Having your own collection is great. But it doesn’t provide the service Spotify does (or any streaming service). 80% of the time I listen to discovery-type generated playlists. I want to find new music. This is fundamentally impossible with the music I own. This is something you can’t self host. Even if you have a vast collection of music you don’t know (by whatever means your get it), you still need the algorithms to pick the music that you’re likely to like.
I really wish I could. I self host basically everything else. Even tried some local music similarity training for “smart playlists”. It’s kinda neat at best, but no where remotely close to the music discovery of Spotify and other online services. You need the massive amounts of users to derive that data.
I guess that’s where the ListenBrainz/Last.fm part comes in (which is mentioned in the article).
I still get music recommendations via friends, concert/festival lineups and online forums, but that’s just for my “main” genres. For other stuff, Spotify is quasi the only solution for me as well.
Friends don’t work for me. I don’t know a single person who listens to even close to the things that I like. Sure there’s some overlap occasionally, and I might hear about one artist once a week or month. I get dozens to hundreds recommended by spotify weekly, and I actually end up liking a handful of those. With friends, it also only works with known artists, and it’s incredibly rare to get reommended something that isn’t well known but happens to fit my taste by them (don’t think that ever happened, actually). As an example just last week I got recommended an artist that has 60-something monthly listeners on Spotify (now 74!). I liked them so much I tried to see what I can find, and they got a youtube channel with 3 (live) videos and like 500-ish views each (38 subscribers). NOBODY is ever gonna recommend me those kinds of things, cause nobody ever heard of them, let alone anyone of my friends (and even if they have, they’d have to know to recommend them to me).
As for the listenbrainz/last.fm that is kind of a solution, but it takes a very long time to train up your profile to actually be useful. I haven’t used it in a VERY long time (decades), but last I did it was kinda “meh”. You can also only start out with what you have, as you’re scrobbling what you’re listenting to. I no longer have most of the music I listen to daily as an actual file/library. So getting that up to date would probably cost thousands of dollars, too. Not to mention it being incredibly tedious to actually gather them on various individual shops and sites like bandcamp or wherever those artists happen to be.
So as much as I wish there was, there isn’t really a (pracical) alternative. Let alone one of the same “competence”.
Call me old, but people should learn to discover music in different ways (friends, press, concerts, etc.) and not wait to be fed by corporations… just a thought.
See my other reply to tofu. Not the same thing. You just couldn’t do what these services do even 2 decades ago. You could discover things, but at a very different pace and very different reach. You’re limited to discover what friends know from them. Discovering things via “press” isn’t free either, it takes time to read the articles, buy the magazines (do they still exists?) and you’re likely to only hear about popular things. You also need to find publications that suit your own taste, or learn which authors are compatible with it.
As for concerts you can only go to those that are near you, which is either local artists or those big enough to tour away from their home base. There are artists that don’t tour at all (probably a third of my catalog falls into this category).
It’s the opposite for me. I don’t want to read about music. I just want to listen to music that I don’t know yet but am likely to like. I don’t want to dig around for it. The algorithms you dislike do something that no article or podcast can: give me personally tailored recommendations. She not in an abstract way but just as a playlist.
I’m aware it has no concept of artistic quality. But I also don’t care about the quality of music, especially if perceived by some journalist. I only care if I like music. Some of it is intricately composed, masterfully performed. Some is pop, or generic/simple house.
I have discovered entire genres with the algorithms you seem to think only give narrowing recommendations. Some people probably listened to those and something I liked.
Let me repeat again: I have discovered many, many artists for me that I literally would have no realistic chance of every hearing about in any other way. Ever!
It is a lot more fun to discover artists yourself. Browsing a list of album covers and enjoy them, read short description of the album and artist then listen to the music. You also feel the send of fulfillement becausw the process becomes a personal adventure rather than a passive experience
As I said in my other reply, different people like different things. I don’t want an adventure. I want the passive experience. I do other things while listening to music (work, read, tinker, …). I almost always have some music playing, but rarely do I just listen to music (it does happen though). I’ll pick styles depending on mood or task, it’s like the rails that keep me on track while working (as an example). If I’m not listening to music, I lose focus.
I simply can’t do that with an article or other medium that requires my primary attention. I don’t feel a sense of fulfillment either, but increasingly annoyed that reading this thing about music is taking more and more time. Believe me when I tell you, it’s not for me.
Having your own collection is great. But it doesn’t provide the service Spotify does (or any streaming service). 80% of the time I listen to discovery-type generated playlists. I want to find new music. This is fundamentally impossible with the music I own. This is something you can’t self host. Even if you have a vast collection of music you don’t know (by whatever means your get it), you still need the algorithms to pick the music that you’re likely to like.
I really wish I could. I self host basically everything else. Even tried some local music similarity training for “smart playlists”. It’s kinda neat at best, but no where remotely close to the music discovery of Spotify and other online services. You need the massive amounts of users to derive that data.
I guess that’s where the ListenBrainz/Last.fm part comes in (which is mentioned in the article).
I still get music recommendations via friends, concert/festival lineups and online forums, but that’s just for my “main” genres. For other stuff, Spotify is quasi the only solution for me as well.
Friends don’t work for me. I don’t know a single person who listens to even close to the things that I like. Sure there’s some overlap occasionally, and I might hear about one artist once a week or month. I get dozens to hundreds recommended by spotify weekly, and I actually end up liking a handful of those. With friends, it also only works with known artists, and it’s incredibly rare to get reommended something that isn’t well known but happens to fit my taste by them (don’t think that ever happened, actually). As an example just last week I got recommended an artist that has 60-something monthly listeners on Spotify (now 74!). I liked them so much I tried to see what I can find, and they got a youtube channel with 3 (live) videos and like 500-ish views each (38 subscribers). NOBODY is ever gonna recommend me those kinds of things, cause nobody ever heard of them, let alone anyone of my friends (and even if they have, they’d have to know to recommend them to me).
As for the listenbrainz/last.fm that is kind of a solution, but it takes a very long time to train up your profile to actually be useful. I haven’t used it in a VERY long time (decades), but last I did it was kinda “meh”. You can also only start out with what you have, as you’re scrobbling what you’re listenting to. I no longer have most of the music I listen to daily as an actual file/library. So getting that up to date would probably cost thousands of dollars, too. Not to mention it being incredibly tedious to actually gather them on various individual shops and sites like bandcamp or wherever those artists happen to be.
So as much as I wish there was, there isn’t really a (pracical) alternative. Let alone one of the same “competence”.
This isn’t a huge issue, listenbrainz supports importing your spotify history.
Call me old, but people should learn to discover music in different ways (friends, press, concerts, etc.) and not wait to be fed by corporations… just a thought.
See my other reply to tofu. Not the same thing. You just couldn’t do what these services do even 2 decades ago. You could discover things, but at a very different pace and very different reach. You’re limited to discover what friends know from them. Discovering things via “press” isn’t free either, it takes time to read the articles, buy the magazines (do they still exists?) and you’re likely to only hear about popular things. You also need to find publications that suit your own taste, or learn which authors are compatible with it.
As for concerts you can only go to those that are near you, which is either local artists or those big enough to tour away from their home base. There are artists that don’t tour at all (probably a third of my catalog falls into this category).
I don’t know about you but this is so fun for me it bring me joy and fulfillment as opposed to being fed by algorithm
It’s the opposite for me. I don’t want to read about music. I just want to listen to music that I don’t know yet but am likely to like. I don’t want to dig around for it. The algorithms you dislike do something that no article or podcast can: give me personally tailored recommendations. She not in an abstract way but just as a playlist.
An algorithm has zero concept of artistic quality . I also want to always extends my taste and not the opposite
I’m aware it has no concept of artistic quality. But I also don’t care about the quality of music, especially if perceived by some journalist. I only care if I like music. Some of it is intricately composed, masterfully performed. Some is pop, or generic/simple house.
I have discovered entire genres with the algorithms you seem to think only give narrowing recommendations. Some people probably listened to those and something I liked.
Let me repeat again: I have discovered many, many artists for me that I literally would have no realistic chance of every hearing about in any other way. Ever!
It is a lot more fun to discover artists yourself. Browsing a list of album covers and enjoy them, read short description of the album and artist then listen to the music. You also feel the send of fulfillement becausw the process becomes a personal adventure rather than a passive experience
As I said in my other reply, different people like different things. I don’t want an adventure. I want the passive experience. I do other things while listening to music (work, read, tinker, …). I almost always have some music playing, but rarely do I just listen to music (it does happen though). I’ll pick styles depending on mood or task, it’s like the rails that keep me on track while working (as an example). If I’m not listening to music, I lose focus.
I simply can’t do that with an article or other medium that requires my primary attention. I don’t feel a sense of fulfillment either, but increasingly annoyed that reading this thing about music is taking more and more time. Believe me when I tell you, it’s not for me.