I've no idea what source they switched it to, but there's a lot of obscure songs which makes it a lot less fun.
Like: They could just buy a controlling stake, let it run by the original team and just add some cross promo to their main product.
When a large fund has exited a successful public company, they will use their influence on the public company to convince the successful entity to purchase the failed ones.
This is a way to keep the machine going at the expense of the investors in the public company (they are holding the bag now anyway), and this way you always have a positive track record as a fund.
Sometimes, when influence is not enough, purchases can involve kickbacks to members of the board to make sure they are convinced that it's the right choice to do.
Every time I use it now, my inner voice is saying “get the fuck out of my way” to the UX itself.
What are they optimizing for?
Probably engagement. The more clicks, the better.
I've switched to Tidal. It pushes some ads too, but not nearly as badly. The discovery algorithm is slightly worse but pretty close. Most importantly it doesn't keep playing the same 3 songs (at least it's more like 30).
I agree in general about their UX, though; it's part of the general enshittification, these companies always trying to squeeze us for more attention. The constant change has its own friction. And tt feels especially egregious on something as personal as our music.
The one thing I want Spotify to do well is algorithmic discovery. The Discover Weekly playlist is the only thing that keeps me on the service, and yet they make it more and more difficult to find. The position on the home screen is entirely random and unpredictable. The only reliable way to find it is by using the search feature.
Then I finally found something and saw that not only was it not included in my subscription, but the cost was higher than buying the hardcover on Amazon.
It amazed me with the fact that even after creating a radio from a single song, I got exactly what I wanted to hear (including new songs).
It's a shame that it's not available in Europe.
however i've found that the mixes introduce me to recommendations that I like at roughly the same rate as Discover Weekly.
What are you listening to for such good recommendations? Is the the automatic "Mix" playlists it creates?
Because on YT video it's like:
You picked Rammstein? Sure, here is your next video with classical music, because you were listening to it last week.
I wish I'd taken a screenshot or done a video tour of my setup before it shut down. The Cluetrain Manifesto/Intertwingularity days were so full of open endless possibility & fun. Spotify did so so so well, had such an interesting capable Javascript extension system built in to the app... then we're one of the first people to pack up & leave the party. I was shocked.
I started using Spotify after Google killed Google Music. I find it totally egregious. My playlists feel hidden from me. Search is infuriating. The path to a full album is many clicks away. Even finding albums vs singles vs EPs is tough. In fact the app seems to discourage full-album listening. The recommendations for me have so far been totally completely underwhelming. And I'm constantly having Joe Rogan shoved in my face, not to mention a whole host of other stuff I have zero interest in.
We all get used to different paradigms, but Spotify feels like a particularly bad (and constantly shifting) case. If it was all I knew, I might think differently.
I used to be loyal to Spotify because it was decent and they were in the music business specifically. Now I'm on YouTube Music and going to cancel Spotify paid.
They'd love it if you listened to podcasts. If you have to listen to music they want to convince you to listen to something unpopular they can license for cheap. That's why the push Discover stuff so hard.
Personally I think Spotify is great and it works really well for me, the only thing I really don't like is the podcast push. While it's not as bad as it used to be, I wish I could toggle it off or banish it to some separate part of the app.
any guesses?
I had to skip without guessing to the end and then see today’s answer. I never heard that song in my life, nor ever heard of the artist. Connecting Heardle to my Spotify profile would make a more fun game.
Usually we would get the answer in a single try, because it happened to be a song we knew by heart, or we wouldn't get it at all because we didn't know the artist/it was just not in a genre to which we regularly listen/the song was an obscure hit or one hit wonder before our time
Perhaps it would have been better as 'guess the artist' and give you 5 second clips from decreasingly obscure songs
Was it just an acquihire all along?
Hopefully someone who has access to the C suite at Spotify can leak the actual answer here (I’m sure they will get right on that). For future reference just Google “x acquires y” if you want to attempt to get any insight about “what x planned to do with y after acquiring”.
https://newsroom.spotify.com/2022-07-12/spotify-to-acquire-m...
> “We are always looking for innovative and playful ways to enhance music discovery and help artists reach new fans,” commented Jeremy Erlich, Global Head of Music, Spotify. “Heardle has proven to be a really fun way to connect millions of fans with songs they know and love and with new songs . . . and a way to compete with their friends as to who has the best musical knowledge. Since its debut, the game has quickly built a loyal following, and it aligns with our plans to deepen interactivity across the Spotify ecosystem.”
The official statement seems consistent with what was reported in this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35570998
In other words, they tried to retool the tech toward an additional value proposition for both users and artists. The result failed to meet a quality bar, and therefore it was decided to axe the project.
I guess it is not worth to keep it on life suport with a skeleton crew just fixing bugs (if even needed)? But then why buy it in the first place?
Embrace and extinguish?
It's a product that should, and perhaps could in a more bullish market, have grown their subscriber base while adding value to their core product.
Clearly they didn't get the numbers they wanted/needed and if everyone else is cutting right now, this is something that seems reasonable to cut from their expenses.
The concept of the game sounds cool though as a customer of the company itself however I didn't know about it.
Also I wouldn't put it past them to push features of the game directly into the Spotify app in the future. (Maybe they already have, I don't know).
This is what happens when businesses follow and chase short-term hype cycles and end up wasting time and money in the end. The return on investment of this acquired startup is exactly $0.
Facebook on the other hand with the Instagram acquisition gave returns into the tens of billions of dollars.
Instagram has to be an all-time steal for what they paid for it. They also own What's App, a juggernaut in its own right.
Facebook's acquisition of Oculus was reasonable. It does remain to be seen if they can truly harness it or not.
negative, far below zero.
