They had to call it "Spotify Unwrapped". Bad move. Too close to a trademark.
If they'd called it "Crappy Streaming Service Royalty Calculator", Spotify would not have had any legal grounds to complain. Even if they used a Spotify logo to identify the Spotify calculation option.
I'm not a Spotify user, I'm an Apple Music user, though if there wasn't Apple Music I'd use Spotify.
The reason that I'd never use YT Music is that I never trust anything from Google: their interfaces are ugly, everything's user-unfriendly, and they have the habit of discontinuing a service at any time. Also it has the impression of not really being well-thought as a product: why name a music service after a video service? I know it's not the case but it always reminds me of those low quality music playlists where people collected low quality unofficial music videos back then in YT just for the music: simply not the right tool for the job.
A lot of people listened to music from YouTube as their primary source besides an FM radio before Spotify was available as it is now. YouTube somewhat famously signed deals with music labels back in the day. Content ID was the controversial, but necessary compromise for the music to remain on YouTube. I am pretty sure a very significant percentage of music listeners globally listen mainly from YouTube, I did it and I also saw a lot of people doing it.
It may seem stupid or counter productive, but it is easy and good enough. YT Music is a clear upgrade for those users.
I think YT Music makes more sense than many of the Google initiatives and it will continue to make sense as long as they will have deals with music labels.
YT Music really is odd. I pay for YT Premium and so have played with it a few times but it feels rather ill-suited for its purpose… as you say, the video streaming heritage is quite evident. Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, heck even Amazon Music last I tried it have much more music-oriented UIs.
YouTube is also actively hostile to third party devs in ways that at least Apple isn’t, somehow. Third party Apple Music clients have existed for years using official Apple-provided APIs, which YouTube isn’t going to ever allow even for paying customers.
From my end the decision to not use the Google product comes from two places. Firstly, any money I send to Google is probably a net negative for the human race as a whole (though the same could probably be said for Spotify). Secondly (and much more importantly for me personally), YouTube is quite addictive, and having premium would enable me. If someone offered me a music streaming subscription with a bit of free crack cocaine on the side, I would not take it over someone offering me just the subscription, regardless of the price (up to a point)
As a counterpoint, YouTube is a vast chasm of highly educational and worthwhile media. There's no other space like it for long-form independent educators, and it's a creative space we need to protect by keeping it economically viable for YouTube. At least until comparable spaces (with sustainable audiences) exist.
I switched from Spotify from YT Music solely for UX reasons. Spotify is a weird flimsy thing to me (or at least was, back when I rage-quit it). Things like, their Android app didn't even have a "play album" button. Random simple stuff just was made needlessly hard. Queueing was weird, it seemed to nudge you to shuffling / algorithmic playback, they had this weird podcast thing going on that was just in the way, and so on.
YT Music on the other hand, has excellent UX in my opinion. This surprised me, given Google's generally mediocre UX design, but they really got a bunch of competent people on this one. All the basics work the way you'd expect (and that's not trivial to get right). Play, queue, play next. Play album, shuffle, it all just generally does what I expect it to do and I can mostly find the buttons I want easily. You can turn off autoplay. Gapless album playback is on by default. It.. just works!
Also I find the algorithmic autoplay to be pretty great, found some great new artists that way.
The fact that the catalog is bigger because it includes weird bootleg recordings and live sets and anything music-y ever uploaded to YouTube, is a nice bonus. But for me, the UX sells it.
If you're using the video YouTube for music, you're not on the right app.
I have both Apple Music (via One Premium) and YouTube Music via YT Premium, and I lean on YT Music overwhelmingly. Its algorithmic playlists are just a universe better.
If the Spotify UI was the only way I could consume music, I would never listen to another song again. It's ugly, barely customizable, wastes space, wastes time, and it's flat-out user hostile, just like recent YouTube UI changes. Except unlike YouTube, I cannot reasonably modify the style and functionality to my liking, or easily use third-party clients.
It seems to me the most ethical mode of consumption which doesn't compromise consumer integrity and freedom is to use YouTube, or pirate, and to make up for lost royalties by directly supporting creators and encouraging creators to cut out the middlemen.
Spotify has such a terrible app, at least on iOS. If you download a song and have a weak cellular/WiFi connection the app prefers the connection over the downloaded song, so you just can't listen to music unless you turn on offline mode.
Similarly, if you have a weak connection and go back a song that song isn't cached which is infuriating.
This mostly happened when I was getting into my car which is barely in WiFi range but the connection wasn't stable enough to be usable, so I'd have to start driving before I could interact with Spotify.
Anyway, I switched to Apple Music a year or two ago. Spotify is trying to lock users in with the social aspect (e.g. Spotify Wrapped) but it's just not worth it.
YouTube music's biggest issue is that it's run by Google. The second biggest issue is that they kill their best apps every 5-10 years. YouTube music is only recently getting to Google music parity.. the app that they killed 5 years back and replaced with YT music.
Also, they've ruined whatever they offered for podcast management when they killed google podcasts and tried to direct users to YT music -_-.
> - Moving all your liked songs and playlists over is annoying
I've switched music streaming services a few times and this is always a pain, no matter which streaming service. I really really wish there were some universal export/import format that all these services shared to make switching easier (but I understand that might not be in their interest).
Spotify isn't primarily about playing music for me, it's about finding new music to play.
And Spotify's just where all of that is. The quality of the radio recommendations, the fact that there's always a playlist for every TV show soundtrack, that artists put together their own playlists, the quality and variety of playlists overall, and it's where cool people I know create and update their public playlists.
None of the other services seem to come close in terms of that. I see links to Spotify playlists all over the internet. I don't think I've ever seen a link to a YouTube Music playlist?
The Spotify app started suggesting me albums it labels as "Sponsored recommendations" a few months ago and it's really put me off. Now it's hard to trust how good it is at finding new music if Spotify is admitting to deliberately excluding most of its database and prefiltering down to its sponsors.
You're right though, the rest of the things you mention do make it much tougher to decide on whether to switch and what to switch to.
Because the Youtube Music app is garbage. I already have Youtube premium and tried cancelling my Spotify for a few months, even transferred my saved playlists over, and it was a horrible enough experience that I'm back to paying for both.
100% this. I pay for YT Premium so I have YT Music for free, and I still choose to pay for Spotify because the YT Music app is that bad. Spotify's app is not perfect by any stretch, but comparatively it's amazing. I really miss the old Google Music service. But so goes almost any product run by Google for long enough -- slowly and inevitably into the ground (at least in terms of user experience, if not always in market share).
That’s a little pot calling the kettle black. The Spotify app has been horrendous for years, ever since they started jamming in all the podcasts and garbage.
I tried switching to it years ago after I was forced to migrate from Play Music (which was superior, IMO). I was _very_ turned off to YT Music matching songs in my library with random audio tracks from YT videos. Perhaps they no longer do this, but I went with Apple Music, which is what I've used since.
And now I'm mad about Play Music shutting down again!
(They, Amazon Music and iTunes/Apple Music had a true "music locker" service where you could upload songs from your library, no matter the source, and play them anywhere. iTunes/Apple Music is the only one left that does this, and even then, I'm not sure if the iTunes part works on Android.)
> I was _very_ turned off to YT Music matching songs in my library with random audio tracks from YT videos. Perhaps they no longer do this
I was also mega turned off by this... initially. At some point it stopped happening to me unintentionally and now it only really happens if I start playing from a YouTube video (which is actually quite help for some obscure songs/remixes). You can also turn off this functionality all together in the settings.
> a true "music locker" service where you could upload songs from your library, no matter the source, and play them anywhere
You can upload your own music and then stream it from any device on YouTube Music now
YouTube doesn't let me add certain tracks to playlists because it has mistakenly labeled them as for kids. It's a stupid platform with way dumber limitations than Spotify.
I've been using YT Music for years and have all my playlists there, but am now considering switching to Spotify because _everyone_ I know sends me Spotify links. I then also feel bad sharing YT Music links when their entire ecosystem (car audio etc) is centered on Spotify, and YouTube is likely to play an ad if they're not a subscriber. Music sharing is kind of a big thing for me and it sucks that I'm now paying for a service I don't use just to share links with people >.<
I’ve seen https://idonthavespotify.donado.co used for converting between services but when I tried it just now with some Apple Music links it identified albums wrong
Sharing anyway in case YouTube music links work better
I never cared for Spotify, but I was an early Google Play Music user. Loved it. Then they forced me to YT music and I left for Apple. The YT UI was so bad.
Now I have both AM and YTM because of bundling. AM stream quality is noticeably better. The YTM UI has gotten better over the years and I think the sheer size of YTM means there are tons of playlists which I like.
My preference now would be to duplicate all the YTM user playlists to AM.
I consider Youtube negative value. It is a service explicitly designed to suck up as much as possible of my time / attention, and youtube doesn't change how their algorithm works just because you pay for it with real money. The watchtime maximizing works the exact same time as at the very least all the content produced withing the ecosystem still needs to be watchtime maximizing.
Why would I ever pay for that?
Edit-to-add: Not to mention that I have yet to forgive google for killing Play Music, a much superior service.
People don't talk about this much, but much of Play Music lives on in Youtube Music. I am not sure if its because I was grandmothered in or something, but all my mp3s that are definitely not otherwise on YouTube still shockingly exist in my Youtube Music "Library".
YT Music is generally as good or better for casual listening. There's a potential deal breaking quirk in that some tracks are user uploads. You can find obscure stuff that's not easily available elsewhere, but I've found quite a few tracks that are low quality CD or vinyl rips, and concert bootlegs. If you build a playlist, it's not easy to weed out the trash.
Spotify has awesome playlists, both from the community and curated by the company itself.
YouTube is much worse at that, last time I checked. Mostly shitty spam, as with everything Google.
I don't really listen to individual songs or albums, but look for "classic rock for workouts" or "relaxing instrumental for work" etc. Spotify is great for that.
I would be more interested in YouTube music if it allowed users to play the audio of any video. Right now, a video has to be tagged by the creator as music for it to be made available on the app.
??? Studio provided digital masters will of course be identical across all of the services.
Apple Music has the upper hand on the very high end with full lossless streaming, but that's irrelevant to almost everyone listening in a compromised situation -- like 100% of bluetooth headsets -- and YT Premium's 256Kbps AAC is extremely high quality.
YouTube Music is one of the worst pieces of software ever created. That's the only reason I use Spotify at all. YTM on Android crashes randomly, playback stops randomly, it forgets your playback position in podcasts randomly, sometimes it breaks itself so hard that you have to hard reboot your phone to fix it. It's incredible.
Terrible app, variable quality since they clearly re-use music uploaded originally as video with a static background. Apple Music is king of streaming quality, however neither Apple Music nor YTM can beat Spotify's algorithm as far as the kind of music I listen to is concerned.
Does youtube music have a desktop app yet? Or do they still expect me to hunt down one of my many tabs in one of my many browser windows any time I want to change a song? It's a ridiculous UX killer.
I also don't want my music to stop when I restart my browser.
Spotify has albeit unofficial headless client for linux. None of other services I know does. It implements the same interface as smart speakers so can be controlled remotely by any gui client.
I have youtube premium and music. I've never tried spotify but I have to believe it's better than youtube music. It's hard to believe it could possibly be worse.
Why use either when you can download songs from normal YouTube (via yt-dlp) for free?
I've indeed been asking myself that, as a current Spotify customer. The whole point of paying for a streaming service is the convenience of it combined with the monetary support of the artists on it. If Spotify is decreasingly convenient, and Spotify is decreasingly paying artists their fair share, then at some point I might as well just go back to torrenting whole discographies like it's 2005.
For context, I'm an ex-Googler, worked there 2016-2023 during this. For entertainment's sake, I'll list it as I experienced it, rather than just rotely saying "lol disorganized"
- 2008-2015: Huge, absurd Apple fanboy. waiter => create startup => iOS dev. Sold it.
- 2016: Apple rejects me b/c no degree, suggests calling back in a couple years. Google makes me an offer. I join Google.
- October 2016: Wow Pixel looks cool...I work on Android watches...lets try Pixel.
- November 2016: I've been missing out on so much with web services!!! Google is in the future while Apple is in the past!! Even just Google Play Music: Google has iTunes in the browser. Wow!!!!
- 2017: Aw they're shutting down Google Play Music...but hey, I get it! I can see the internal musings and it makes sense, YouTube can commit more resources and has a great content catalog!
- 2018: Wow this dogfood version is great! Lots missing from Google Play Music, seems like a thin shim over YouTube x "play audio only" button x music rights, but there's plenty of time to iterate before release!
- 2019: Ehhh meh this is starting to feel weird, hasn't really evolved much. I do love the recommendation feed better! There's still some stuff to add back, I know they're working on adding your own files back, and they have that excellent Google Play Music/iTunes in the browser UI to be inspired by!
- 2020: Goodbye Play Music, sunset, gone. Ehhhh nothing really changed with YouTube Music, but at least I'm saving money compared to Spotify
- 2022: Podcasts is gonna get sunset and merged into YouTube Music? Makes sense, I guess.
- 2023: Oh man, they sunset Podcasts and YouTube Music wasn't actually prepared for this, they had the absolute MVP for Podcasts...Oh man, look at public backlash.
Man, BigCo management is hard...at the top, they only have bandwidth for Game of Thrones stuff of "We should take podcasts!!" but "delegate" the actual work and people are people, they do exactly what they need to with exactly the resources they have. I guess its cool they're publicly owning the backlash.
- 2024: I am still using YouTube Music. I see your comment on HN, and realize I would have been happier on Spotify all along.
Yes! Spotify evidently does something. You can watch the Netflix show, that takes the original approach to explaining its success from the different angles of key people involved, to review one of the best approaches to answering this question for a company I’ve ever seen.
In a world where musicians and listeners have all the other choices to connect still, IMO Spotify completely deserves its position. I detest the low effort complaints by ppl on Reddit saying their financial success is not deserved.
On this topic, I'm sick and tired of Spotify's recommendation algorithm and ready to jump to a superior service, would love to hear HN's recommendations. Happy to pay for a good service.
My listening style basically comes down to vibe, e.g. "I want to imagine myself as a jaded ex-con planning my next heist" and "I'm duking it out with an aggressively hegemonizing von Neumann swarm in the asteroid belt"
All of the streaming services are awful at discovery. They'll introduce you to stuff that you already like or stuff that people in your cohort like, which, 90% of the time, is what you already like.
I landed up going back to college/community radio for true discovery (i.e. you'll find stuff you hate AND stuff that you love from genres that you didn't know existed). I use Bandcamp to find/buy new music in genres I love and know well.
For people reading this who are interested in trying this out, these are the stations that I listen to:
- KEXP (Seattle, WA/Bay Area)
- KTRU (Houston, TX) <-- home station
- KPFT (Houston, TX) <-- home station
- WMSE (Milwaukee, WI)
- WYEP (Pittsburgh, PA)
- KVNO (Omaha, NE) <-- classical
- KCSM (San Mateo Area) <-- jazz
- SomaFM Indie Pop Rocks!
- SomaFM Metal Detector
You can also try scanning the lower end of your radio dial (under 93 MHz), as this is usually spectrum that's reserved for community and college radio stations. Some college stations still broadcast in AM, though this, and AM radio writ large, is dying out.
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While I'm on this soapbox: Apple Music's shuffle absolutely biases towards bigger/more popular artists.
I once had a few (like, between 10 and 20) Taylor Swift songs in my library in a 2000+ song playlist I used to shuffle in the mornings. I don't listen to her very often, and I didn't have any of her albums in my library at the time.
EVERY SINGLE TIME I'd shuffle all of the songs in this playlist or my library, Taylor Swift would get queued up way more than she should have given my listening history. I removed all of her songs from my library to get it to stop.
I get much more variety when I shuffle all of my _downloaded_ songs (which, I believe, is everything in my library).
Thanks for plugging local radio that also stream! I support my local radio as well and for the same reasons: discovery. Listener supported also has the benefit of zero ads.
This is a seriously left-field suggestion, because, it's neither a streaming service nor a recommendation algorithm, but over the years I've never found anything better than last.fm for classification of music.
For as long as I can remember, last.fm has had the ability to show you similar artists when given any one particular artist. And it's remarkably good, in my opinion.
With it, I've discovered so much great music that I'd have never stumbled upon organically.
It's also totally free to browse and without signing up. For example, browse artists similar to Jean Knight: https://www.last.fm/music/Jean+Knight (scroll down to "Similar Artists", or just tack on /+similar to the URL)
After nearly 10 years of Spotify I think I have heard it all. Now my discover weekly is filled with rock covers of pop songs or music I'm just not into. So either the algorithm got bad or I discovered all music I like.
I can recommend everyone this video by Rick Beato: The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse
That pop cover stuff is getting out of hand, it's was nice dose of nostalgia at first but I now skip every one because its such spam and I don't want to be recommended them
While I agree that music has become more homogenized and crap than ever before, I think Rick here is just applying incorrect beliefs to this process. I think the only point he makes that is valid is that finding signal through all the noise is harder than ever (and is something that can be said about music, tv, movies, writing, nearly every creative pursuit).
Music is too easy to make? So people like producers and record executives don't have the power they used to. That's a good thing. The history of music proves this.
Music is too easy to consume? I legit don't know how to respond to this. Just because music isn't part of kids' identities anymore doesn't mean that's because it's too easy to consume. Times change, Rick. Whereas they used to share music now they share streamers and YouTubers.
The main argument that derails Rick here is in the first few minutes. He claims that music all sounds the same because of the tools available. He claims that music sounds the same because someone is comfortable with sounds that are familiar. He doesn't really say whether it's record companies or artists or consumers. Just some nebulous 'they'.
It's always been like that. Always. When a band gets popular, other bands pop up just like them to try to steal their popularity and money (Fats Domino and Chubby Checker is the oldest example I can think of without googling it). There are 'sounds' of decades. You can name sounds from the 50's, or 60's, or 80's, **all from way before this technology he's blaming existed.
Overall that video comes across as an old person who longs for the better days of their youth and is upset they can't make money in ways they want to. Welcome to the fucking world. Times change. Change with them or don't, it's your problem.
Desktop app that doesn't work any more suddenly and there's no actual support to speak of. That's already five steps below Spotify.
Plus actually shitty UX/UI people like to call good, but it lacks plenty of really really basic features. Like having control over if a song is added to the queue to be played next or last, or just being able to preview what stations are going to play (it's a minefield of an UI to try and find new songs while also not interrupt the current one).
I’ve been a big fan of the shows on Apple Music! They have a pretty decent variety and you can listen to a backlog of shows and with their own distinct vibe. There’s a couple I tune into but my favorites are Matt Wilkinsons daily show at noon GMT and classical connections with Alexis Ffrench. I do appreciate the human curation with a lot of these programs they’ve been putting out.
Not sure where you get 75% for Bandcamp. They take a 15% cut for digital sales, 10% for physical, plus processing fees.
Also, they’re not really a streaming service: you can preview a lot of music on the platform, but it’s primarily about buying music. It’s not really a good comparison to Spotify at all.
One of the (only) things I think Spotify gets wrong as a service is they’re too cheap. I pay for prime, Spotify and Netflix in my house - (we occasionally sub Netflix for Disney). A price rise to Netflix or prime would cause us to reconsider, but I think I would stomach Spotify doubling their price quite easily with no change in service.
(a) is the real problem for many of the musicians who have vocally complained about this. If you look at most songs produced by record labels, you will see 5 songwriter credits, 10 producers, and a whole band to pay. Not to mention the army of recording engineers and the marketing staff.
I saw an artist say recently on insta reels that if their fanbase switched to Apple Music it would go from beer money to more than their day job. And apparently even more from Tidal. They acknowledged that spotify is the elephant in the room with 80% of their audience on it.
Apple and Spotify both pay 70% but the devil is in the details. Apparently Spotify gives out 70% of its revenues based on what percentage of streams the artist has that month. What that means is that regardless of what you listen to, a percentage of what you pay will go to the heavy hitters like Taylor Swift. There's an excellent chance that the obscure artist you listen to doesn't get much of anything.
If Apple actually pays rights holders based on what you actually play that would be a huge difference.
Both Apple Music and Tidal (and Google Music, Amazon) can afford to lose money as long as leadership want the service to stay online.
I don't think it's sustainable for musicians to rely on cross financing via other services or VC money.
Further consolidation under under big tech conpanies would be a negative IMO
Most probably because a large amount of their fan base uses free accounts. So of course it would make them more money if they switched to Apple Music, because they’d start paying.
The website appears to still be up, I literally used it minutes before posting this comment. Is this the correct URL https://www.spotify-unwrapped.com/ ?
No, this is a copycat - the original was at https://www.spotifyunwrapped.org/. (Although it does seem that one of the articles linked in the source made the same mistake!)
in a serious society, Spotify (and related business models) would never exist. the profession of music producer is almost a voluntary job with negative ROI
Why? The underlying business model of "being a middleman and take a 30% cut" seems pretty solid. Is it because nobody would be musicians? This almost sounds like "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded". If nobody wants to produce music because the ROI is too low, then some musicians will drop out, and the ROI for the remaining musicians will go up because there's less competition. The only way this will fail is if people aren't willing to pay any amount for music, but that seems unlikely.
because the streaming business model and the convenience of having any song from
any artist in the palm of your hand has canabalized any and all other possibilities for musicians that would otherwise pay better.
you have a few people/fans that insist on paying for the music in platforms like bandcamp, but thats uncommon.
from the user's point of view, it's the perfect world, where he pays a little to have access to the entire musical catalog on the planet.
Lots of words about a legal threat, but I didn't actually see what those words were that were so threatening. On what grounds does Spotify have the ability to shut down a satire site? How spineless are Unwrapped to immediately cave?
The entire discussion here is people's opinion on the Spotify service compared to its competitors, yet no actual discussion of TFA.
> How spineless are Unwrapped to immediately cave?
Most people are going to back down straight away. Seriously, most people won't even stand up and have local employment laws applied. Many will keep silent about things they saw even when there is no possible retribution. Most people aren't willing to battle over things.
Because the legal/administrative costs of a lawsuit will bankrupt the poor. It's not worth the risk unless the a group like the EFF expressly backs them. This is systematic.
Hot take: Maybe music consumption and production has changed enough that it's basically a commodity now, and maybe not worth paying "full" price for anymore most of the time?
There's a tiny handful of artists for whom I'd go out of my way to buy an album directly from them (or a t shirt, or concert or whatever, just to support them).
But for most of my day, music is more just a background thing, like having the radio on, and I don't really pay attention to what's playing or know or care who makes it. Most of it could be (or maybe already is) AI generated and I wouldn't know the difference. I would not pay $20 for an album of that stuff.
I think it's interesting to compare the music industry with the video games one. Both have a glut of suppliers with many invisible titles and producers trailing behind a few famous ones. Both had physical media and big publishers in the 90s and 2000s before transitioning to downloads and streaming. The PC games market moved to pretty effective market segmentation divided between full price new release titles, Steam sales for older games, and first or third party subscriptions like EA Play or Ubisoft Plus or Microsoft Gamepass. Each reaches a different part of the market and can accommodate both players who rent and those who buy. There's also room for smaller indie games, between Steam and Humble Bundle and GOG.
The music market seems archaic, oligopolistic, and predatory by comparison. Where's the Valve of music, offering a great service for both consumers and producers? We do have Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, etc., but why can't they make the finances there work when the also expensive video games market seemed to be doing OK (at least until the post covid bubble burst these last two years)?
I think people have a short memory. It was not that long ago that you’d have to pay 10+e for an album, where most of that would go to the record labels. Now I can pay 10e a month and listen to almost every song ever made, and I’m not going to be willing to pay much more than that.
Artists make their money with live events nowadays. Spotify’s average profit for the last 4 years is around 500m per year. Investors need to be paid and distributing some of that profit among a handful of top artists isn’t going to go a long way.
So how do you suppose we pay the artists more royalties?
Artists have always made their money with live events. Back when people bought CDs, artists got a tiny fraction of a fraction of the sale price. These days they get a slightly larger fraction of a smaller price. A handful of artists at the top of the charts can make bank, and the rest struggle, as always.
I don’t see any solution short of some massive government arts program. It comes down to supply and demand. Most musicians play for a love of music. They would (and many do) play music even if they got no money for it at all. That makes for a glut of musicians and a really low equilibrium price of labor.
We see a similar phenomenon (on a much smaller scale) in tech with games. Lots of people really like making games. They’d do it for free. Getting paid for it at all is a dream. Result: pay is not great in that segment of the industry. Not many of us dream of adding some features to CRUD apps and as a result that pays better.
I wish Spotify would let me "upgrade" individual albums to purchases. Like I'd still pay for my monthly sub, but if I particularly like a track or artist, I could buy that album for a discounted price (like $5, ideally) and the artist would get like 95% of that revenue.
It doesn't really solve the problem of "your music is so generic nobody wants to buy it and nobody can tell you apart from the other similar artists", but maybe it doesn't need to? There's already enough excellent, good, and mediocre music out there to last me several lifetimes even if nothing else gets made. There's way more supply than demand. Everybody wants to be creative, I guess, but not everyone is actually good at it? Maybe it's OK for most of that music to fall by the wayside and only the 1% of the 1% to really make it. Streaming is a good proving ground, and upgrades could help the really good artists earn a bit more.
To me it's not really that different from the infinite supply of shitty books, articles, games, movies, software etc. Most of it just isn't good enough to stand out.
If you're looking at Spotify's profit to redistribute, you're looking at the wrong places. The right places would be the payola agreements worth billions they already have in place with the major labels, and the fact that they explicitly allow bot plays to prop up the profits of said labels. Starting in January, they won't even tally royalties for songs that get less than 1000 streams- which means most of their catalog. They will just take the money, and consumers are ok with it because less than a thousand people per artist will care. But hey, it's convenient.
>Where's the Valve of music, offering a great service for both consumers and producers?
How do platforms like spotify not offer "great service for both consumers and producers"? They offer the same 70/30 split as steam, and I'm not aware of any widespread consumer discontent for spotify, aside from maybe their reputation for underpaying their artists (see previous point).
Right, so then why don't the economics of Spotify work out if similar margins work in the games and apps industries? Is music really that much more expensive to make than video games? Are music labels much greedier than game publishers? What's different about music that makes artists especially poorly paid vs games?
Or maybe it's just that Spotify is a subscription split between all the listened tracks whereas Steam is individual purchases? It's probably be fairer to compare the economics to Microsoft Gamepass.
There is a Valve for music, it's called CD Baby. Ten bucks buys you instant distribution on all the platforms. That's as good as it gets for both producers and consumers.
It can't solve the problem of getting artists compensated because Americans do not value music. You yourself even expressed your own opinion of the lack of music's value. This is the fundamental reason why we've allowed Spotify to pocket 99% of the total value of music. If Americans valued music and the musicians that labor to make it more, they would care about artist compensation. But they don't, trusting the 'free' market to do it for them.
> when the also expensive video games market seemed to be doing OK
I’m pretty sure ballooning AAA budgets leading to studio death marches, lack of courage to innovate and deviate from a winning formula, the demise of mid-budget games, etc. have plagued the industry for over a decade now.
Whereas in Olde Hollywood, streaming has eaten its lunch, theaters are struggling to stay afloat, the demise of mid-budget films (when’s the last time you’ve seen a comedy in theaters?), and so on.
The book publishing industry is made up of copyright hawks, I can only assume because the internet has allowed self-publishing and unending amounts of free text to compete with.
This is not a good time for content in any format.
I'm curious when AI generated music will displace most artist-created music on Spotify or similar platforms, and if we will even notice. It will probably cost a few dollars per track to generate.
Maybe we'll be left with a handful of Beyoncé's or Taylor Swift's that expand beyond just music, and the rest is generated.
I suspect that AI generated music will be widely produced and consumed in the same way AI movies will largely be used for say commercials or cutscenes, AI images for commercial illustration, and LLM text for content writing; interstitial filler material that is obligatory but no one really seeks out. So you’ll hear royalty-free AI-generated muzak when you’re on hold watching network TV show procedurals/sitcoms, meditation apps and low-fi hip-hop beats channels. When there needs to be sound that you’re not actually focusing on.
> I'm curious when AI generated music will displace most artist-created music on Spotify or similar platforms, and if we will even notice. It will probably cost a few dollars per track to generate.
I sure hope not. I may not buy lots of music, but I have been to see many of my favourite artists in person, in venues that range from a few hundred people to a few thousand - certainly nothing on the scale of Swift or Beyoncé. And I discovered many of those artists through streaming.
Indie/local book shops have had a revival in the wake of the Amazon bookseller behemoth even as big box stores like Barnes & Noble have flailed or Borders have failed, so you may be onto something there. Counter-market cultural trends lead people to value locally-sourced productions.
I'd buy albums off Bandcamp for artists I already know, but I wouldn't use it for discovery. Do they even have discovery features? (I honestly don't know)
Steam's recommendations (and more importantly, sales) are how I discover new games. And there's a lot of titles (both games and music) I'd happily pay $2 or $5 for, but not $20 or $50. There's a lot MORE titles I'd be happy to try for a monthly all inclusive subscription.
For music, I wish Spotify would add a "Like this track? As a Premium subscriber, you can buy the whole album for only $5!" function. That's way less than a full price album but still way more money than the artist would get from streaming.
Disagree. Bandcamp doesn't require a bloated desktop app that needs to install a bunch of updates every time you open it. Songs you download are yours to play and distribute as you please. They don't require an active Internet connection to check your license and track your listening habits.
Besides that, Steam is the go-to place to publish games. The only reason you wouldn't distribute on Steam is if you are a Nintendo or Epic-level megacorp that has its own store and exclusivity rules. On Bandcamp, the decision to upload an album comes down to whether the record label allows it. So a lot of times, artists will post early works to BC and drop it as soon as they sign with a label.
Readit News
If they'd called it "Crappy Streaming Service Royalty Calculator", Spotify would not have had any legal grounds to complain. Even if they used a Spotify logo to identify the Spotify calculation option.
Don't banned books or movies benefit from increased attention?
The reason that I'd never use YT Music is that I never trust anything from Google: their interfaces are ugly, everything's user-unfriendly, and they have the habit of discontinuing a service at any time. Also it has the impression of not really being well-thought as a product: why name a music service after a video service? I know it's not the case but it always reminds me of those low quality music playlists where people collected low quality unofficial music videos back then in YT just for the music: simply not the right tool for the job.
It may seem stupid or counter productive, but it is easy and good enough. YT Music is a clear upgrade for those users.
I think YT Music makes more sense than many of the Google initiatives and it will continue to make sense as long as they will have deals with music labels.
YouTube is also actively hostile to third party devs in ways that at least Apple isn’t, somehow. Third party Apple Music clients have existed for years using official Apple-provided APIs, which YouTube isn’t going to ever allow even for paying customers.
YT Music on the other hand, has excellent UX in my opinion. This surprised me, given Google's generally mediocre UX design, but they really got a bunch of competent people on this one. All the basics work the way you'd expect (and that's not trivial to get right). Play, queue, play next. Play album, shuffle, it all just generally does what I expect it to do and I can mostly find the buttons I want easily. You can turn off autoplay. Gapless album playback is on by default. It.. just works!
Also I find the algorithmic autoplay to be pretty great, found some great new artists that way.
The fact that the catalog is bigger because it includes weird bootleg recordings and live sets and anything music-y ever uploaded to YouTube, is a nice bonus. But for me, the UX sells it.
https://music.youtube.com/ is similar to the web apps.
If you're using the video YouTube for music, you're not on the right app.
I have both Apple Music (via One Premium) and YouTube Music via YT Premium, and I lean on YT Music overwhelmingly. Its algorithmic playlists are just a universe better.
It seems to me the most ethical mode of consumption which doesn't compromise consumer integrity and freedom is to use YouTube, or pirate, and to make up for lost royalties by directly supporting creators and encouraging creators to cut out the middlemen.
Similarly, if you have a weak connection and go back a song that song isn't cached which is infuriating.
This mostly happened when I was getting into my car which is barely in WiFi range but the connection wasn't stable enough to be usable, so I'd have to start driving before I could interact with Spotify.
Anyway, I switched to Apple Music a year or two ago. Spotify is trying to lock users in with the social aspect (e.g. Spotify Wrapped) but it's just not worth it.
Also, they've ruined whatever they offered for podcast management when they killed google podcasts and tried to direct users to YT music -_-.
the migration from Google Play Music was pretty uneventful for me. (i assume folks with huge uploaded libraries might not share this impression.)
- The YTM UI just feels worse than Spotify
- YTM has no official desktop app
- Moving all your liked songs and playlists over is annoying
- The whole shutting down Google Play Music just to release Youtube Music did a lot of damage to their "brand mindshare"
- People think it just means watching music videos on YouTube
- Everyone they know uses Spotify and they like seeing what their friends are listening to and it's easier to share links to songs within platform
I've switched music streaming services a few times and this is always a pain, no matter which streaming service. I really really wish there were some universal export/import format that all these services shared to make switching easier (but I understand that might not be in their interest).
Spotify isn't primarily about playing music for me, it's about finding new music to play.
And Spotify's just where all of that is. The quality of the radio recommendations, the fact that there's always a playlist for every TV show soundtrack, that artists put together their own playlists, the quality and variety of playlists overall, and it's where cool people I know create and update their public playlists.
None of the other services seem to come close in terms of that. I see links to Spotify playlists all over the internet. I don't think I've ever seen a link to a YouTube Music playlist?
Easy to start a mix/radio from any track/video or playlist.
There are public playlists, though I have no idea how well curated they are.
You're right though, the rest of the things you mention do make it much tougher to decide on whether to switch and what to switch to.
And now I'm mad about Play Music shutting down again!
(They, Amazon Music and iTunes/Apple Music had a true "music locker" service where you could upload songs from your library, no matter the source, and play them anywhere. iTunes/Apple Music is the only one left that does this, and even then, I'm not sure if the iTunes part works on Android.)
I was also mega turned off by this... initially. At some point it stopped happening to me unintentionally and now it only really happens if I start playing from a YouTube video (which is actually quite help for some obscure songs/remixes). You can also turn off this functionality all together in the settings.
> a true "music locker" service where you could upload songs from your library, no matter the source, and play them anywhere
You can upload your own music and then stream it from any device on YouTube Music now
Sharing anyway in case YouTube music links work better
Now I have both AM and YTM because of bundling. AM stream quality is noticeably better. The YTM UI has gotten better over the years and I think the sheer size of YTM means there are tons of playlists which I like.
My preference now would be to duplicate all the YTM user playlists to AM.
* cost isn’t really a factor, a couple of quid either way ain’t gonna impact my life
* what I’m interested in is the artists I rate getting paid.
* Google are even more evil than Spotify.
Why would I ever pay for that?
Edit-to-add: Not to mention that I have yet to forgive google for killing Play Music, a much superior service.
YouTube is much worse at that, last time I checked. Mostly shitty spam, as with everything Google.
I don't really listen to individual songs or albums, but look for "classic rock for workouts" or "relaxing instrumental for work" etc. Spotify is great for that.
Apple Music has the upper hand on the very high end with full lossless streaming, but that's irrelevant to almost everyone listening in a compromised situation -- like 100% of bluetooth headsets -- and YT Premium's 256Kbps AAC is extremely high quality.
I also don't want my music to stop when I restart my browser.
Pin the tab? And chrome has a button to show all playing media in all tabs.
You could also use a separate profile to solve both the finding and the browser-closing issues.
I've indeed been asking myself that, as a current Spotify customer. The whole point of paying for a streaming service is the convenience of it combined with the monetary support of the artists on it. If Spotify is decreasingly convenient, and Spotify is decreasingly paying artists their fair share, then at some point I might as well just go back to torrenting whole discographies like it's 2005.
For context, I'm an ex-Googler, worked there 2016-2023 during this. For entertainment's sake, I'll list it as I experienced it, rather than just rotely saying "lol disorganized"
- 2008-2015: Huge, absurd Apple fanboy. waiter => create startup => iOS dev. Sold it.
- 2016: Apple rejects me b/c no degree, suggests calling back in a couple years. Google makes me an offer. I join Google.
- October 2016: Wow Pixel looks cool...I work on Android watches...lets try Pixel.
- November 2016: I've been missing out on so much with web services!!! Google is in the future while Apple is in the past!! Even just Google Play Music: Google has iTunes in the browser. Wow!!!!
- 2017: Aw they're shutting down Google Play Music...but hey, I get it! I can see the internal musings and it makes sense, YouTube can commit more resources and has a great content catalog!
- 2018: Wow this dogfood version is great! Lots missing from Google Play Music, seems like a thin shim over YouTube x "play audio only" button x music rights, but there's plenty of time to iterate before release!
- 2019: Ehhh meh this is starting to feel weird, hasn't really evolved much. I do love the recommendation feed better! There's still some stuff to add back, I know they're working on adding your own files back, and they have that excellent Google Play Music/iTunes in the browser UI to be inspired by!
- 2020: Goodbye Play Music, sunset, gone. Ehhhh nothing really changed with YouTube Music, but at least I'm saving money compared to Spotify
- 2022: Podcasts is gonna get sunset and merged into YouTube Music? Makes sense, I guess.
- 2023: Oh man, they sunset Podcasts and YouTube Music wasn't actually prepared for this, they had the absolute MVP for Podcasts...Oh man, look at public backlash.
Man, BigCo management is hard...at the top, they only have bandwidth for Game of Thrones stuff of "We should take podcasts!!" but "delegate" the actual work and people are people, they do exactly what they need to with exactly the resources they have. I guess its cool they're publicly owning the backlash.
- 2024: I am still using YouTube Music. I see your comment on HN, and realize I would have been happier on Spotify all along.
In a world where musicians and listeners have all the other choices to connect still, IMO Spotify completely deserves its position. I detest the low effort complaints by ppl on Reddit saying their financial success is not deserved.
My listening style basically comes down to vibe, e.g. "I want to imagine myself as a jaded ex-con planning my next heist" and "I'm duking it out with an aggressively hegemonizing von Neumann swarm in the asteroid belt"
I landed up going back to college/community radio for true discovery (i.e. you'll find stuff you hate AND stuff that you love from genres that you didn't know existed). I use Bandcamp to find/buy new music in genres I love and know well.
For people reading this who are interested in trying this out, these are the stations that I listen to:
- KEXP (Seattle, WA/Bay Area)
- KTRU (Houston, TX) <-- home station
- KPFT (Houston, TX) <-- home station
- WMSE (Milwaukee, WI)
- WYEP (Pittsburgh, PA)
- KVNO (Omaha, NE) <-- classical
- KCSM (San Mateo Area) <-- jazz
- SomaFM Indie Pop Rocks!
- SomaFM Metal Detector
You can also try scanning the lower end of your radio dial (under 93 MHz), as this is usually spectrum that's reserved for community and college radio stations. Some college stations still broadcast in AM, though this, and AM radio writ large, is dying out.
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While I'm on this soapbox: Apple Music's shuffle absolutely biases towards bigger/more popular artists.
I once had a few (like, between 10 and 20) Taylor Swift songs in my library in a 2000+ song playlist I used to shuffle in the mornings. I don't listen to her very often, and I didn't have any of her albums in my library at the time.
EVERY SINGLE TIME I'd shuffle all of the songs in this playlist or my library, Taylor Swift would get queued up way more than she should have given my listening history. I removed all of her songs from my library to get it to stop.
I get much more variety when I shuffle all of my _downloaded_ songs (which, I believe, is everything in my library).
Here are my two stations that I listen to:
- WBER https://wber.org
- WITR https://witr.rit.edu
For as long as I can remember, last.fm has had the ability to show you similar artists when given any one particular artist. And it's remarkably good, in my opinion.
With it, I've discovered so much great music that I'd have never stumbled upon organically.
It's also totally free to browse and without signing up. For example, browse artists similar to Jean Knight: https://www.last.fm/music/Jean+Knight (scroll down to "Similar Artists", or just tack on /+similar to the URL)
I can recommend everyone this video by Rick Beato: The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse
https://youtube.com/watch?v=1bZ0OSEViyo
Music is too easy to make? So people like producers and record executives don't have the power they used to. That's a good thing. The history of music proves this.
Music is too easy to consume? I legit don't know how to respond to this. Just because music isn't part of kids' identities anymore doesn't mean that's because it's too easy to consume. Times change, Rick. Whereas they used to share music now they share streamers and YouTubers.
The main argument that derails Rick here is in the first few minutes. He claims that music all sounds the same because of the tools available. He claims that music sounds the same because someone is comfortable with sounds that are familiar. He doesn't really say whether it's record companies or artists or consumers. Just some nebulous 'they'.
It's always been like that. Always. When a band gets popular, other bands pop up just like them to try to steal their popularity and money (Fats Domino and Chubby Checker is the oldest example I can think of without googling it). There are 'sounds' of decades. You can name sounds from the 50's, or 60's, or 80's, **all from way before this technology he's blaming existed.
Overall that video comes across as an old person who longs for the better days of their youth and is upset they can't make money in ways they want to. Welcome to the fucking world. Times change. Change with them or don't, it's your problem.
I don't know why they have to make it so hard for people to express their listening intent.
Plus actually shitty UX/UI people like to call good, but it lacks plenty of really really basic features. Like having control over if a song is added to the queue to be played next or last, or just being able to preview what stations are going to play (it's a minefield of an UI to try and find new songs while also not interrupt the current one).
They don't. Spotify pays out roughly 66% of their revenue as royalties, while Apple Music only does about 50%. [1]
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-music-reveals-how-much-it... https://archive.is/lRZns
So pretty much there all the same, SoundCloud though is different
https://blog.groover.co/en/tips/how-much-do-streaming-servic...
To pu it another way, what level of Royalties should be paid? It just seems to be market to the bottom. Gigs and merch.
Spotify pays out 70% of revenue they receive to owners of the music, BandCamp 75%, SoundCloud 80%. Could be slightly better, but it's not outrageous.
The real problems for artists are:
a) they are not the owners of the music, their record label takes most of it, and the rest is split between the artists, songwriters, producers, etc.
b) bad deals with (but good for) the customers - ~10/month for unlimited music too good value
Also, they’re not really a streaming service: you can preview a lot of music on the platform, but it’s primarily about buying music. It’s not really a good comparison to Spotify at all.
If Apple actually pays rights holders based on what you actually play that would be a huge difference.
I don't think it's sustainable for musicians to rely on cross financing via other services or VC money. Further consolidation under under big tech conpanies would be a negative IMO
because the streaming business model and the convenience of having any song from any artist in the palm of your hand has canabalized any and all other possibilities for musicians that would otherwise pay better. you have a few people/fans that insist on paying for the music in platforms like bandcamp, but thats uncommon. from the user's point of view, it's the perfect world, where he pays a little to have access to the entire musical catalog on the planet.
The entire discussion here is people's opinion on the Spotify service compared to its competitors, yet no actual discussion of TFA.
Most people are going to back down straight away. Seriously, most people won't even stand up and have local employment laws applied. Many will keep silent about things they saw even when there is no possible retribution. Most people aren't willing to battle over things.
There's a tiny handful of artists for whom I'd go out of my way to buy an album directly from them (or a t shirt, or concert or whatever, just to support them).
But for most of my day, music is more just a background thing, like having the radio on, and I don't really pay attention to what's playing or know or care who makes it. Most of it could be (or maybe already is) AI generated and I wouldn't know the difference. I would not pay $20 for an album of that stuff.
I think it's interesting to compare the music industry with the video games one. Both have a glut of suppliers with many invisible titles and producers trailing behind a few famous ones. Both had physical media and big publishers in the 90s and 2000s before transitioning to downloads and streaming. The PC games market moved to pretty effective market segmentation divided between full price new release titles, Steam sales for older games, and first or third party subscriptions like EA Play or Ubisoft Plus or Microsoft Gamepass. Each reaches a different part of the market and can accommodate both players who rent and those who buy. There's also room for smaller indie games, between Steam and Humble Bundle and GOG.
The music market seems archaic, oligopolistic, and predatory by comparison. Where's the Valve of music, offering a great service for both consumers and producers? We do have Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, etc., but why can't they make the finances there work when the also expensive video games market seemed to be doing OK (at least until the post covid bubble burst these last two years)?
Artists make their money with live events nowadays. Spotify’s average profit for the last 4 years is around 500m per year. Investors need to be paid and distributing some of that profit among a handful of top artists isn’t going to go a long way.
So how do you suppose we pay the artists more royalties?
I don’t see any solution short of some massive government arts program. It comes down to supply and demand. Most musicians play for a love of music. They would (and many do) play music even if they got no money for it at all. That makes for a glut of musicians and a really low equilibrium price of labor.
We see a similar phenomenon (on a much smaller scale) in tech with games. Lots of people really like making games. They’d do it for free. Getting paid for it at all is a dream. Result: pay is not great in that segment of the industry. Not many of us dream of adding some features to CRUD apps and as a result that pays better.
I wish Spotify would let me "upgrade" individual albums to purchases. Like I'd still pay for my monthly sub, but if I particularly like a track or artist, I could buy that album for a discounted price (like $5, ideally) and the artist would get like 95% of that revenue.
It doesn't really solve the problem of "your music is so generic nobody wants to buy it and nobody can tell you apart from the other similar artists", but maybe it doesn't need to? There's already enough excellent, good, and mediocre music out there to last me several lifetimes even if nothing else gets made. There's way more supply than demand. Everybody wants to be creative, I guess, but not everyone is actually good at it? Maybe it's OK for most of that music to fall by the wayside and only the 1% of the 1% to really make it. Streaming is a good proving ground, and upgrades could help the really good artists earn a bit more.
To me it's not really that different from the infinite supply of shitty books, articles, games, movies, software etc. Most of it just isn't good enough to stand out.
How do platforms like spotify not offer "great service for both consumers and producers"? They offer the same 70/30 split as steam, and I'm not aware of any widespread consumer discontent for spotify, aside from maybe their reputation for underpaying their artists (see previous point).
https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machin...
Or maybe it's just that Spotify is a subscription split between all the listened tracks whereas Steam is individual purchases? It's probably be fairer to compare the economics to Microsoft Gamepass.
http://cdbaby.com
It can't solve the problem of getting artists compensated because Americans do not value music. You yourself even expressed your own opinion of the lack of music's value. This is the fundamental reason why we've allowed Spotify to pocket 99% of the total value of music. If Americans valued music and the musicians that labor to make it more, they would care about artist compensation. But they don't, trusting the 'free' market to do it for them.
Source? A quick search shows spotify is only pocketing 30%.
https://dittomusic.com/en/blog/how-much-does-spotify-pay-per...
I’m pretty sure ballooning AAA budgets leading to studio death marches, lack of courage to innovate and deviate from a winning formula, the demise of mid-budget games, etc. have plagued the industry for over a decade now.
Whereas in Olde Hollywood, streaming has eaten its lunch, theaters are struggling to stay afloat, the demise of mid-budget films (when’s the last time you’ve seen a comedy in theaters?), and so on.
The book publishing industry is made up of copyright hawks, I can only assume because the internet has allowed self-publishing and unending amounts of free text to compete with.
This is not a good time for content in any format.
A month ago, for Beetlejuice2.
IMO a comedy is one of the only reasons to still go to a theater. The communal experience of everyone laughing is terrific.
Maybe we'll be left with a handful of Beyoncé's or Taylor Swift's that expand beyond just music, and the rest is generated.
I sure hope not. I may not buy lots of music, but I have been to see many of my favourite artists in person, in venues that range from a few hundred people to a few thousand - certainly nothing on the scale of Swift or Beyoncé. And I discovered many of those artists through streaming.
I wonder if a complete AI disruption where background music can be generated will increase the demand for live bands, even if at a local pub.
Steam's recommendations (and more importantly, sales) are how I discover new games. And there's a lot of titles (both games and music) I'd happily pay $2 or $5 for, but not $20 or $50. There's a lot MORE titles I'd be happy to try for a monthly all inclusive subscription.
For music, I wish Spotify would add a "Like this track? As a Premium subscriber, you can buy the whole album for only $5!" function. That's way less than a full price album but still way more money than the artist would get from streaming.
Besides that, Steam is the go-to place to publish games. The only reason you wouldn't distribute on Steam is if you are a Nintendo or Epic-level megacorp that has its own store and exclusivity rules. On Bandcamp, the decision to upload an album comes down to whether the record label allows it. So a lot of times, artists will post early works to BC and drop it as soon as they sign with a label.