Spotify

I have been a Spotify user since they first launched in the US, which was (checks notes) July 2011. Wow. I'm pretty much a happy customer, and I think I get good value from the service. I'm also an artist on the platform, whatever that's worth, though I don't receive any royalties anymore since they changed the structure so that songs with less than 1000 plays don't get paid out. I feel like the two-tiered system that this creates is completely unfair, and destroys Spotify as a platform where a long tail of artists can have even some meager amount of success, whatever that means. In fact, currently you have to pay a distributor like DistroKid to put your music on Spotify, where you have no chance of earning that money back, so it really is "pay to play". Sigh.

What I really want to discuss though is the fact that, even though I have a YouTube Music subscription bundled with my YouTube Premium subscription, I still pay for Spotify. Some people would think this is completely crazy, but there are reasons, I swear.

First off, it's not just lock in. Whenever I read articles or forum posts where people discuss switching away from Spotify, there's lots of consternation around "but what about muh plAYLisssts???". Let's be clear, I barely use playlists. I have like half a dozen, and most are just collections of songs that I want to "bookmark" somehow. Something like 80% of my music listening is full albums. And I'm not even that worried about Spotify having my saved library of albums (which I admit, that part is extensive) because I've cataloged that list at best albums in the universe. Plus I'm sure I could write a 10 line Python script to grab my albums list from the Spotify API should I ever need it.

No, I think it's more of a muscle memory thing, kind of like a vim/emacs debate, where I've developed familiarity with the Spotify interface. I know how to find, play, queue, skip, etc, songs without much trouble. Even more important, I know how to navigate between songs and the albums or artists, and how and where to find albums versus compilations versus singles, to get to what I want to listen to.

That said, I've actually considered the switch to YouTube Music [disclosure: I work for YouTube], for one reason: the steaming pile of flaming garbage that is the Spotify homepage.

The first 3 shelves are "keep listening to stuff you just listened to", which is clearly designed for people who are playlist heavy. They probably listened to 5 or 6 songs from a playlist and want to resume. Or they listen to the same 4 playlists every week.

The next two shelves are "dive in" to genres that I don't like, that they're pushing on you as part of their rumoured payola schemes.

And the next 6 (I wish I was kidding) shelves are podcasts. Because listen to podcasts! Spotify doesn't have to pay royalties on them! Don't you want to listen to PODCASTS??

So I'm thinking of switching to YT Music so that maybe I could have some kind of useful homepage experience. Unfortunately my YT Music history is shit because I have only ever used it in Waymo, which is a scenario where I listen to like loud hip hop and other shit I wouldn't normally listen to. So I wouldn't switch to YT Music unless there is a "Clear all history" button. But unfortunately, you can't clear YT Music history without clearing your entire YouTube history, which would destroy all of my YouTube video recommendations (which are, actually, not bad). Also YT Music has all kinds of cruft where they decided that some playlists that I randomly have on YouTube are actually music playlists, so they show up in YT Music. They also recommend shit based on music videos I watch, which I normally watch for reasons not related to actually liking the music.

This are just some nuanced opinions of course, and overall I think Spotify is pretty useful and great. I worry about it destroying the music industry/artist's livelihoods. But there have been a long queue of technologies, governments and cultural shifts that have been trying to destroy the music industry for the past 100 years, so I'm not actually that concerned. See also Bandcamp.