Spotify and Me

[This was prompted by an article in the Guardian on 5th October 2018 - see link at the end]

First off, I confess: I am a fully paid up Spotify user. I do probably use it in a slightly unusual way – for me it’s mostly a “try before you buy” thing (If I like an album (or song) on Spotify I buy the CD or the digital download: I want the person who made the album I like to be paid for creating it), though, just to be clear I do have playlists as well, including my master random playlist of favourites optimistically titled “Dead”.

Nevertheless, I know Spotify is evil. Or at least the beguiling handiwork of one of Satan’s demons.

It unfairly favours those artists who sell albums by the (digital) shedload, worse, it practically shoves them down your throat. In most cases these are the artists whose work I loathe with a passion that is probably both unholy and unhealthy but loathe them I do.

Spotify also claims to know your musical taste and, using its version of your taste, recommends other music based on what you listen to. This is where it really falls apart for me. Spotify does not have a clue about the music I like.  I could spend a week listening to Norwegian death metal non-stop and still be recommended the latest offering from some anonymous bloke from one direction or another. (Admittedly after a week of non-stop death metal a bit of variety might be welcome, even if only to remind me why I was listening to death metal in the first place. N.B. For the record (LOL) there is always a place in my heart for a bit of death metal.)

I suspect there is some built-in bias to their predictive algorithm – I am NEVER going to want to hear any song by a certain singer-songwriter with red hair (nothing against red hair, just to be clear, I love it – in fact I’d have any hair that’s going spare) so don’t tell me when he’s released something new, PLEASE, ‘cos I don’t bloody-well care!  [As a side note, if, by some chance, Spotify shows I am listening to one of his songs, then call the police, because it means I am being held hostage AND tortured]

Equally just because I like one song by, say Kiss, for example, (‘I was made for lovin’ you’ if you’re asking) it doesn’t mean I’m going to like anything else by them (and in this case it really doesn’t, I despise Kiss for so many reasons) or any other bunch of American identikit poodle-haired supposed rockers of the same ilk.

So, I’ll continue to use Spotify, not for it’s ability to recommend music that will turn my blood to stone, nor as a replacement for actually paying the people who make music (if you’re in any doubt, look it up, most musicians / bands get roughly two-thirds of four-fifths of f**k-all squared from Spotify) but because it lets me hear obscure or new stuff that’s hard to hear elsewhere and then decide if I want to let it live in my head, heart, hips and/or house.

The original Guardian Article can be read by clicking here