[jcstk]

I'm reading these comments and I'm thinking "are we using the same Spotify?" I don't see any AI music, I don't get Podcasts pushed on me, the UI is fine, playlists are fine and I get new music I like suggested to me often.

[smackeyacky]

"I'm not seeing a problem so how is there a problem" is not the right critique in an era where the selection algorithm is so personalised.

Spotify is awful for me, I concur with the original article. YouTube Music is heading slowly the same way. At this rate I'll have to cast around for another phone that can take an SD card again.

The service I really miss is eMusic, they had little in the way of well known music so leaned into small label music and it was wonderful.

[grugagag]

Get a standalone music player and you will have full control (but you also may have some upfront work to do your music downloading and create your playlists but worth it imo). I got a Miyoo Mini game emulator for my kid and ended up getting one for myself, all for ~$50. Being offline (by choice, the device does have wifi) and being able fully customize the thing, backup the SD it's really great. It's such a whiff of fresh air to be honest, you get no popups, no attention misdirects, everything is there waiting for you and no corp messes up you.

[randlet]

eMusic was so good!

[satvikpendem]

It's the HN effect, as well as selection bias. People here are highly technical and may notice things that regular people don't, or they do things in a very idiosyncratic way. I remember seeing comments here before about how some people have no cell phone, run only a very old school terminal based computer, etc, for example. They also seem to be annoyed at very specific things as you can see in the comments here, things that the average user wouldn't even think about. Ultimately, HN and other technical fora are not representative of the average user's experience.

[chrisshroba]

Agreed. I just navigated to my home page on desktop and I see the following categories:

- A section with 8 of my recently played playlists

- A section of "Made for <my name>" with 6 Daily Mixes (which I generally like), Discover weekly (which I like now that it's tailored to me: I used to hate that it only contained pop/hip hop hits), Release Radar (love it), and the AI DJ (which I find very annoying)

- A section called Recently Played which looks like all legitimate things I've played

- "New Releases for You", which are all by artists I've listened to very recently

- "Jump back in", which has several playlists and artists I've listened to recently

- A sidebar of all of my playlists I've created or followed

Of the ~50 actionable items on the page, the only one I dislike is the AI DJ, but it by no means feels forced on me since it's just a single square.

https://i.imgur.com/RKsIgLR.jpeg

[eproxus]

I’m more curious of the claim that you don’t get podcasts pushed on you.

The last time I used Spotify (and the reason I left) podcast were constantly featured on the start page and it was impossible to remove them (and I have zero interest in podcast in my music application).

[witty-name]

That's what I'm thinking as well. Spotify ain't great but it's fine. Some people are recommending Apple Music but Apple Music don't even have a client for Linux and their website is awful. OTOH, I can use Spotify even through my terminal.

[grugagag]

You may indeed have a different experience, but you also may not notice these things as it happens slowly over time, like the proverbial boiling frog. If you're younger it's likely you haven't noticed the patterns. I've been around for a while and notice these patterns from miles away.

[jcstk]

I'm talking about my current experience, not the delta over time. I've been using Spotify since 2011.

[zerreh50]

I recently unsubscribed because I definitely saw a lot of AI music. I do think Spotify has the best UI and user created playlists of all platforms though

[ku1ik]

For me Spotify had best UI in 2012. Native, clean, simple, ultra fast.