I am in an intense love-hate relationship with Spotify. It makes good mixes for me, I have found a lot of great bands that way. BUT IT KEEPS REGURGITATING THE SAME SONGS IN THERE. I know about Song Radios and Artist Radios, so please don’t recommend those. Smart Shuttle doesn’t cut it, either.
The best thing would be several randomness sliders. One for randomness in bands, the other for randnomness of their songs, one for genres. Please tell me some music service has implemented something like that. I am dying over here.
I’m ready for downvotes but I use Apple Music and it plays me new music all the time. And if it repeats a song I just say suggest less and it goes away. I play my station and it’s a nice mix of music I like and new stuff.
And it is free to stream! (2015)
And it is only 2.99 $ (2018)
And it’s only 4.99! (2020)
And it’s only 10.99! (2023)
We went from free to 132$ in 8 years for (check notes) listening to the radio.
Is everyone cool with paying 20$ a month in 2028?
I think most people use it in bundles with other Apple subscriptions like iCloud and TV
They have all gone up in price:
The most marked increase is in the overall Apple One bundle. Its lowest, or individual tier, used to cost $16.95 per month but as of now, it is $19.95 per month.
Similarly, the Family Apple One tier has risen from $22.95/month to $25.95/month. And the Premier tier is now up from $32.95 to $37.95.
The price rise for Apple One comes at the same time as increases for many of its major constituent services.
Apple TV+ was $6.99/month, now $9.99 Apple News+ was $9.99/month, now $12.99 Apple Arcade was $4.99/month, now $6.99
Even as a primarily Android user, I agree. I have tried most music streaming services at this point and Apple Music has been the best for helping me discover music. Most others play it too safe with the algorithm and only play music I already like.
Another plus is Apple Music is one of the last remaining music platforms that is not trying to shove podcasts down my throat.
Thanks, I think I will try it for a bit. Other people recommended YouTube music, I’m a bit torn between those rn
I’m using Appel music as well and I think it’s great for the most part. It sometimes has a weird bug where it won’t play downloaded music unless you have internet though.
Spotify has that bug too, and it’s infuriating. Whenever I’m on a plane or something I have to put Spotify in “offline mode”, otherwise it just refuses to play all the music I’ve downloaded.
I have the same gripe with Spotify, you dare like a song and that’s all you get over and over.
I really miss Google Play Music!
Same gripe. I recently requested all my data from Spotify, scraped play counts out of it (thanks for not providing that in the API) and made a playlist of my liked songs in ascending play count order. Shuffling that, I’m hearing songs I love which I haven’t heard in years. Sucks that it takes so much effort
I’ve been thinking about something like that as well. Can you create playlists and add songs via the API? Really have to check that out.
But yes, it’s a frustrating trend, I have that with smart home stuff as well. Huge vendors sell powerful enough hardware, but it’s dumbed down and after some point you get so frustrated you start tinkering with their API. Almost seems like a ploy to get all abled people distracted, so they don’t use their time and energy to work on building guillotines
I’m pretty sure you can create playlists and add songs via the API. For my purposes, because I wasn’t otherwise using the API, I found it easier to just manually copy a list of URLs in/out of playlists on the desktop app.
Vim + grep + tiny python snippet = good enough
Now though, I’m thinking a little script which did a “true shuffle” on a playlist, via the API, that could then be played in playlist order could be just as useful…
I have been using https://spotifyshuffler.com/. This allows you to create a shuffled version of your playlist, then you play through that version once with Spotify’s shuffling disabled.
Is the idea that it’ll break Spotify preference to play only certain stuff?
The idea is that you don’t rely on Spotify shuffle at all. A separate app reads your playlist, shuffles it once, and puts that shuffled version into your library. Now you can play this new version with the in-Spotify shuffle disabled. Once you’ve heard all the songs, just rinse and repeat.
Is it weird that I don’t use any of these streaming services and just use my own library via FTP (if I’m not at home)?
I’m (slowly) working my way towards that too (it’s hell to classify though) but how do you discover new music?
Like I’ve always done, through friends or the internet 🤷.
I don’t have a small collection BTW. Things weren’t always discovered through app suggestions 😂.
Cool!
But if I understand you correctly you have a load and loads of stuff? How do you deal with it?
I mean, awhile ago I shazamed songs I liked and I got everything they ever produced and got cluttered up. It’s not the disk space but I don’t have the time to classify it all (in some perfect way) and I don’t even have a way to classify songs, some are good but only in a party setting, but another is both for a party setting, a long car ride and for outdoor business etc etc.
Any help greatly appreciated:-) !
I could google that, but I’m in a chatty mood 😂, could you explain what that is?
It’s a self-hosted music streaming service, based on the subsonic protocol. I set it up with an nginx reverse proxy so I’m able to access it from many compatible apps without a VPN, I use Symfonium on my phone and the integrated web UI on my computer.
While I primarily use streaming services, I almost always still buy albums on Bandcamp for the day when I need to go back to running my own music. You can save up for a Bandcamp Friday when more goes to the artist. Bandcamp has been the best place for music for awhile. Best to get in before Songtradr continues the destruction Epic started.
I do it too, just with Plexamp.
The recommendations and radios on plexamp are amazing compared to any other service I’ve tried.
