Spotified

I started out listening to the various guitar songs via Youtube, but had moved to Spotify for the most part by the end. The selection on Youtube was greater, and it is nice being able to see the artists, but when I had only an artist, instead of a specific song, it was simpler to get an overview through Spotify via their "Popular" section at the top of an artist's section.

I did end up making the Guitar Sampler playlist, and then I noticed that if I clicked "Share", I could add a note, so I went through and added relevant blog posts for each playlist, because I have written about almost all of them. Using "Share" for this ability means that they were all on my Facebook timeline, but the connection to Twitter did not seem to work.

Spotify was very useful to me in this project, and I appreciate that. There are two things that I appreciate less.

One is of course the low amount of royalties paid. Technically I think their payments are lower than Youtube, though with Youtube if the video is not loaded specifically through that group's channel, they are probably not getting anything for it. That would not be an issue for Spotify, though since I have seen at least two cases of groups with the same name having their songs mixed in together, I do have to wonder how that works. Regardless, I know that it takes hundreds of thousands of plays to earn a dollar.

Therefore, my first point here is to reiterate the importance of buying music. I love that I can listen to songs and albums before I purchase, but once I know that I like this, and I want to listen to it multiple times, then it's time to buy, whether you purchase a physical or digital copy.

Currently, I often use Spotify to listen to music I already own. This is partly to benefit the bands more, even if only infinitesimally so, but it's also a matter of convenience. I've sort of let the alphabetical order slide on my CD rack, and the dog is often sleeping in front of it, so it's often just easier. Still, I buy.

The other thing that sometimes bugs me about Spotify has everything to do with monetization. This is an important topic, and one that's close to my heart as someone who cares about bands getting the financial support they need, so we are going to talk about that more tomorrow.

For now, I am just going to focus on how that comes into play specifically with Spotify, which functions on the principle of the add-on sale. It is more sophisticated than asking if you want fries with that, because it is looking at your history to make the appropriate offers. In theory, the ads  you see on Facebook have a similar technology behind them, though what piece of data leads certain ads to appear is beyond me. I question their algorithm.

Spotify is a little more sophisticated for that, I guess, except that they don't understand that the way I listen to music involves a lot of exploration and study. This means that I am usually pretty up on what is out there, so the link to get tickets for AFI is nice, but I already have mine.

It also means that sometimes I am listening to things that I hate for academic purposes. Therefore while they have accurately identified a band that is similar to the one I was listening to, this in no way means that I have any desire to listen to them.

Of course, sometimes science can't account for anything anyway. By all accounts, as someone who loves My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy, I should love Panic! At The Disco, and band members will be mean to me if I don't like them, but I don't like them! I'm sorry! I don't know why they annoy me; they just do.

Finally, sometimes Spotify hits a nerve. "You have been listening to (this song) a lot lately; would you like to listen now?"

What are you implying? Are you calling me obsessive? I mean, I like the song but I like lots of songs; you are way off base trying to ascribe some deeper meaning to it. I am not in love with the bass player!

Ahem. In conclusions, Spotify can be quite useful for exploration and convenience, but it is not a way of supporting artists. More on that tomorrow.