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
We’ll have to see how long subscription services will be able to raise prices. I hope that there will be some disruption soon.
The service has improved every time though in Apple’s defense…and if there’s one company I actually trust to improve on its services it is Apple (not a fanboy, they have their own issues, just delivering quality consistently isn’t one of them).
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.
Agreed, my new music mix is usually pretty good too.
I’ll second Apple Music!
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.
That makes it even weirder. Probably some DRM thing.
The discovery radio works really well too as long as you’ve been liking and disliking things.
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
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?
Where do you get the (new) music from, CDs/albums?
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 installed Navidrome for that
I use Tidal and it shares the same problem, especially if you are using it in drive mode in your car (Android Auto). I guess they do it to minimize data transmission costs by buffering your favorite songs on your device, but it annoys the hell out of me.
Also, Tidal has a Hip-hop/Rap bias that I was unable to remove after some 2 years of using it. I don’t have a single song from those genres in my favorites or playlists, but it will suggest them all the same. I will block the artists and they will pop up on the new releases page.
Regarding music quality it is miles ahead of Spotify. I don’t know if Spotify has finally released an hi-fi/lossless tier, but at the time Tidal was unmatched. After listening to Tidal hi-fi I could not go back to Spotify’s mungled up audio.
Spotify still has done nothing about their audio quality. I use it where I don’t have access to decent playback equipment.
I know it’s not tidal lossless quality, but have you set all the music quality settings to extreme in Spotify settings?
Very high is the maximum, that’s what I use. The same songs in 128kbps mp3 sound much better even in my crappy airpods, not to mention lossless files. My speakers give me a Bose soundbar experience when playing Spotify on them.
You’re right, I don’t know where I got the idea it was called extreme
Does tidal still have lossless? I remember they were replacing all lossless flac with their
qmamqa stuff, which isn’t lossless, and requires you to buy specialized hardware. That was the main reason I chose deezer instead of tidal.Yes, they have a 16bit/44.1KHz FLAC tier (€7.49), as well as a 320Kbps tier for lower data consumption and a 24bit/192KHz tier (€13.99) if you have the Hi-Fi gear to use it.
I really wanted to use Tidal because of the Linux thing and FLAC, despite the cost over Spotify etc.
Tried to sign up and had horrendous problems over such a simple thing. Gave up on them. Never had a problem with subscriptions before or since, unless you count insurance auto-renew!
I haven’t had any problem with my subscription.
Their player works very well for my use cases: I use it on my Android phone, on my car via Android Auto, on my LG TV with WebOS and on my Linux machine via Firefox.
That’s very good to read. It was only the sign-up that went badly wrong and getting on touch with them made it worse.
Hopefully I got a disgruntled Customer Service person on a bad day. One of those things.
Enjoy!
This wasn’t what you asked for, but I have to add it in here: I switched to YouTube music because I was told the shuffle actually was random there. From my experience the past couple of months it seems to be the case, at the very least it’s better. But discovering new music (without putting in much effort) has been harder. Their playlist sorting is non-existent (you’re stuck with alphabetic order, no folders). And for some idiotic reason the playlists are shared with YouTube… Everything with it, except for its working shuffle, is horrendous.
How the fuck can Spotify just not have a true fucking random shuffle, it’s so annoying! It does everything else fairly well, but I’m not switching back to starting a playlist of 8+ hrs and getting a recognizable pattern depending on what I skip and don’t. Or whatever goddamn algorithm they think is better than /dev/urandom.
This gave me hope for a while, but I’ve now given up: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/All-Platforms-Option-to-have-a-true-shuffle/idi-p/4880594/page/103#comments
If you want to discover new music, use “Start Radio” in lieu of shuffle.
Yes, I’m aware of the radio ability. I’m not using shuffle to discover new music. I’m using it to play random songs from a large playlist I have.
Thanks, maybe I should really Check that and Apple music out… still frustrating, as no option seems to be great. How can that be, after so many years of music services? What are all those developers doing? Are they stuck in scrum meeting timeloops?
https://spotifyshuffler.com/ this is what I use. To shuffle liked songs, use the desktop app, go to liked songs, ctrl-a, right click, add to new playlist. Then that playlist can be shuffled with that tool and you play it in spotify with shuffle turned off (since the song order is already random). I’ve heard a lot of songs I haven’t heard in forever so it’s super nice
I use Virtual Shuffle. It forces Spotify to play truly random tracks. https://shuffle.virock.org
One of the main reasons I stuck with YouTube Music is that I find the algorhitms superior to spotify. Maybe this is placebo, but I think between the 7 mixes + discovery + artist / song radio I always have something that does not feel the same, and I feel like any intentionally searched listening updates the mixes fairly quickly.
I disagree entirely.
I used the free trial. The algorithm was a whole lot shittier than spotify’s recommendations. It had the same annoying vibe as the regular youtube algo where if you watch one video from Jordan Peterson, you suddenly inherit the feed of an Elon Musk worshipping alt right tech bro.
It was the same for music. I listened to one song as a joke then it stopped recommending good music and just made my whole feed into joke songs. Much like youtube’s algorithm, youtube music algo clearly uses google’s machnine learning tech (which they use for ads too) where it tries so hard to predict what you like without real data, instead preferring to use solely other people’s browsing habits rather than creating a unique profile for that user without it making too many assumptions right off the bat. Perhaps, I’d describe that algorithm as “HIGHLY reductive” when compared to any other recommendatiion algorithm which seem more geared toward slowly discovering the tastes of its users.
This might be a function of low usage time, the shifts were definitely more pronounced in the beginning, now when I listen to new stuff it only introduces the changes in the appropriate mixes (i.e my mix 1-3 is various hiphop (very well segregated into different styles i must add), 4,5 is indie/rock etc) and the amount is a function of how much of said new stuff i listen. On occasion i will use votes and the dislikes especially affect playlists quickly.
I know the youtube behaviour you refer to and it honestly really makes me hate watching youtube, some days I will have a bad mood and start spamming not interested for a few rows and my feed is good again.
But with YTM it seems to be really nice, whereas with spotify, as OP, I found it quite stale.
I do the same with YT Music and tolerate the ads. Then, when they hit on a few songs I’m enjoying, I go to Newpipe and play playlistss or extended version of the songs/artists. I also build my own playlists in Newpipe.
If I discover a song I like IRL (say, on the radio or in the background of a video), I add it to both YT Music and Newpipe (e.g., I’m listening to Chaleya from the movie Jawan on Newpipe right now, discovered when I was out and about).
ETA: Newpipe also offers auto-enqueing, which might lead to more discovery.
Im a disgusting premium user, but I might check out newpipe some day.
Nah it’s not just you. Anytime I decide to start a radio while working, half the time I discover absolute bangers that I add to my playlists that balances between matching the vibe and distinct - which isn’t as easy as it seems.
I’ve been having the same issue. Then I saw a meme implying it’s laziness is a caching issue? I’m going to try clearing the cache daily (or more often if I am using it a lot) and seeing if that helps Spotify be more spontaneous
I don’t suppose you’ve tried the “DJ” feature? It’s usually pretty good for me, but of course your mileage may vary.
I’ve run into the same problem of the shuffle (and “smart” shuffle) just plays the exact same thing all the time, even in a playlist with thousands of songs. Tried out YouTube music for a while, and it’s not much better. So I’ll be interested in what others say here.
The best one for me a long time ago was Pandora - for some reason I was under the impression they weren’t around anymore, but it looks like they are. But, I don’t know if they are still as great as they were back then.
I was enjoying the DJ feature until it started cramming in top 40 shite into my mix that doesn’t even come close to resembling anything I would ever listen to. And not just one song - usually three or four in a row. I used to love Pandora’s shuffle play feature but it’s no longer available in my country.
I’ve been using Deezer for a while and I like its variety. They have a “Flow” button where you can let it play random music with favorites mixed in, but you can also select a “mood” (like Focus, Party, Chill, and others) or genres (like R&B, Alternative, Rock, and others). You can also have Flow lean more towards new music or already favorited tracks, but that’s been inconsistent for me in the past where sometimes it’ll only play my favorited songs when I chose to listen to new music or vice versa.
I’ve discovered a lot of new songs and artists by letting Flow do its thing on my drive to and from work. Although, sometimes Flow gets stuck in a certain style of music, like playing back-to-back-to-back Golden Oldies, and it’s frustrating trying to get it to play anything else without manually selecting a genre or mood each time you launch the app. That’s a small gripe because the variety is typically good, with favorites mixed in.
I love flow but deezer’s music variety is just really lacking compared to Spotify or YouTube music for me, unfortunately. I want to love it!
Pandora sort of has some of that but not so far in depth. You can customize with crowd favorite songs or hits or deep cuts or discovery. Their library is much smaller though, and you’re stuck in a genre based on the station for the most part.
This is kinda how I operate. Just listen to pandora while I’m doing other tasks and see if new songs grow on me, then every few weeks, I put all my thumbed up songs on spotify playlists.
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.
I think this article can help you https://www.newvisiontheatres.com/spotify-shuffle-plays-same-songs
Plex without Chromecast.
I’m enjoying Plexamp
YouTube Music is what I use. You can start a radio from a song, and it’ll play new music. You can also change the Up Next to different styles if you want familiar or new music.
