Darren, Spotify never has been in the music business! Check their I.P.O paperwork. They are in data and tech. I have been stating for years now that music has been hijacked by Silicon valley so now people may realize that music is not the priority. Music is just an appetizer! It is not the main course. Hopefully people realize that music is just a tool by the Silicon Valley types. They control the price of a product that they do not build or develop. For me it is a great hustle of the century. I salute them for that hustle but all I am asking is for people to look what the technologist have done to music. There is no spirit left and now with the A.I criminals now we have arrived at no feeling. Music is not a data point!! However, now it is and we see the affects but most will be silent or may not even notice.
Spotify is classic platform economy shenanigans: find an aspect to drive in huge amounts of people, let peer pressure kick in to lure in even more people, then make sure you have an overview over all the little connections between people and objects happening on your, by now hopefully ubiquitous, platform. Finally, use those insights a) to monetize, b) to adjust the user experience towards „what users want“, mainly meaning what keeps them hooked, to exponentialize the potentials of monterization.
As we can see here, the music is mainly the „aspect to drive in people“, which could be any other arbitrary factor, it doesnt matter for anything else a platform like Spotify does
I’m planning to move to another DSP later this year and Qobuz is at the top of my list. Having said that, despite the vast majority of my listening taking place on Spotify, I don’t rely on it for curation of new music.
Outside of the Spotify NPR Music’s New Music Friday playlist and the weekly Release Radar playlist, I take responsibility for sourcing new music discovery. Much of that comes from the music Substacks I follow as well as the “Featured” and “Music Feed” sections of the Bandcamp app. Also, sites like metacritic and AOTY are good sources.
At heart, I’m still an album guy and despite the vast majority of music consumed being on a DSP, I’m still committed to the album experience.
I’m also REALLY enjoying that Decius album. I hadn’t been aware of them previously but it’s probably my most played album so far this year.
Used in tandem with Soundiiz, there is still a fair bit of interaction you can do with a free Spotify account and Qobuz. For example, if you get a link for a Spotify playlist, you can add it there and use Soundiiz to transfer it to your new platform.
Depending on how much faff you want, you can keep your list of follower artists updated in Qobuz, and every Friday transfer those back to Spotify. You can then use https://spotifyreleaselist.netlify.app/ to give you a list of new releases on that platform, dump them all into a playlist, and Soundiiz it back to Qobuz.
In unsurprising news, I spend most of every Friday "working" on music stuff.
Worth reading ‘The Mood Machine’, by Liz Pelli, to demo’ how utterly derailed Spotify has become…Welcome to Qobuz, from a flat earther who just wants to hear music not soundtrack his life via playlists!
Thanks for the good read. Funny enough, I just cancelled my own Spotify subscription and switched to Tidal. And yes, the hi-res sound does sound way better than anything I could have imagined.
Hi Darren, couldn’t agree more regarding Spotify. I wrote a bit about how their goals are not engagement with music (and albums) but to achieve ubiquitous passivity for their listener base. Make people less likely to switch over, switch off or unsubscribe - https://theodhracle.substack.com/p/letter-11-mission-statement?r=dzr9a
Although I acknowledge all of Spotify's sins, I find their library is significantly bigger than that of Qobuz, at least for the stuff I'm interested in. I spend a lot of time either searching for new releases or going down obscure rabbit holes, so that makes a difference to me. In no case do I pay any attention to Spotify's house playlists and only rarely to suggested albums. And by now I have so many ongoing playlists of my own that I use to keep track that switching away would be labor-intensive if I were to recreate them. So by a combination of laziness and compromise I have yet to move. That said, I noted a playlist transfer solution in another comment, so who knows what the future will bring...
Soundiiz managed to migrate all my playlists over to both YouTube Music (which I still have a sub to, more as an offshoot of having YouTube Premium) and Qobuz.
I do agree that Qobuz has some gaps in terms of catalogue, but nothing that I've found problematic thus far.
Again, I think for me the primary issue with Spotify was just this sense that it is almost actively trying to distract you from the things you've spent time building on there, i.e. your collection and your playlists. With Qobuz that isn't the case, and I just feel it allows me to enjoy a more focused experience with music in general. But to each their own of course; I don't want to be taking that kind of polarised "No! Use Qobuz or you're not a real music fan!" type of BS.
Darren, Spotify never has been in the music business! Check their I.P.O paperwork. They are in data and tech. I have been stating for years now that music has been hijacked by Silicon valley so now people may realize that music is not the priority. Music is just an appetizer! It is not the main course. Hopefully people realize that music is just a tool by the Silicon Valley types. They control the price of a product that they do not build or develop. For me it is a great hustle of the century. I salute them for that hustle but all I am asking is for people to look what the technologist have done to music. There is no spirit left and now with the A.I criminals now we have arrived at no feeling. Music is not a data point!! However, now it is and we see the affects but most will be silent or may not even notice.
Spotify is classic platform economy shenanigans: find an aspect to drive in huge amounts of people, let peer pressure kick in to lure in even more people, then make sure you have an overview over all the little connections between people and objects happening on your, by now hopefully ubiquitous, platform. Finally, use those insights a) to monetize, b) to adjust the user experience towards „what users want“, mainly meaning what keeps them hooked, to exponentialize the potentials of monterization.
As we can see here, the music is mainly the „aspect to drive in people“, which could be any other arbitrary factor, it doesnt matter for anything else a platform like Spotify does
Well said. Thank you for engaging.
I’m planning to move to another DSP later this year and Qobuz is at the top of my list. Having said that, despite the vast majority of my listening taking place on Spotify, I don’t rely on it for curation of new music.
Outside of the Spotify NPR Music’s New Music Friday playlist and the weekly Release Radar playlist, I take responsibility for sourcing new music discovery. Much of that comes from the music Substacks I follow as well as the “Featured” and “Music Feed” sections of the Bandcamp app. Also, sites like metacritic and AOTY are good sources.
At heart, I’m still an album guy and despite the vast majority of music consumed being on a DSP, I’m still committed to the album experience.
I’m also REALLY enjoying that Decius album. I hadn’t been aware of them previously but it’s probably my most played album so far this year.
Love albums, you’ll love Qobuz
Used in tandem with Soundiiz, there is still a fair bit of interaction you can do with a free Spotify account and Qobuz. For example, if you get a link for a Spotify playlist, you can add it there and use Soundiiz to transfer it to your new platform.
Depending on how much faff you want, you can keep your list of follower artists updated in Qobuz, and every Friday transfer those back to Spotify. You can then use https://spotifyreleaselist.netlify.app/ to give you a list of new releases on that platform, dump them all into a playlist, and Soundiiz it back to Qobuz.
In unsurprising news, I spend most of every Friday "working" on music stuff.
Worth reading ‘The Mood Machine’, by Liz Pelli, to demo’ how utterly derailed Spotify has become…Welcome to Qobuz, from a flat earther who just wants to hear music not soundtrack his life via playlists!
Great to see another Qobuz convert. It’s the best streaming platform in every way from my experience.
Great article aside, I stumbled across Decius today - they kick arse!
I'd say they slap arse, with a pouty look on their face 😆
😂
Thanks for the good read. Funny enough, I just cancelled my own Spotify subscription and switched to Tidal. And yes, the hi-res sound does sound way better than anything I could have imagined.
The sound is noticeably better on Apple Music than Spotify too.
Hi Darren, couldn’t agree more regarding Spotify. I wrote a bit about how their goals are not engagement with music (and albums) but to achieve ubiquitous passivity for their listener base. Make people less likely to switch over, switch off or unsubscribe - https://theodhracle.substack.com/p/letter-11-mission-statement?r=dzr9a
Although I acknowledge all of Spotify's sins, I find their library is significantly bigger than that of Qobuz, at least for the stuff I'm interested in. I spend a lot of time either searching for new releases or going down obscure rabbit holes, so that makes a difference to me. In no case do I pay any attention to Spotify's house playlists and only rarely to suggested albums. And by now I have so many ongoing playlists of my own that I use to keep track that switching away would be labor-intensive if I were to recreate them. So by a combination of laziness and compromise I have yet to move. That said, I noted a playlist transfer solution in another comment, so who knows what the future will bring...
Soundiiz managed to migrate all my playlists over to both YouTube Music (which I still have a sub to, more as an offshoot of having YouTube Premium) and Qobuz.
I do agree that Qobuz has some gaps in terms of catalogue, but nothing that I've found problematic thus far.
Again, I think for me the primary issue with Spotify was just this sense that it is almost actively trying to distract you from the things you've spent time building on there, i.e. your collection and your playlists. With Qobuz that isn't the case, and I just feel it allows me to enjoy a more focused experience with music in general. But to each their own of course; I don't want to be taking that kind of polarised "No! Use Qobuz or you're not a real music fan!" type of BS.