After nearly 10 years of Spotify I think I have heard it all. Now my discover weekly is filled with rock covers of pop songs or music I'm just not into. So either the algorithm got bad or I discovered all music I like.

I can recommend everyone this video by Rick Beato: The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1bZ0OSEViyo

That pop cover stuff is getting out of hand, it's was nice dose of nostalgia at first but I now skip every one because its such spam and I don't want to be recommended them

While I agree that music has become more homogenized and crap than ever before, I think Rick here is just applying incorrect beliefs to this process. I think the only point he makes that is valid is that finding signal through all the noise is harder than ever (and is something that can be said about music, tv, movies, writing, nearly every creative pursuit).

Music is too easy to make? So people like producers and record executives don't have the power they used to. That's a good thing. The history of music proves this.

Music is too easy to consume? I legit don't know how to respond to this. Just because music isn't part of kids' identities anymore doesn't mean that's because it's too easy to consume. Times change, Rick. Whereas they used to share music now they share streamers and YouTubers.

The main argument that derails Rick here is in the first few minutes. He claims that music all sounds the same because of the tools available. He claims that music sounds the same because someone is comfortable with sounds that are familiar. He doesn't really say whether it's record companies or artists or consumers. Just some nebulous 'they'.

It's always been like that. Always. When a band gets popular, other bands pop up just like them to try to steal their popularity and money (Fats Domino and Chubby Checker is the oldest example I can think of without googling it). There are 'sounds' of decades. You can name sounds from the 50's, or 60's, or 80's, **all from way before this technology he's blaming existed.

Overall that video comes across as an old person who longs for the better days of their youth and is upset they can't make money in ways they want to. Welcome to the fucking world. Times change. Change with them or don't, it's your problem.

It takes intentional effort to streer the algorithm back to anything reasonable. Skip the garbage and "like" anything you want to see more.

I don't know why they have to make it so hard for people to express their listening intent.

Apple Music is quite good. Better masters, good recommendations, no fuss - and they pay artists more, supposedly.

Recently made the switch and have been very happy with the service.

> they pay artists more, supposedly

They don't. Spotify pays out roughly 66% of their revenue as royalties, while Apple Music only does about 50%. [1]

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-music-reveals-how-much-it... https://archive.is/lRZns

That percentage doesn’t really explain anything. What if Apple has more revenue? What if Apple users stream less, so royalty costs per subscription are lower? In both cases the AM payout could be fairer for artists and the percentage could still be lower.

The article you cite actually claims the latter is true, so it seems looking at just that statistic is misleading.

Did you even read what you posted ? "Its average per-stream payout rate is lower"

That comes down to Spotify being mostly ad supported users and Apple being all paid. If Spotify got rid of their free tier their 60-70% rev share would be more than Apple's 50%. But then the number of streams would go down by 50-60%, counterintuitively the total payout would only go down like 10-15% tho.

Dang that sucks.

Man, I really, really hate this situation.

No, they misread.

Desktop app that doesn't work any more suddenly and there's no actual support to speak of. That's already five steps below Spotify.

Plus actually shitty UX/UI people like to call good, but it lacks plenty of really really basic features. Like having control over if a song is added to the queue to be played next or last, or just being able to preview what stations are going to play (it's a minefield of an UI to try and find new songs while also not interrupt the current one).

I'm not sure I can reproduce some of these complaints. Play next and add to queue are both there for me. What do you mean by "doesn't work any more"? I just opened it; it's definitely in need of a UX update but seems to work fine.

Maybe it's just the tvOS version that lacks the option I described? I was disappointed in Spotify on tvOS so I'm using Music there. I guess platform inconsistency is an another negative of Music.

And by "doesn't work" it just says "an error occured" and nothing helps. I've even reinstalled it. Judging by reddit posts about it, it's a common issue. (Its logs also provide 0 hints about the error it encounters.)

A big drawback is that they erase your data whenever you stop subscribing (playlists, liked songs, etc).

Oh that's fascinating. That's a privacy trade, isn't it?

Try tidal. Their app is a bit worse in terms of device compatibility but their discovery is better and seems to give you more on theme similar tracks.

All of the streaming services are awful at discovery. They'll introduce you to stuff that you already like or stuff that people in your cohort like, which, 90% of the time, is what you already like.

I landed up going back to college/community radio for true discovery (i.e. you'll find stuff you hate AND stuff that you love from genres that you didn't know existed). I use Bandcamp to find/buy new music in genres I love and know well.

For people reading this who are interested in trying this out, these are the stations that I listen to:

- KEXP (Seattle, WA/Bay Area)

- KTRU (Houston, TX) <-- home station

- KPFT (Houston, TX) <-- home station

- WMSE (Milwaukee, WI)

- WYEP (Pittsburgh, PA)

- KVNO (Omaha, NE) <-- classical

- KCSM (San Mateo Area) <-- jazz

- SomaFM Indie Pop Rocks!

- SomaFM Metal Detector

You can also try scanning the lower end of your radio dial (under 93 MHz), as this is usually spectrum that's reserved for community and college radio stations. Some college stations still broadcast in AM, though this, and AM radio writ large, is dying out.

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While I'm on this soapbox: Apple Music's shuffle absolutely biases towards bigger/more popular artists.

I once had a few (like, between 10 and 20) Taylor Swift songs in my library in a 2000+ song playlist I used to shuffle in the mornings. I don't listen to her very often, and I didn't have any of her albums in my library at the time.

EVERY SINGLE TIME I'd shuffle all of the songs in this playlist or my library, Taylor Swift would get queued up way more than she should have given my listening history. I removed all of her songs from my library to get it to stop.

I get much more variety when I shuffle all of my _downloaded_ songs (which, I believe, is everything in my library).

Thanks for plugging local radio that also stream! I support my local radio as well and for the same reasons: discovery. Listener supported also has the benefit of zero ads.

Here are my two stations that I listen to:

- WBER https://wber.org

- WITR https://witr.rit.edu

Nice recommendations. Thanks! The no-ads bit is great; I agree! (I donate to keep that train going!)

Do you know why USA radio systems are all named Kxxx or Wxxx? Some kind of code assigned by the governement?

It's a radio callsign (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_signs_in_the_United_State...)

> The FCC policy covering broadcasting stations limits them to call signs that start with a "K" or a "W", with "K" call signs generally reserved for stations west of the Mississippi River, and "W" limited to stations east of the river.

OK thanks. That's cool. Presumably our local radio stations also have them, even if I can't find them with a quick duckduckgoogle.

This is a relatively new invention as well. When radio first started in the US (late 1890s), callsigns were arbitrary. I believe the Kxxx and Wxxx divide started in the 1920s. Also, this callsign convention applies for TV broadcast as well.

Thank you for your thorough and informative post!

I’ve been a big fan of the shows on Apple Music! They have a pretty decent variety and you can listen to a backlog of shows and with their own distinct vibe. There’s a couple I tune into but my favorites are Matt Wilkinsons daily show at noon GMT and classical connections with Alexis Ffrench. I do appreciate the human curation with a lot of these programs they’ve been putting out.

My best experience is deezer

This is a seriously left-field suggestion, because, it's neither a streaming service nor a recommendation algorithm, but over the years I've never found anything better than last.fm for classification of music.

For as long as I can remember, last.fm has had the ability to show you similar artists when given any one particular artist. And it's remarkably good, in my opinion.

With it, I've discovered so much great music that I'd have never stumbled upon organically.

It's also totally free to browse and without signing up. For example, browse artists similar to Jean Knight: https://www.last.fm/music/Jean+Knight (scroll down to "Similar Artists", or just tack on /+similar to the URL)

Damn. Nice. Thank you.