  
  I've been very cautious over all the years that ive been using it. My rule is to only like what I wouldn't mind listening daily to, and do playlists for all the other stuff that I don't want to get bombarded with.
  It has worked out for me.

Switched to deezer some years ago. I tested all music streaming services beforehand and found that Deezer an Applemusic have the most relevant music recommendations for me.
Both deezer and apple have all the spotify features my family wants plus lossless audio if youre into that kind of thing (like me). Since distribution is handled by tunecore etc the catalog is the same anyway. Decided on deezer because I use android. Also a neat little backdoor in their servers Ü.

just stop listening to automated playlists

This is why i only listen to music recomedations by Anatoly Bannano the internet's busiest music nerd (tm) and laurie my punk transwomen psychotic co-worker.
Oh what the hell time to hijack this thread... GIMMIE YOUR FAVORITE PLACES TO FIND NEW MUSIC!
- Nts.live Dubspot Radio I've replaced streaming services with music nerd internet radio.
  
  I love internet radio as much as the next boomer, But what ever happened to music blogs and independent music fans? I like the kind of fanboy that is both a critic and a bridge to new genres.

Music industry destroyed music way before Spotify. The second it became industry.

I routinely added new music I've discovered from elsewhere to my Spotify.
I rarely listen to playlists created by Spotify (i also don't listen to other people's playlists either but significantly more than the Spotify one)
I have hundreds of playlists, most of them are ideas i had that i haven't added to so many of them have only a few songs in them.
Another example i have a playlist that is One - Metallica, One - U2 and Chris Cornells mashup of the 2 songs
Just 3 songs because that's all it needs to be
I don't engage much with other people through it, and i don't even "like" all of the songs i listen to.
I've heard other people complain greatly about the algorithm they use but I've had a really good experience with it to date.(Helped me find me things i enjoy listening to and also things i would never have found myself)
I feel it's because i put a fair amount of time injecting music into my experience that isn't dictated by Spotify i have this different experience.
I like to choose a specific song as a seed, and let Spotify keep playing after that.
That's what has worked very well for me, but i feel if i didn't often start with something I've heard elsewhere it would not have worked so well for me.
Some notes, i listen to guitar driven music mostly. But also enjoy classical music and piano as well, but most of the new stuff i seek to seed track on Spotify is new modern rock.
This works very well for me, but it does what i want.
The other reason i still use Spotify is that after trying Tidal and Deezer I rarely can't find what I'm trying to listen to.
Honestly the only thing i like about Spotify actually is the catalogue and that it isn't google or apple.
Ive had more that l than a few ... Intergalactic Journeys... Thinking about a repository of music and nanny different versions of it. Still hoping something turns up in 5 to 10 years
And lastly i absolutely loathe when they add things or make changes as well as their playlist creation functions.

fuxk spotify
- Yeah Spotify sucks, I just recently deleted my account entirely. The only thing I liked about it was making playlists. Then one day I had a Fuck This Shit moment and decided I was done.
  I have a collection of digital albums that is far better than anything I could get at Spotify, lol

Tidal is better

Podcasts and playlists on mine. Been a spotify user for 15 years.
Playlist are usually genre specific. With a GrabBag playlist and "comedy" playlist. Spotify is good at throwing me new songs on a solid genre playlist. Pretty easy for my house/techno, rock, and my wayback (pre-2000s) playlist.
A mix of songs kind of throws it off, like too many different types of music and it doesn't really get "taste".
If you use spotify, make playlists separated by genres. That's the best I've seen for music discovery with spotify.

Isn't that how Lil Nas X broke out? He figured out how to game the algorithm.