[HN Gopher] Spotify Shuts Down 'Unwrapped' Artist Royalty Calcul...
___________________________________________________________________
Spotify Shuts Down 'Unwrapped' Artist Royalty Calculator with Legal
Threats
Author : cpach
Score : 178 points
Date : 2024-12-28 12:00 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.digitalmusicnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.digitalmusicnews.com)
| zeristor wrote:
| So how do the other streaming services compare, this isn't
| sustainable.
|
| 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.
| ProblemFactory wrote:
| Most streaming services take a similar cut of the revenue.
|
| 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
| maccard wrote:
| 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.
| manfre wrote:
| Counter example, if they raised their price by more than
| $1-2, I'd cancel it. The music discovery hasn't been great
| and it mostly suggests playlists of the songs I already
| listen to. Inertia is the only reason I haven't cancelled
| and bought all the songs directly
| nprateem wrote:
| They did and I did
| maccard wrote:
| See I think how you feel about Spotify is exactly how I
| feel about Netflix. I don't use the discovery of Spotify
| much, if at all. The value is the catalog.
| Lanolderen wrote:
| Spotify is already steep in my eyes when I compare it to
| Netflix. Probably because I'm looking at video bandwidth vs
| audio bandwidth but paying for music more than you pay for
| movies feels weird in my monkey brain. No shiny picture,
| less money monkey say.
| maccard wrote:
| For me the value proposition is that there's zero
| fragmentation. I know that by paying what I do for
| Spotify, I have access to pretty much everything. That's
| worth a decent premium to me.
|
| The problem with Netflix is the same as console
| exclusives in video games - fragmenting the ecosystem
| means I look at the service for the content it has vs the
| other services. But with Spotify it fills that niche
| entirely.
| threeseed wrote:
| > I know that by paying what I do for Spotify, I have
| access to pretty much everything
|
| Apple Music, Tidal etc have almost identical libraries.
|
| Catalog size stopped being a differentiator years ago.
| maccard wrote:
| I mean compared to video streaming sites - Netflix and
| prime have vastly different libraries. If Spotify and
| Apple Music had different libraries to the same degree,
| id probably bounce between them both and be more price
| sensitive. The fact that Spotify (and apple and tidal)
| have the full catalog mean the network effect is likely
| to be my main decider.
| threeseed wrote:
| Spotify maybe cheap compared to Netflix.
|
| But it is way overpriced compared to Apple Music
| (definitely) and Tidal (arguably).
|
| Not having lossless audio and paying artists less is
| ridiculous.
| maccard wrote:
| We have duo for my wife and I, so Spotify is PS8.50/month
| each. Apple Music is PS11/mo.
|
| 60% of my listening is through a pair of AirPods over
| Bluetooth, 30% on a Sonos system and 10% using semi
| decent wired headphones. Lossless isn't something that is
| a differentiator for me.
|
| I have some music on both Spotify and Apple Music - the
| reality is that even with a few thousand streams per
| month we haven't even made back the cost of 2 hours of
| rehearsal space. The reality is that for artists making a
| living off this, the problem isn't the difference between
| 75 and 80% that Spotify holds onto, it's the fact that
| the artist only sees 15-20% of what's left over.
| jzb wrote:
| 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.
| Arnt wrote:
| But does Spotify pay the same rate to each artist, or does
| the rate depend on what deal an artist's record company has
| with Spotify?
| kalleboo wrote:
| Doesn't Spotify still have a free tier? I think that would
| account for the biggest discrepancy in their payouts.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| (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.
| gwervc wrote:
| Those people are doing real work, it's normal they're paid
| too. If musicians want more for themselves they could cut
| middlemen and produce and commercialize themselves their
| music.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Absolutely, and they are pretty much all equal
| participants in the creation of the sound you are
| hearing. It's just one worker (the headline artist) who
| gets all the attention.
| ClimaxGravely wrote:
| It seems to be happening more and more these days.
| JPEGMafia is a good example
| jhogendorn wrote:
| 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.
| msoad wrote:
| Let's not assume that in a world where Apple has 80% market
| share artists are getting paid better...
| Snafuh wrote:
| 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
| jason_zig wrote:
| Might want to take a look in the mirror with regard to
| tech...
| int_19h wrote:
| Is there an actual breakdown somewhere on how much, exactly,
| an artist makes on each platform, similar to this calculator?
| musictubes wrote:
| 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.
| 23B1 wrote:
| 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"
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Apple Music is quite good. Better masters, good
| recommendations, no fuss - and they pay artists more,
| supposedly.
| pjm331 wrote:
| Recently made the switch and have been very happy with the
| service.
| fundatus wrote:
| > they pay artists more, supposedly
|
| 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
| 23B1 wrote:
| Dang that sucks.
|
| Man, I really, really hate this situation.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| No, they misread.
| ivanbakel wrote:
| That percentage doesn't really explain anything. What if
| Apple has more revenue? What if Apple users stream less, so
| royalty costs per subscription are lower? In both cases the
| AM payout could be fairer for artists and the percentage
| could still be lower.
|
| The article you cite actually claims the latter is true, so
| it seems looking at just that statistic is misleading.
| threeseed wrote:
| Did you even read what you posted ? "Its average per-stream
| payout rate is lower"
| mustyoshi wrote:
| That comes down to Spotify being mostly ad supported
| users and Apple being all paid. If Spotify got rid of
| their free tier their 60-70% rev share would be more than
| Apple's 50%. But then the number of streams would go down
| by 50-60%, counterintuitively the total payout would only
| go down like 10-15% tho.
| Avamander wrote:
| 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).
| Schiendelman wrote:
| I'm not sure I can reproduce some of these complaints. Play
| next and add to queue are both there for me. What do you
| mean by "doesn't work any more"? I just opened it; it's
| definitely in need of a UX update but seems to work fine.
| Avamander wrote:
| Maybe it's just the tvOS version that lacks the option I
| described? I was disappointed in Spotify on tvOS so I'm
| using Music there. I guess platform inconsistency is an
| another negative of Music.
|
| And by "doesn't work" it just says "an error occured" and
| nothing helps. I've even reinstalled it. Judging by
| reddit posts about it, it's a common issue. (Its logs
| also provide 0 hints about the error it encounters.)
| Kelteseth wrote:
| 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
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=1bZ0OSEViyo
| Rastonbury wrote:
| 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
| Loughla wrote:
| 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.
| Avamander wrote:
| It takes intentional effort to streer the algorithm back to
| anything reasonable. Skip the garbage and "like" anything you
| want to see more.
|
| I don't know why they have to make it so hard for people to
| express their listening intent.
| nothercastle wrote:
| Try tidal. Their app is a bit worse in terms of device
| compatibility but their discovery is better and seems to give
| you more on theme similar tracks.
| nunez wrote:
| 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.
|
| ---
|
| 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).
| binarymax wrote:
| 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.
|
| Here are my two stations that I listen to:
|
| - WBER https://wber.org
|
| - WITR https://witr.rit.edu
| hyperman1 wrote:
| Do you know why USA radio systems are all named Kxxx or Wxxx?
| Some kind of code assigned by the governement?
| int_19h wrote:
| It's a radio callsign (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_s
| igns_in_the_United_State...)
|
| > The FCC policy covering broadcasting stations limits them
| to call signs that start with a "K" or a "W", with "K" call
| signs generally reserved for stations west of the
| Mississippi River, and "W" limited to stations east of the
| river.
| adnanaga wrote:
| 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.
| peheje wrote:
| My best experience is deezer
| skibz wrote:
| 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)
| mstipetic wrote:
| I still don't get how YouTube (premium + music) isn't a clear
| winner here. Why use Spotify if you can get all that for the same
| price?
| e40 wrote:
| UI/UX? YT is the most hated UX of anything I ever use. It's
| different in terrible ways on each platform, too.
| EduardoBautista wrote:
| On desktop I use YouTube music because of how bad the Apple
| Music app is. On mobile, I use Apple Music.
| 23B1 wrote:
| What about the app don't you like? I ask because I'm done
| with Spotify and looking for the next service.
| nothercastle wrote:
| Apple Music has a really bizarre interface for managing
| playlists. It's so cumbersome and takes way too many
| clicks. Probably as a side effect of being mobile first
| nunez wrote:
| Can you describe how? I actually find playlist editing to
| be really easy on Apple Music/iTunes.
| 23B1 wrote:
| Wow I just tried it out and it's quite awful, you're
| right. The way Spotify allows you to see what's in the
| 'radio' station and then add additional tracks to a
| playlist is great - there's almost no similar
| functionality in Apple music.
|
| Actually bonkers that discovery is this bad in Apple
| music
| eek2121 wrote:
| The desktop app is the same as the mobile one, what issue
| are you seeing?
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| You might like https://cider.sh/
| llm_nerd wrote:
| YouTube music on iOS and Android is very similar to the other
| music apps. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/youtube-
| music/id1017492454 with a 4.8 on iOS, so people seem to like
| 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.
| whycome wrote:
| Similar but not great. That last 10% is 90% of the
| experience.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Last I tried it, you couldn't even click through different
| songs in an album without it jumping to the now playing
| screen. No way to disable that behavior in settings.
|
| Absolute trash of a UI.
|
| Spotify has plenty of warts but it is at least functional.
|
| On top of that, account management, setup, building new
| playlists is just horrible. It feels like the person who
| wrote it doesn't listen to music.
|
| Literally anything is better than Youtube music. Given that
| Google music was actually pretty good back in the day it is
| hilarious how badly Google has screwed it up.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| I guess people have different needs out of their apps.
|
| I was a long time Spotify user. When they decided to give
| hundreds of millions to Joe Rogan, I switched to Apple
| Music. Then when I got YT Premium for the video benefits,
| I randomly tried YT Music and it has been my primary
| since.
|
| And I have zero complaints. I search for artists and
| albums and songs and play them. Often I start algorithmic
| "radio" playlists based upon one of those. It plays the
| music. I save things to my library. I add things to
| playlists.
|
| I listen to music and I think it's a _great_ app. And
| again, 4.8 on the app store, so the people for whom it 's
| a terrible app might be the exception.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Not really, all the Google apps get five star ratings
| from all the spam accounts to try and make them seem more
| legitimate.
|
| Neither major app store has done anything about ratings
| spam for a decade and the system is entirely useless.
| NBJack wrote:
| What do you want to see in the playlist behavior? I admit
| I build them without much effort in YT Music and never
| felt constricted, but I may be missing out.
| skrebbel wrote:
| 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.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| The YouTube Music UI fails at very basic things. Play a
| track that Google seems is "for children" and you are
| unable to navigate to another track or browse without it
| stopping playing, because the service inherited YT's clumsy
| COPPA compliance solution.
|
| The UI can't cope with long titles. It uses space badly. It
| doesn't surface content well (no Christmas playlist on the
| front page during December).
|
| It's a UI mess. I tried switching my family to it since we
| pay for YT Premium anyway and faced a total revolt.
| nunez wrote:
| I found Spotify to be very playlist-oriented. Not great for
| people who listen to albums straight through. Things like
| pushing albums to a queue were not possible on the platform
| (IIRC the best you could do is play albums "next").
| prpl wrote:
| you can add albums to the queue. Have been able to for a
| long time.
| gadders wrote:
| I believe there is some royalty-related reason why
| Spotify prefers playlists over albums.
| antifa wrote:
| Spotify is so playlist oriented, we need a button to turn
| a search into a playlist just to make search usable...
| Iflyblue wrote:
| I just learned that Spotify apparently likes to charge you
| for Taylor Swift while their algorithm pushes their own AI
| generated music into your ear buds which costs them
| nothing. That's how CEOs sell a couple billion dollars of
| stock options. Question is... Are you gonna continue to
| support him/them/they? I'm not. I'm gonna go for a bike
| ride right now and leave the ear buds home and listen to
| the sounds all around me. Take care y'all.
| jamespo wrote:
| Where did you learn this about AI generated music on
| Spotify?
| mutagen wrote:
| Not OP but there's both accusations of AI generated music
| [0] and the slightly overlapping issue of Spotify owned
| music in playlists [1].
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42526803
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42461530
| NBJack wrote:
| Especially compared to one of their core competitors in the
| US market: Amazon Music.
|
| I don't know who pissed off who in the world of Amazon, but
| I'm shocked at how broken the Amazon Music app has been for
| the last few years. Random stops in the streaming, weird
| behavior on flagship phones after the app has been in the
| background for a while, their app store reviews tell more.
|
| At the very least they fixed a (long-standing) bug that
| caused the scrollbar to conflict with side panel UI
| elements, making it stop/halt when you tried to view long
| lists of songs. Their fix was: remove the scroll.
|
| FWIW, I prefer YT Music simply because the same app on the
| same phone works beautifully. It ain't perfect (my favorite
| is the random cross-talk with YouTube at times on 'likes',
| or when I occasionally see the interface change for a
| particular song in my play list), but I don't have to reset
| stuff just to listen to a few tracks in a row.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Oh my lord, reordering the queue or playlists on Amazon
| Music on iOS is one of the most frustrating interfaces I
| have ever used. It makes me so mad just thinking about it
| that I can hardly even pinpoint what's wrong other than
| "it is almost but not quite completely broken."
| soulofmischief wrote:
| 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.
| jMyles wrote:
| Vanilla VLC still feels like the best user experience to me.
| CasperH2O wrote:
| Im still on Winamp, still got the keyboard keys in my
| muscle memory.
| rpdillon wrote:
| Agreed! Still my go-to across desktop and mobile.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| 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.
| oarfish wrote:
| Man, there's few things as infuriating as the Spotify app
| refusing to play a downloaded podcast unless i connect to
| the internet. can disconnect right after it starts playing,
| so it makes no sense.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I've been on a streak of days-long roadtrips using YouTube in
| my car for about a year and the experience has been great for
| me on the whole.
| denkmoon wrote:
| The audio quality of most music on YTM is abysmal.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| ??? 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.
| Avamander wrote:
| If it has been uploaded with that quality. It's not like
| YouTube is giving it's replacement tool to anyone regular
| to use, for better-quality uploads.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| You, along with many others, seem very confused about
| this. No one is talking about random people uploading
| their MP3s to YouTube the video service.
|
| YouTube Music is a separate service. The music is
| provided by music labels in exactly the same way it is
| provided to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and
| others. Music labels provide digital masters and the
| streaming service encodes as necessary for their users.
| anamexis wrote:
| YouTube Music definitely has just standard YouTube videos
| uploaded by random people. It's one of the only reasons I
| use YouTube Music - listening to vinyl rips of things
| that were never released in other formats.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| When you are on YouTube there is a Music section that
| includes music videos, random uploads, etc. A lot of
| people are talking about that in this discussion and it
| is causing a lot of confusion.
|
| That is not YouTube Music.
|
| These are YouTube Music-
|
| https://music.youtube.com/
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/youtube-music/id1017492454
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.
| and...
|
| Random rips that people upload on YouTube are _not_
| available on YouTube Music (again, _not_ the Music
| section on YouTube, but the separate YouTube Music
| service). The only music available is through a
| sanctioned distributor like Amuse, and of course the
| labels have direct feeds to these services.
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| You are mistaken. User uploads, unofficial remixes,
| mixtapes, anime music videos, entire video game
| soundtrack rips, etc. All in the YouTube Music app.
|
| https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc-
| MRIbtyP8&si=m5A0o6QLomb...
|
| https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=bPtF-
| hvruDQ&si=iK5SGGZMup2...
|
| https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=tMWvoJjflfc&si=Uqz_a-
| dzl4q...
|
| https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=3dBLZXt18U0&si=ExNqN60V
| G6e...
|
| https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=I6pPpKjA-
| FY&si=jlVoeBhuXGH...
|
| https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=xddHYuXEXik&si=k0tWdhMz
| v-H...
|
| https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=1Oq5BS8E5D0&si=u6OEMhWO
| DWZ...
|
| https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=YQRXJVF8lic&si=JR6tiZVB
| LR_...
|
| https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=oKD-
| MVfC9Ag&si=tRHXKwDzB7Q...
|
| https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=u8GCIBWztoY&si=z9JRzBBZ
| p-6...
| Groxx wrote:
| To +1 the general "youtube music is youtube": every time
| I've given the YT music app a try, I've started listening
| to [what I wanted] only to end up in random youtube mixes
| (not YT-music-mixes of just studio-uploaded stuff,
| _youtube videos_ titled "mix" or otherwise, sometimes
| 10h long, with accompanying looped graphics and sometimes
| VPN advertising segments and like-and-subscribes strewn
| throughout randomly) after a few songs.
|
| YTM is YT _plus_ music, not a separate thing. It 's very
| clearly intentionally forced to be that way. It's the
| primary reason I think it's an awful service (the general
| UX is a very close second). It does, however, have the
| benefit of niche user uploads like this existing because
| it's YT.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| Mea culpa.
|
| Having said that, having done thousands of search for
| countless bands, albums, and songs, and having listened
| to countless playlists, I have never, ever encountered an
| unofficial track. It has always been first-party official
| releases.
|
| I guess it's that I'm not looking for stuff for which
| there isn't a direct licensed track. But the earlier
| comments about "uploaded with that quality" and talking
| about replacement tracks is simply wrong for the vast
| majority of people. You're going to be listening to the
| music distributors version.
|
| I guess if you're looking for anime music or something
| where an official listing simply doesn't exist then it's
| the alternative to nothing.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I use normal YT with premium for music all day, never
| even felt an urge to try out "YouTube Music". What would
| be the value add? I already have playlists on normal YT
| and all my music is there.
| kevingadd wrote:
| 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.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| One doesn't even need to pay for YouTube. Just install Brave
| browser.
| Mond_ wrote:
| Habits and familiarity are pretty powerful forces.
| solardev wrote:
| 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.
| nothercastle wrote:
| How do you find decent community curated playlists
| solardev wrote:
| I just search as normal and look in the playlists. Usually
| something in the top 2 or 3 results is a good one. I think
| they're ranked by number of saves or something? Not sure.
| The official ones labeled "Spotify" are also quite good.
| jakkos wrote:
| I switched to YouTube Music from Spotify years ago, but have
| friends who refuse to switch, my understanding is:
|
| - 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
| joemi wrote:
| > - 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).
| internet101010 wrote:
| A universal track id number combined with m3u?
| wesselbindt wrote:
| 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)
| soulofmischief wrote:
| 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.
| Minor49er wrote:
| There are plenty of better alternatives to YouTube for
| independent educational media. For example, Udemy,
| Skillshare, or Coursera which allow independent educators
| and don't rely on poor recommendation algorithms or
| incessant advertising (both from the platform and in
| sponsorships)
| dylan604 wrote:
| Better alternative in some regards, maybe, but for
| discoverability, there is no bigger platform than YT.
| It's the Walmart of media consumption with a "you're
| going to make it up in volume" concepts
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I've sampled all of those services. None of those have
| comparable, sustainable mass audiences like YouTube. They
| also lack integration with my other consumption, which
| YouTube provides. And in general, the quality of
| independent educational content I find on YouTube is
| quite good and is often a product of YouTube culture
| itself, now that we are no longer in the first generation
| of YT creators, and I quite like the culture and its
| aesthetic.
|
| Udemy, Skillshare and Coursera have failed to create a
| product which attracts me, and the general population.
| Their focus on specific content and consumption habits is
| both a blessing and a curse, depending on who you ask.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| I don't know about Udemy or Skillshare, but I gave up on
| Coursera a long time ago because almost everything on
| there seems to be of a "X for non-X-majors" variety. They
| tend assume no prerequisites and are generally super
| watered down.
| roughly wrote:
| YouTube is also a vast repository of conspiracy bullshit
| with a recommender algorithm that is happy to start feeding
| you as much of it as you can autoplay.
| plagiarist wrote:
| This is my objection to paying them. They push a lot of
| ragebait. They have a lot of longform advertising that is
| just raw conspiracies or medical quackery.
| derektank wrote:
| My understanding is that 55% of your YouTube premium
| payment goes to the creators you watched to compensate
| them for lost ad dollars (and I believe creators actually
| earn slightly more per premium viewer than per ad-
| supported viewer). So in some ways, if you pay for
| YouTube premium you are actually paying to drown out
| conspiracy theories and ragebait content with whatever
| content it is that you prefer.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Spotify directly funds/endorses Joe Rogan.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Yes, and you should disable autoplay and browse with
| intent. You should network with others and use your
| network as a discovery pipeline instead of relying on an
| opaque algorithm.
|
| After a while, the algorithm aligns somewhat anyway and
| you occasionally get a good recommendation from the front
| page or related videos. But first, you have to curate
| your tastes so that it knows what to pull.
|
| I could generalize your comment to say that the world
| wide web itself contains a vast repository of useless or
| malicious content and is a dangerous pipeline to
| extremism. But we find corners of it that don't
| facilitate toxic content, and we ensure the livelihood of
| those who produce useful things for us. They benefit from
| a narrowcasting service with a large audience and ad
| network such as YouTube. Until one of us can provide them
| a better service, that's what they're stuck with.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Companies with billion of dollars in profit yearly are not
| charity cases and no one should feel bad about not giving
| them money.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Who cares about a corp, my comment was focused on keeping
| creators employed. I do think the splits are terrible,
| and I recommend directly supporting creators you enjoy.
| Larrikin wrote:
| You said keep Youtube economically viable, not directly
| pay creators.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| Or Apples family offering. For ~EUR40 we get Apple Music, Apple
| TV+, 2 TB of iCloud and probably something more for the whole
| family.
| tomrod wrote:
| Newpipe is great here too, as well as Freetube.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| 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 -_-.
| pas wrote:
| their podcast integration works. it's not amaaazing but no
| issues with it.
|
| the migration from Google Play Music was pretty uneventful
| for me. (i assume folks with huge uploaded libraries might
| not share this impression.)
| mightyham wrote:
| 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.
| Stealthisbook wrote:
| 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.
| Avamander wrote:
| 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.
| matwood wrote:
| 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.
| eek2121 wrote:
| I use Apple because of the One plan. Not about to pay for
| anything else.
| nunez wrote:
| 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.)
| int_19h wrote:
| I'm not sure if the upload part works, but once it's uploaded
| it plays just fine.
| jakkos wrote:
| > 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
| badgersnake wrote:
| For me a few reasons:
|
| * 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.
| drakonka wrote:
| 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 >.<
| peheje wrote:
| I hear you, just a bandaid but maybe checkout
| https://github.com/sjdonado/idonthavespotify
| drakonka wrote:
| Oh that might do! I'll try it, thank you.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| 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
| drakonka wrote:
| I just tried this via that site as well as the Raycast
| extension and unfortunately keep getting server errors :(
| aliher1911 wrote:
| 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.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| 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.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Recommendations and playlists.
|
| 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?
| pas wrote:
| YT Music recommender algo is pretty good.
|
| 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.
| pohuing wrote:
| It's also got a lot more niche music in it. I've switched
| because that. Practical everyone is on YouTube(willing or
| not), good luck finding that one self published song from
| 2009 uploaded from an abandoned account on Spotify though.
| pas wrote:
| Exactly. Recordings of live sets, strange/interesting
| post/doom/stoner metal albums, and - for better or worse
| - all the bootlegged stuff that Spotify doesn't have
| because legal disputes as user uploads.
| alberto_balsam wrote:
| 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.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| 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.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| 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".
| Groxx wrote:
| The storage and library is, yes, AFAICT. It's a "full"
| migration, everyone I know who used Play Music heavily has
| had no data-retention issues at all with YT Music.
|
| But the UX is _so_ much worse, it 's just mindblowing.
| Basically all of them left for something else eventually.
| jillyboel wrote:
| 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.
| can16358p wrote:
| 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.
| hawski wrote:
| 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.
| antihero wrote:
| Those people generally didn't care about audio quality,
| YouTube for me seems synonymous with unreliable bit rates
| and disorganisation.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Quoting a reddit post:
|
| > Youtube's best audio is format 251: Opus with a
| variable bitrate target of 128k. Note that 128k Opus is
| approximately equal in quality to 320k mp3 (as in, it's
| generally considered transparent)
|
| I care a lot about audio quality and I use YT premium for
| music just about every day. You also get enhanced bitrate
| on some videos with premium.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I use regular YouTube (not Music) for discovering music by
| way of playlist mix videos sometimes (such as the
| retrowave/chillwave/etc mixes by soulsearchanddestroy), but
| if I like a playlist well enough I'll rebuild it in my
| Apple Music library with a combination of tracks on AM
| natively or in some cases with Bandcamp purchases. Music
| being tied up in YouTube long term is cumbersome, even with
| YT Premium offline downloads as an option.
| mattmanser wrote:
| Google already shut down their first music streaming
| service.
|
| Trying to get your playlists out was a complete nightmare
| too, some moron at Google decided on a ridiculously poor
| data structure. It was something utterly absurd like a zip
| with a CSV file per track, that generally had only that
| track in it.
|
| Not going back to a Google run one.
| TOMDM wrote:
| Shut down seems a bit much, it was transitioned from
| google play music to youtube music.
|
| I still have all my google play music playlists from 2015
| in youtube music.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| 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.
| rideontime wrote:
| 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.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| 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.
| redhale wrote:
| 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).
| ClimaxGravely wrote:
| 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.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Standard Google stuff.
|
| 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.
| imbnwa wrote:
| 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.
| solardev wrote:
| 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)?
| michelb wrote:
| 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 Beyonce's or Taylor
| Swift's that expand beyond just music, and the rest is
| generated.
| bpye wrote:
| > 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 Beyonce. And I discovered
| many of those artists through streaming.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Likely relevant: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/2397-there-
| is-a-theory-whic...
| Apocryphon wrote:
| 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.
| eprparadox wrote:
| the Valve of music might be Bandcamp.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The Epic Games Store of music, surely.
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| The Gorbino's Quest of music!
| solardev wrote:
| 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.
| where-group-by wrote:
| They kind-of do. The main page allows you to browse popular
| albums by genre. Each individual album also has a
| "recommended by this artist" footer, or "people who bough
| this also bought" (if there aren't any recommendations
| set).
|
| I also check profiles of other people who purchased an
| album I liked and see if anything catches my interest.
|
| I do not use Spotify, so I'm not sure if the above counts
| as a proper discovery tool.
| crtasm wrote:
| Click the tags on any release to jump into to their
| discovery system, or get there from the genre/tag/countries
| buttons on the homepage.
|
| https://bandcamp.com/discover/
| rchaud wrote:
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| Yeah bandcamp is closer to GOG, because it's DRM free, and
| you can get all your games in offline installer format if
| you so desire.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| That was probably true before Epic bought them. Less so now.
| somethingor wrote:
| You're one sale behind the times, Bandcamp was sold to
| Songtradr in 2023
| int_19h wrote:
| As someone who regularly buys music on Bandcamp, I can't
| say that I've noticed any substantial changes throughout
| the acquisitions.
|
| It also seems that most bands that I listen to prefer
| people to buy their music on Bandcamp before other
| platforms, so presumably it's still a better deal for the
| artists as well?
| crtasm wrote:
| I believe so yes, they make their payout % clear and are
| continuing to do days where they waive their cut
| entirely.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > 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.
| nilamo wrote:
| > (when's the last time you've seen a comedy in theaters?)
|
| 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.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Ah, an exception that truly proves the rule. A sequel stuck
| in production hell for _thirty-six years._ Granted, it
| appears to have the mid-budget of what we used to see
| plenty of (in films such as comedies), but _Beetlejuice
| Beetlejuice_ and the Sydney Sweeney rom-com that also came
| out this year are rarities; it's been widely known for
| years that comedies have fallen out of favor from the
| cinema. (Some say MCU-style superhero quip fests replaced
| them.) Sample coverage:
|
| https://www.escapistmagazine.com/6-reasons-why-comedy-in-
| fil...
|
| https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/comedy-movie-not-dead-
| busi...
|
| https://whatculture.com/film/it-s-official-movie-comedies-
| ar...
|
| There are opportunities to laugh at the movies, but they
| tend not to be specifically comedies.
| deanc wrote:
| 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?
| solardev wrote:
| (From a sibling comment of mine)
|
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| >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.
|
| I don't get it, your proposal is that you want to be able
| to buy albums for less the usual price of $15-20 or
| whatever? Why would an artist want to do that? Or is the
| idea basically a tipping function where you "buy" an album
| for $5, but don't get anything in return?
| nosioptar wrote:
| Qobuz allows purchasing some music (flac).
|
| Qobuz does have its share of problems.
|
| I often found its catalog lacking.
|
| Its plagued with edited versions of albums that aren't
| labelled as edited.
|
| It lacks filters. I'd like to filter out singles and just
| browse albums.
| miunau wrote:
| 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.
| deanc wrote:
| Survival of the fittest? I really don't have a problem with
| this. Artistry is hard - not everyone can make it. 1000
| plays is a failure - financially. It probably costs Spotify
| more to payout the transaction for such a low amount of
| plays than the amount they are paying out.
| freed0mdox wrote:
| > Most of it could be (or maybe already is) AI generated and I
| wouldn't know the difference.
|
| 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.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| >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).
| solardev wrote:
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| >Right, so then why don't the economics of Spotify work out
| if similar margins work in the games and apps industries?
|
| Can you clarify what you mean by "economics of Spotify work
| out"? Are you talking about how much money artists are
| getting from spotify compared to steam? If so, I think the
| answer is pretty obvious. Video games derive an
| overwhelming majority of their revenue from selling the
| product itself and associated DLC/microtransactions. All of
| that is done through steam or whatever storefront, so the
| storefronts can rightly claim they're paying hundreds of
| millions to the publishers/developers. This makes them look
| "fair". On the other hand for music, streaming is only a
| fraction of overall revenue. Artists also derive revenue
| from live performances, merch, and album sales. That makes
| streaming platforms seem "unfair", because they get so
| little revenue from them, even if the revenue split is the
| same. I don't see this as an issue though, only an issue of
| public perception.
|
| Artists are free to take their works off streaming
| platforms if they don't like the deal, but I suspect most
| don't because the free publicity they get from being on
| streaming platforms drive other revenue sources. Streaming
| is a loss leader. Artists complaining about this makes as
| much sense as news publications complaining about how
| little money they get through subscribers, when their real
| revenue source is advertisers.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| (smallish) artists complain about it because they also
| run a loss when they try and tour. It's quite difficult
| to make any money in this industry, and that's
| fundamentally the source of discontent. It feels absurd
| to make a product then get paid nothing for making that
| product when lots of people use it.
| gruez wrote:
| >It feels absurd to make a product then get paid nothing
| for making that product when lots of people use it.
|
| It really shouldn't be considered absurd, especially to
| people on hacker news. Many software projects are used by
| billions of devices (eg. linux, curl, openssl), but
| nobody is creating websites protesting how little github
| pays them. Just because people use your product, doesn't
| mean they're willing to pay money for it. If you can't
| make the economics work because nobody is willing to pay
| for your product, or there are tons of people lining up
| waiting to undercut you, blaming the platform is barking
| up the wrong tree.
| jamespo wrote:
| The main developers of those projects you have listed
| have all made a living thanks to them.
| pas wrote:
| big names complained too.
|
| also, of course it's a very frequently voiced
| "observation" that some percentage of a big amount of
| money... is a big amount itself, yet the marginal cost is
| - and you might not believe it, but - almost zero!
|
| that's why people complain about taxes, bonuses, etc.
|
| the usual complaints from small artists are usually about
| how the network effects are "biasing" the payout
| distribution toward big names. (ie. the fixed monthly
| subscription revenue split amongst all the artists
| weighted by plays.)
| int_19h wrote:
| Thing is, one of the reasons why so many people use the
| product is because it's so cheap for them. Given the
| sheer amount of content being produced today, I don't
| think it's reasonable to expect most of it to command the
| price that it needs to be for the makers to make money
| off it. This is separate from the issue of parasites like
| Spotify, which can still profit in this arrangement by
| skimming a little bit from everyone.
| mustyoshi wrote:
| Spotify boasts a huge free user base, when I looked at
| their financials, I mathed that a paying user generating 6x
| as much revenue as the ad supported users. They simply
| can't raise their payouts and support free users.
| youngtaff wrote:
| Spotify are busy pushing consumers towards 'Made for Spotify'
| music that they don't beed to pay royalties on
|
| https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-
| machin...
| vinceguidry wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| >This is the fundamental reason why we've allowed Spotify to
| pocket 99% of the total value of music
|
| Source? A quick search shows spotify is only pocketing 30%.
|
| https://dittomusic.com/en/blog/how-much-does-spotify-pay-
| per...
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > 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.
| popcalc wrote:
| 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.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Even if it doesn't cost people will generally not fight.
| Seriously, go look at all the people complaining on Reddit
| about their Bosses but don't even bother to fight back by
| looking for a new job.
| thayne wrote:
| Not all costs are (directly) money. Looking for a new job
| costs time, and stress, and possibly the costs of
| relocating, which can include being farther away from
| friends and community you currently have.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| To me, that's just reaching. Fight or flight is a thing.
| Not everyone is going to fight. Just face, generally,
| it's not a cost thing, it's a "they're not a fighter"
| thing.
| alexalx666 wrote:
| for $30 you can get Roon + Qobuz subscription, i found that it's
| impossible to navigate apple music or spotify if you like
| listening to albums
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| I struggle with Spotify's anti-album stance as well. I assume
| it makes them more money because it's easier for them to
| "guide" you to the songs they make more money on?
| jackbrookes wrote:
| Playlists allow spotify to create a moat. It encourages you
| to listen to (and build) playlists, that wouldn't then be
| easily available if you try to switch platforms
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _...i found that it's impossible to navigate apple music or
| spotify if you like listening to albums_
|
| I can't speak to Spotify, but listening to albums in Apple
| Music couldn't be more straightforward -- (1) choose album, (2)
| play.
|
| Roon's apps give "generic music player". What about it
| specifically allows you to play albums successfully, where
| Spotify and Apple Music trip you up?
| pxoe wrote:
| On Spotify it's also (1) choose album, (2) play. I'm failing
| to see how it's any different. There's library sidebar with
| an albums only filter with a variety of view options, list
| with covers, compact list, grid of various sizes - if you
| want to have a hundred of albums on your screen, you got it.
| There are play buttons on the little album cover thumbnails
| in that sidebar, or they can be just double clicked to start
| playing them, there are green play buttons on album cards on
| artist pages and in search, and on album pages. Am I missing
| something?
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| 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/ ?
| mustyoshi wrote:
| I think it's pretty telling that they don't have an option for
| the ad supported users, when they make up like 70% of Spotifies
| userbase.
| theZilber wrote:
| The language of the article implies that Spotify rips artists off
| while their executives earn millions.
|
| The problem is the millions the executives make do not come
| directly from Spotify's revenue, they come from stocks which are
| only loosely related.
|
| Don't get me wrong, Spotify has many issues. And should be
| rightfully criticized. but if you are going to parody them makes
| sure it is a humoristic pretence that most people would
| understand. Juxtaposing CEO stock selling revenue with how much
| artists actually make, is more misleading than it is humoristic -
| as stocks prices are merely loosely linked to company income, and
| by extension loosely linked to the artist's cut.
|
| So I would assume that if a case to be made for taking down the
| website - it is because it did not convey it is a parody and was
| edging defamation.
| miunau wrote:
| Who do you think created all that stock value for him?
| gruez wrote:
| Who do you think creates all the stock value for social media
| companies? Do you think such users should be equally outraged
| that their social media site has billions in market
| capitalization but paid them $0?
| pas wrote:
| um, many users are absolutely. this is still one ot the
| most frequent critique of these sites. for example Reddit
| with its IPO, and their bossing around of their unpaid
| mods, and so on.
|
| at least YT pays some money to creators.
| miunau wrote:
| I wasn't aware it takes years of training and possibly
| expensive schooling to make a social media post. My bad
| gruez wrote:
| >So I would assume that if a case to be made for taking down
| the website - it is because it did not convey it is a parody
| and was edging defamation.
|
| IANAL but under US law that most certainly wouldn't apply
| because spotify isn't a "non-public person".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_light
|
| My guess is that they used the (still spurious) excuse of
| trademark infringement, since it uses "spotify" in its name and
| you could plausibly argue that consumers would be deceived into
| thinking it's an official spotify site. Most would probably
| realize it isn't, but the use of "spotify" in its name, and the
| fact it doesn't disclaim the it's a non-official site probably
| exposed itself to legal threats.
| maeil wrote:
| Serious question - is there no "lite" version of bulletproof
| hosting where they're not as willing to host e.g. silk road but
| happy to throw cease and desists by the likes of Spotify for this
| sort of nonsense in the bin? Surely this is a good opportunity
| for some enterprising Russians? With how relations are nowadays,
| it's hard to imagine Putin would give a toss.
| boredemployee wrote:
| 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
| gruez wrote:
| 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.
| Animats wrote:
| 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.
| m463 wrote:
| Honestly getting it shut down is a much much better move.
|
| Don't banned books or movies benefit from increased attention?
| terminalbraid wrote:
| Yeah, this Streisand Effected itself and probably wouldn't
| have garnered as much attention here otherwise.
| NBJack wrote:
| This is how I learned about it!
| o999 wrote:
| Reminder: A frontend-only web app can be anonymously deployed for
| free on Github pages, Gitlab pages, Netlify, Zeronet (with a
| proxy?).
|
| No reason to tip your opponents about your real identity, even if
| you break no laws, we have the developers of Tornado Cash in
| prison for crimes they didn't commit, OpenAI's and Boeing's
| whistleblowers where found dead in mysterious circumstances.
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