Spotify

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  • Is "my music" the same thing as "any music I'd ever want to hear at least once"?

    yeah, i get that. it's why i said in my second post that i can see using spotify (the free, ad-burdened version) with emusic. essentially spotify would work as a long-play sampler and gatekeeper, to determine which albums i really want to download.

    (exactly what kenny said, actually!)
  • I did a quick search for Spotify playlist sites, there are quite a few, including Share My Playlists. Anybody have other sites for generating or sharing playlists which are better?
  • edited September 2011
    I think we could use a thread for Spotify playlists, either our own, or ones we've found.

    Edit: Started Spotify Playlists thread.
  • interesting article arguing that spotify and other universal streaming services devalue music.

    it's certainly true that i acquire and am exposed to so much music these days that i can't possibly appreciate it the way i appreciated an album i bought when i was a kid.

    there's an interesting broad theme in this article, too, i.e., that -- instead of broadening our horizons -- the internet has narrowed them.
  • It's funny (to me) that I opened this thread and haven't commented since. Truth is I never started up my Spotify account at all. Since getting an iPhone, I only fire up a real computer about once or twice a week- usually just for the purpose of refilling my iPods.

    But I have to say I totally get the idea of streaming devaluing music. I have very little interest in hearing things once, or between 1 and 5 times, because I'm still hooked on the idea of the thing that takes repeated listens to really understand and enjoy. When I was young, I'd buy a tape, and if I didnt like it the first time through, I'd keep trying, cuz I couldn't afford another tape just then. Some of my favorite things ever turned out to require more than one listen to love. On the flip side, some things that seemed great at first quickly lost their shininess on repeated listens.

    So, if I use streaming to sample stuff, what's going to happen to all that needs-repaeated-listening-to-know-for-sure type stuff?

    Lately, with the decrease in emu stuff (I'm currently on a $6.49 plan), I find myself digging through my collection finally, and finding lots to love in exactly that category, two recent examples of things I quickly shelved are Patti Smith's Horses and Megadeath's Peace Sells.

    So that's my $.02 on Spotify and streaming for now.
  • edited September 2011
    amclark2:
    I have very little interest in hearing things once
    Interesting. So the set of "music I'd rather hear once than never" is small or negligible for you? I'd expect the opposite for most ardent music fans (it's large for me). Of course, since we're all resource-limited, we generally can't subsume that set into "music I acquire".
  • "I have very little interest in hearing things once" - actually, this is the best use of Spotify so far for me. There have been a few items rec'ed on the "now listening" thread that I checked out on Spotify and knew that I would not need to obtain a copy. Not that it was bad, but maybe it didn't strike me as something I had to own. I find that I tend to hear a couple of songs from a new band then gorge myself on their whole catalog. Sampling on Spotify helps me spend my music dollar more wisely.

    I do like the user-created setlists (like a mix-tape), but there are other ways to do that sort of thing without spotify.
  • I can think of almost nothing that I'd rather listen to once than never. For me if it's worth listening to more than 30 second samples, it's worth at least 5 listens, assuming I can find the time for it. I just don't trust that my first judgment of something is good enough to never listen to it again. And all those one offs would waste the time I'd otherwise spend trying to get to 5 on something else. That's just me though; but I'd think someone out there has to feel the same???
  • @amclark - I am totally with you. You describe exactly how I have always mainly related to music. I have even been known to buy stuff I didn't entirely like but had an inkling I would with more listens ahead of stuff I liked but suspected would wear thin fast. I also share your feeling that once is hardly worth it. The exceptions for me are a few albums I may have read about and just want to know what it is, and things that I might be able to eliminate from my SFL but can't tell from samples - so I am using spotify as a filter some of the time (with the caveat that one listen may well not tell me either). I fully share your sense that basic, default listening mode is 5x+.
  • edited September 2011
    ...assuming I can find the time for it. I just don't trust that my first judgment of something is good enough to never listen to it again.
    I view the situation under discussion as one of knowledge and context, more than aesthetic-appreciation-value. There's lots and lots of music out there, more than I'll ever hear, that I might consider worth hearing multiple times. But I'm neither immortal nor infinitely rich, so obviously I will never access some amount of such music. But hearing some of it once will certainly expand my knowledge, socio-musical context, and appreciation more than if I never hear any of it once (that set being the set that I don't own or otherwise hear multiple times). It strikes me as pretty strange that that doesn't apply to almost every music enthusiast. Of course listening to something once is a trade-off with listening to something else an additional time, but obviously listening to something new has a different set of characteristics than listening to something you've heard before, so offers distinct benefits.

    For example, I recently listened to <CLASSIC-X> for the first time via streaming - I don't think I'll be buying it any time soon, but I'm glad I heard it so I know the sound-world it occupies, and what people are referring to when they mention it. (In this case, CLASSIC-X = the Allman Bros' Live at Fillmore East, but I made it generic to note that it doesn't matter what it was, there are many thousands of "classics" within human musical production.)
  • Right before I left eMusic, I got The Minutemen's Double Nickels On The Dime because it had great reviews and was supposed to be a ground-breaking punk record. I forgot to listen to it until recently, on another board 1985 music was being discussed and htat album was released in 1985.

    OMG, what a waste of DL credits getting that. I had to force myself to listen to it. But I did want to hear it. Once was enough though, and I wish Spotify had been around.

    I'm glad I heard it so I know the sound-world it occupies, and what people are referring to when they mention it.
    This sums it up perfectly! There are lots of albums that get high ratings and I would like to listen to them once, for this very reason. Of course, if I find them to my liking I will listen more often.

    I'd keep trying, cuz I couldn't afford another tape just then
    I'd get angry I blew my money on another album that turned out to be a dud!
  • edited September 2011
    Double Nickels is a perfect example - it took me literally 8 or 9 years to love that album, but now I really do love it.

    It's funny the difference in listening habits even among the small subset of people with way too much music and extremely diverse tastes; but there you have it.
  • katrina: i hate that double nickels album. hate.
  • Why? It seems so odd to hate any album. This thread is starting to seem weird to me.
  • it really, really irritates me. maybe "hate" is too stong. "really really dislike" is perhaps more accurate.
  • edited September 2011
    it took me literally 8 or 9 years to love that album, but now I really do love it.
    See, that sounds like a waste of time, to me. Spending that much time to learn to love an album? Honestly, it doesn't irritate you? You're the first person who has said they honestly like it. But even so, you're saying you didn't like it at first.

    I want to know how THE HELL all those good reviews about it got published!

    Oh, and reading the reviews, it seems the last few tracks were added at the last moment to make it a double album, with the 4th side called "Chaff". There were a few that weren't so annoying, "There Ain't Shit On T.V. Tonight" and "June 16th". I can usually find at least one song per album to rate at least 3 stars, meaning that I'd want it to come up again sometime in my smart playlist. Um, not on this one.

    Back to spotify...if you publish playlists and share them with your friends, they can add to your playlists, too! How cool is that? Maybe you all already knew that, but I was tyring to tidy up my own Spotify shared playlists and dragged something around wrong. It ended up in a friend's playlist. They commented on me adding to their playlist and thanked me, LOL.

    edit - this works when you are facebook friends and your set Spotify preferences to allow facebook

    Erm, I guess I better go re-read the Spotify Playlist thread here on emusers ; )
  • Friends adding to my playlists? Sounds hideous. I'd rather get polite suggestions, like here.
  • edited September 2011
    Sorry. I'm sure it's fun for certain kinds of playlists (and maybe certain kinds of friends). But it does conjure up images for me of listening so, say, Max Richter and then suddenly being catapulted into, say, Megadeth. I'm really not the target market for those features; I almost never use shuffle with my own music. But if I were the target market the world would be a strange place.
  • I love Double Nickels and loved it the first time I heard it. It just merges hardcore, funk, and other disparate genres so seamlessly.

    Craig
  • edited September 2011
    I like Double Nickels well enough, but because I'm interested in learning about exotic life forms, I have to ask if there's anyone (Minutemen fan or otherwise) who doesn't think D Boon was the lamest, most useless vocalist imaginable? I cringe with sympathy for the human species when I hear him sing. He's not even distinctive enough to be grating. Just incredibly lamely awful.
  • <raises hand>

    I'm overly fond of the band because their music is tied to much of my youth. That said, D. Boon's vocal styling is less grating to my ears then Patrick Stump (Fall Out Boy), Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day), or even Michael Stipe (his earnestness makes me want to jam chopsticks into both my ears until the meet in the middle). I will concede that D. Boon is no Pavarotti.
  • I once read it said of Johnny Cash, "he can't sing but it's the way he can't sing." D. Boone's maybe no Johnny Cash either, but it's like that.
  • LOL. OK, maybe I'll give that vile album another spin.
  • Yay!

    If you get a chance check out We Jam Econo - it helps with appreciation of them. It was on Netflix.
  • There are quite a few people that fall into that great singers who can't actually sing category. Off the top of my head: Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Marianne Faithful, Tom Waits, maybe Billy Corgan, Craig Finn.

    I really need to see We Jam Econo sometime.

    Craig
  • Bob Dylan and Tom Waits are different though- they both have an incredible amount of vocal control, and I feel like they sound exactly the way they want to sound. Waits especially - his first album or two were totally smooth crooner stuff.
  • i "really really dislike" bob dylan, too, fwiw.
  • edited September 2011
    I'm with Katrina, I'm afraid - I thought the Minutemen were one of the most overrated bands of that whole era, maybe of all time. I saw We Jam Econo too, only to be further convinced that they were a waste of time. I'll admit they weren't (and aren't) as overrated as Neutral Milk Hotel, but that's hardly fair - I doubt anyone ever could be ever again. When you look up the word "overrated" in the dictionary, you really should see a photo of Jeff Mangum. If you don't, then your dictionary is probably pre-90's.

    Sorry to those of you who are fans of those guys... these are just my personal opinions, etc., etc.
  • Fwiw, I deliberately abstained from saying "can't sing" - vocal technique is not that important to me - "useless" and "lame" are the chief descriptors for me. None of cafreema's list strike me as qualifying for those.

    The epitome of my distaste for Boon's vocals is perhaps "The Cheerleaders" from Post-Mersh vol 2. Gah! Probably worsened by the stunningly clunky "funk" on display (cool lyrics tho).
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