Spotify is fundamentally broken in a certain, unfixable way, IMO.
I use it and have a subscription, but I dread opening their app and looking at the starting screen that shows the same artists I listened to twenty years ago in pointless blurbs like "presave this (you can't listen to it)", "jump back in (you literally already listened to it)", "your favorite artists (not according to you but according to us)". There is no joy of discovery of new music that you haven't heard. There is no connection to other humans through music. Audioscrobbler/Last.fm is miles ahead of this. Youtube is miles ahead of this.
Here's how I discover music these days: I swipe Youtube shorts until its algorithm decides to show me an artist, then I look that artist up on Spotify. Thats how bad Spotify is - it's an audio server with search and a hundred layers of irrelevant features bolted on top.
It seems like every recommendation algorithm gets into a state that is broken eventually. For the music streaming services, I find they end up in one of two states, either it shows me the exact same artists and songs over and over again even if I skip their songs constantly, or I'll play a song once out of curiosity or accident and it decided that that genre is all I am interested in listening to for the next month. Is it really that hard to map artists
I got so frustrated with Tidal recently that I finally sat down and finally setup a media player on Linux to play my locally saved music (most of which is from What.cd).
I still find that, even after all these years, Pandora's recommendation engine still seems to be the best. I can tune into stations that I created, jeez, 15+ years ago, and it might play one or two tracks that I know, but it quickly diverges into new tracks that are still within the "flavor" of the station, but I've never heard of.
> There is no joy of discovery of new music that you haven't heard. There is no connection to other humans through music.
Hard disagree here.
For new music, Discover Weekly is great, if you take some time to engage with it on a routine basis. Even better, if you have an artist/genre you already like, the Fans Also Like or Discovered On will link you to other artists and playlists. Super easy to go down rabbit holes of new artists and playlists.
As far as connecting with others, I do like the spotify DMs (in-app share), the friend activity tab, and particularly the share attribution. When you share a song via link (url with ?si=), you'll permanently be linked to it. For a number of my favorite songs, I see "From {friend}" at the bottom while listening. Makes me feel super connected to friends I've bonded with over music.
I had spotify premium for ~10 years i think. I recently cancelled. I travel a lot, so now they started complaining i was not listening near my address.
then they started blocking family members because i was not around.
then they wanted to charge in a different coin because i was not home, but EVEN if i would their login doesnt work because it redirects me to a different country if i am abroad.
they are vibe coding too hard that they add all bs they think is a good idea. it was a good push for me to cancel that.
I haven't used it, but YouTube Music has a samples section which is supposed to show you "shorts" of new (to you) songs.
> There is no joy of discovery of new music that you haven't heard.
I have my problems with Spotify, but this is not one of them. I discover new artists, or long forgotten artists, regularly - even some weird obscure shit like Tänzelcore.
But I have to agree, that the magic of discovering new music is not the same as, for example, digging records in a record store or via obscure boards and platforms (remember FF-Shrine?)
How? What's your secret? It's actively fighting me from discovering anything new. "Hey we'll show this artist you stopped listening to two years ago on your start screen forever. Wanna jump back in?" That's Spotify to me.
My spotify homepage has had a "discover weekly" playlist for like 10 years. Found some nice things there, changes every week.
Then switch to YouTube Music or Tidal, they're way better.