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MelloMakes
@MelloMakes

Spotify sucks in a million ways. They wedged themselves into the music industry and are making it so that no one can get paid properly with the worst possible version of streaming, an excellent concept that was gonna be the future of music either way. Their CEO is a slimy human being who openly wants musicians to become overworked "content" machines. He's like the Bobby Kotick of music. The service keeps people at a distance from ever actually owning the music they listen to. And not a lot of listeners know this, but you actually have to pay to be on Spotify and a lot of the distributors are subscription-based. So musicians are paying monthly to be on the relevant platform because people look at you crazy if they can't find you on there. YouTube, Soundcloud, Bandcamp etc. just involve free uploading, so why wouldn't Spotify be the same way, right? Between this and it becoming increasingly impossible to tour, musicians are kind of getting starved out of all the ways they're supposed to make a profit.

On top of all of this, a former employee says she invented the Wrapped concept as an intern and they took it without giving her credit: https://says.com/my/tech/spotify-wrapped-story-intern-idea-no-credit

But whether that's true or not, it's funny that Spotify Wrapped has become such a big moment of the year for them and their relevance, so much that they also need us to care about it. This year, we were asked to create exclusive video clips that would be sent to our top listeners. All these apps want me to take on a part-time job within a vertical video, and I'm not having it.

However, I do care about my listeners a lot, and there are a few reasons I enjoy seeing Wrapped posts. Spotify may suck but they are trendy and their presentation is pretty impressive (to me), if not exactly my style. No other music app/platform really brings the visuals like they do or the "cool" feeling to being a listener, and that's a huge shame. Because the app is so ubiquitous and trendy, seeing these posts gives me insight into how my not-incredibly-online listeners interact with and use my music. I've had a lot of people follow me just today on platforms because I guess Wrapped prompts them to find me and share with me. There's also THE DATA that I get from watching my OWN Wrapped and learning which of my songs/albums were the most popular and how many people listened for how long. From seeing which artists I am most commonly appearing next to, or seeing what kinds of people are in my top 1% of listeners (obviously the best kind of people).

Bandcamp is how I make most of my money off music releases. Spotify pays out less over time, Bandcamp pays out a huge amount in the first few months after a release. However, Bandcamp is the mustiest, dustiest website and app I can imagine being financially dependent on in 2022 and I have a fear that new generations will not embrace it and that will leave me in trouble. Because why would they, it's gross and it's always felt like you're encouraged to use it sitting at a computer and downloading album .zips over anything else. (I love album .zips and think more people should have album .zips)

I would love for something like Bandcamp to be cooler, for Wrapped to have any competition at all. It wouldn't have to be much, it'd be enough to have some smaller indie alternative for your die-hards to talk about. I hope that Spotify can be pushed to treat us better in the new year, and it will no longer be just this ugly wedge between me and the listeners I really do want to hear from.


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in reply to @MelloMakes's post:

GOD I wish Bandcamp would care more about the music listening experience. I try and buy as much music as possible on there but they only this year added a music queue for multiple albums πŸ€¦πŸΎβ€β™‚οΈit's frustrating that they're so behind

They sent me an email earlier this year saying that newly released albums will appear in searches now! and I was like.... Bandcamp, why were newly released albums not appearing in searches

I was thinking the Epic money might at least help them with cool features, but it seems like they had a lot of really basic stuff to go through first

They're hiring a search and discovery engineer right now 🀣, so they're probably working on some improvements there.

It was very weird when I looked at their jobs page, I almost forgot Epic bought them and all of their postings go to the Epic HR site now.

I hate the power Spotify Wrapped holds over me. Before marginally better options like Apple Music added a year review, It single-handedly kept me on Spotify and now I have so many local+streamed playlists that I genuinely haven't had the time to try migrating off. I can understand why Bandcamp might not be able to keep up with all the convenience/features, but I can't be the only person that a year review is that influential and I know they already have the data available to whip something up. I do my best to mitigate it with purchasing music where I can, but it really is such an unfortunate situation :/

bandcamp's design has long been in need of an overhaul, though it doesn't need much to modernize and appear more attractive to the average, casual music listener. every once in a while on the mobile web version of the site, i see a prettier design for pages pop up?? but i can never figure out who gets that exactly and why... it's not part of the bandcamp pro package as far as i can tell? there's so much that seems hidden from view as an artist on the platform, let alone the listener's experience

i love their written features and editorials, there does seem to be a genuine appreciation for music of all genres and it gives me the vibes of old school music enthusiast blogspots just without the illegal zip file of mp3s hidden in the comments. i keep hoping that epic money goes into something front-facing while still keeping that passion on display. sadly that can only go so far even for larger artists, and surely there's a good middle ground they can find between where they are now and discoverability systems like spotify has without selling their own soul or someone else's

I love their editorial work and wrap-ups too, that's where I'd be able to say Spotify doesn't really do anything comparable. I have bandcamp pro and I do not think I have any more options to make my site prettier than I used to. The most requested feature I hear about from listeners is playlists, really hoping for that soon with the epic money

same, i only just found out about bndcmpr from marine eyes earlier this year and it's hardly an ideal solution. really hope bandcamp's got something in the works that connects right into the service and gives more social sharing than just user collections

Wait, you can't buy an album on the Bandcamp android app? It looks like it works fine to me; just about a month or two ago I bought an album while I was at work.

I do agree about Spotify though. I left it to have a local library + YouTube music, and I get fomo about wrapped every year. I can't believe nobody else is doing it.

I checked just now and it totally looks like you can buy albums on android, yeah (the card of mine that bandcamp knows about has expired, but it shows options to pay with card or paypal, and it seems like it would work if I actually typed the new card number in)

I feel like part of the problem has to be placed at the listener: Do you care enough about your music to use a solution that isn't streaming? Are you willing to take the time to manage your music? That's going to be a smaller scope of people for sure, but the ones that are passionate about music like that should be thinking about it.

They and others need more optics into what making music is actually like, as you elaborated. Music just needs to be a deliberate action, not a reflex for background noise.

Personally, I found that statistically tracking my listening habits made me feel bad for doing things like listen to the same song 10 times in a row. "Someone on last dot fm might roast me about it" was always in the back of my head... so I prefer not having that aggregated in the first place. Very subjective there, and from back in the day of using the last fm plugin in rockbox.

I'm not particularly attached to the Spotify experience, but I'm curious - when I listen to your tracks on Spotify do you functionally get paid for that and does it raise your algorithm visibility on that service like it would on YouTube? Or is there basically no upside for you at this point and I should use another app. (This is separate from the real way to give artists money, which is Bandcamp)

My general workflow for music because every Android app sucks is that when I'm away from home I'm using Spotify or (occasionally, but it really sucks) YouTube Music, and at home I use foobar2k with a big NAS full of music I bought off bandcamp.

Yeah, I do get actually paid and plays do help me get surfaced, cutting off spotify (hypothetically might be an act of protest in the future, who knows) would hurt me. especially if you're also buying from bandcamp, i think the big purchase + continuous streaming revenue is the best way to support artists

absolutely agree. currently my technique as a listener is to use spotify to sample (like with discovery playlists) to find new artists, then i buy the track/album on bandcamp (or on cd) and add my purchased albums to my spotify (by hearting them) and then use spotify to listen to the stuff i own. i tried the itunes/apple music version of this for a while, even imported my whole cd collection in like 2017. but nobody else is doing it like spotify. the software is better whether i'm on my phone or desktop, casting to my devices is useful, the algorithms are accurate and lead me to new artists i like, wrapped is fun. zany that nobody else seems to be able to keep up - i guess amoral profit-seeking does give them a financial edge.