This would be right if not for the fact that Spotify will regularly introduce you to music that you might like and otherwise might not have heard of. That can be worth paying for.
Except that as part of its enshittification Spotify has intentionally changed its algo to push people into more and more homogenous “beige”, nothing music. It has become so prolific that Spotifycore has become a term to describe what happens when you let Spotify autoplay.
With the rise of AI, Spotify is now producing and recommending beige music that is produced on an industrial scale, at the expense of actual artists.
This is 100% true, and the reason I left Spotify. Back to buying records and CDs online and in niche record stores (I live in a metropolis, so that works even for obscure music). I also got a tidal subscription, and I like the recommendations from there much more. Bandcamp & SoundCloud newsletters are also great for suggestions.
But now, since collecting records and CDs, I find myself spending much more time with individual albums and critical listening, and relying less on playlists and suggestions. Anyway, Spotify is just garbage now…
I signed up for this about 2 months ago because someone on here recommended it. It’s absolutely garbage unless you only listen to radio music. I listen to industrial hardcore and uptempo about 90% of the time, the remaining 10% are a pretty even split between hard rock and radio music. It only recommends me radio music, not a single hardcore track.
I have subscriptions for Spotify, Tidal and SoundCloud, and all 3 of them have vastly better recommendations of you listen to less popular genres
It’s true, some genres are better represented than others. The user base on listenbrainz is relatively small. I hope you do keep scrobbling your listens to listenbrainz because it can still help improve the recommendations for other users after you who listen to somethings you do but know a lot less than you in the genres you listen.
I would argue that this is the entire value proposition of Spotify. I may not own the music, but I have all the artist and song names. I can always re-acquire them at any time.
This would be right if not for the fact that Spotify will regularly introduce you to music that you might like and otherwise might not have heard of. That can be worth paying for.
There’s a reason music piracy is still niche compared to games or movies/tv.
Spotify is still a good deal to me. I’ll gladly pay $12 a month to not have to go through the hassle of torrenting and organizing music.
Except that as part of its enshittification Spotify has intentionally changed its algo to push people into more and more homogenous “beige”, nothing music. It has become so prolific that Spotifycore has become a term to describe what happens when you let Spotify autoplay.
With the rise of AI, Spotify is now producing and recommending beige music that is produced on an industrial scale, at the expense of actual artists.
Mood Machine go brrr
Mood Machine by Liz Pelly review – a savage indictment of Spotify | Music books | The Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/mar/05/mood-machine-by-liz-pelly-review-a-savage-indictment-of-spotify
This is 100% true, and the reason I left Spotify. Back to buying records and CDs online and in niche record stores (I live in a metropolis, so that works even for obscure music). I also got a tidal subscription, and I like the recommendations from there much more. Bandcamp & SoundCloud newsletters are also great for suggestions.
But now, since collecting records and CDs, I find myself spending much more time with individual albums and critical listening, and relying less on playlists and suggestions. Anyway, Spotify is just garbage now…
We had scrobbling services before Spotify and we will have them afterwards.
See Last.fm and ListenBrainz.org
I signed up for this about 2 months ago because someone on here recommended it. It’s absolutely garbage unless you only listen to radio music. I listen to industrial hardcore and uptempo about 90% of the time, the remaining 10% are a pretty even split between hard rock and radio music. It only recommends me radio music, not a single hardcore track.
I have subscriptions for Spotify, Tidal and SoundCloud, and all 3 of them have vastly better recommendations of you listen to less popular genres
What are some of your favourites in this category? Spotify hasn’t been giving me any good recommendations on this front either.
It’s true, some genres are better represented than others. The user base on listenbrainz is relatively small. I hope you do keep scrobbling your listens to listenbrainz because it can still help improve the recommendations for other users after you who listen to somethings you do but know a lot less than you in the genres you listen.
I would argue that this is the entire value proposition of Spotify. I may not own the music, but I have all the artist and song names. I can always re-acquire them at any time.
This is why I use Spotify and why it’s gotten so much worse over the last year.
My blocked artists list used to be empty, but now it feels like I’m blocking every third new artist for being AI.
I love starting out with one song and just letting the algorithm do it’s thing. It comes up with new shit for me all the time.