Hacker News Reader

Comment by rahoulb | Hacker News Reader

I tried Apple Music for 6 months, and spent that time diligently training it to my tastes. My latest "favourites mix" had 12 songs that I had to mark as "dislike" after all that training. Likewise the "for you"playlists are garbage - just because I like a couple of songs by guitar bands doesn't mean I want to listen to hours and hours of them.

Apple Music on Apple Watch 3 is amazing - leaving a phone at home is strangely liberating.

But, for me, the big advantage of Spotify is I don't always need to think about what I want to listen to - I can pick an artist and listen or I can be lazy and just hit a Daily Mix which plays stuff I really like. Asking Apple Music to play "some reggae" or whatever invariably ends up with it playing a load of music I really don't like, even after all that training.

View on HN

> the big advantage of Spotify is I don't always need to think about what I want to listen to

This is huge when I'm trying to stay in the flow while programming. Spotify is like a personal DJ that really groks how I work, especially now that it silently continues playing matching tracks when a playlist ends.

With Apple Music, I ended up switching back to iTunes at least once an hour. I really hope they won't be able to crush Spotify.

They (Spotify) also have some kind of awesome new playlist feature that mixes the songs together automatically. The "Trap Vibes" (don't judge) playlist uses that feature, I'd say try it! Play at least 2-3 songs and notice how gapless they transition into eachother. It really works great. I hope it's automated and not based on cuepoints (it probably is, though).

Literally just found this feature this morning. It was awesome that it also adds the fade effect even if you skip a song. Gapless playback used to be a feature that was only active when the track came its end naturally.

That sounds good because the Spotify playlists I listen to have a surprisingly small pool of songs.

For example, I've heard almost all the tracks of the Mexico -> "La + Chingona" playlist on the first sitting. It says they are regenerated each week yet it's the same songs reshuffled. All of the Mexican playlists are like this, but I've never tried other playlists so I don't know if it's Spotify-wide. Maybe they just have a bad Mexican music team.

I totally agree with this sentiment. The auto-generated lists on Apple music suck compared to Spotify. I do think the curated stuff on Apple music is formidable but that's about it. For people who want to discover music...spotify is still the way to go. Apple is just really good at shoving their stuff on people. Spotify has no ecosystem to leverage like apple

> But, for me, the big advantage of Spotify is I don't always need to think about what I want to listen to

I haven't tried Apple Music but I do listen to Spotify. What is highly dislike is that it's so terrible about suggesting or playing songs. I don't think it's good at all. Further, the shuffle doesn't seem to shuffle well enough (often seems to play in a similar order).

I'm terrible at knowing artists, song names, etc. I've noticed people liking Spotify often know the names or various artists plus create their own playlists. I think it's all terrible.

Same for e.g. listening to songs. I might be in the mood for some salsa songs. Spotify will have me listen to Salsa songs for hours on end. It should be way smarter. Some slow songs, then some quicker.. but not too sudden, etc.

I don't want to pay for Spotify because of this. It's terrible in song selection IMO.

"I don't want to pay for Spotify because of this. It's terrible in song selection IMO"

I'm the opposite. I know their song suggestion can leave something to be desired, as it is obviously based on your recent listening instead of suggesting from your entire playlist suggestion. But then again, that also gives me ways to tweak it by simply sampling a variety of music during the week - which I do when I'm searching for new songs. I rarely know band/song names, and can still find music.

Their song selection is generally good for folks that are sometimes listening to odd music. One of my favorite artists has less than 55k plays on the most popular song - and they suggest this sort of thing to me instead of continually suggesting "popular" music.

The most jarring thing (to me) was the ads, which were solved by paying a small fee each month. Bonus points for downloads.

Google Play is great at this. But I prefer Spotify's UI and apps on my devices.

I'm on the same boat. My 3 month trial for Apple Music just ended and switched back to Spotify. Most of the time I don't want to bother to choose what I listen to and for that the discovery features in Spotify just seem to work.

Google Play has really misogynistic algos, it seems to get really hung up on the gender of an artist.

Want to listen to artists like a female? Then obviously you only want to listen to female artists! I once tried it on a few different female artists, Tori Amos, Laura Marling, etc. It really just focuses in on the gender, which is annoying as I just want to listen to the genre.

I understand and agree with your point, but being overly focused on an artists sex (which is annoying) is not the same thing as hating women.

Yeah, I ummed over using that word but left it in as it feels as if the original categorisation by Google was done by a misogynist which the algo learned from. The malice is learned.

If you look at Hole, for example, a classic grunge band you can love or hate, most "related artists" are female artists. The Pumpkins and Nirvana are mixed in as token includes, one because it was her husband, the other because Billy Corgan produced one of their albums. Look at Nirvana, almost all male artists, with Hole being the only female artist. Veruca Salt or Garbage are exactly the same. Juliana Hatfield has more males than most, but they're mainly her ex-band mates. (I bet you can tell roughly how old I am from that list ;)

And that holds true for modern artists too. Look at related artists for Courtney Barnett, The Joy Formidable or Laura Marling and again it's predominately females, while if you look at one of the only male bands on Courtney Barnett's related artist lists, Twin Peaks, it's all male artists.

There is deliberate, systematic, segregation by sex of the artist happening at Google Play.

Laura Marling, for example, is a strong part of Modern British Folk, and that she's being side-lined by google algos is pretty malicious in my book (Short Movie (Director's Cut) is an excellent album if you want a go).

EDIT: researching and writing this makes me realize I can't keep paying for Google Play, I hadn't realized how deeply rooted the problem was in the platform.

> it feels as if the original categorisation by Google was done by a misogynist which the algo learned from

No, it was left in for people like me that _do_ have a strong preference for the voice of the singer. I love my trance music with smooth female vocals, and having men in that mix would be unenjoyable for me.

I think a nice feature for apps like this would be optional granular control of the aspects of the mix that you want. If votes lead to parts of a mix that you don't like(like certain vocals), it would be nice if I could explicitly remove that from the mix.

Checking Spotify for related artists to Nirvana: Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, Foo Fighters, Smashing Pumpkins

Oh dear! All male, not even the single female that Google provided. Spotify must be even more misogynist... or perhaps these bands are just the most commonly listened to by people who listen to Nirvana [1]

"Spotify's related artists and radio are determined by algorithms which look at what people listen to alongside your music."

[1] https://community.spotify.com/t5/Content-Questions/quot-Rela...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com