Musings on the byways of popular culture
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One of the joys of Spotify is creating a hand-made playlist (I’m not talking about grabbing Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits for example and sticking it in a playlist). I’m sure it’s been done here before but how about sharing some of your favourite personal creations? Here’s mine, called Mellow 1 and designed as a party/dinner party playlist. It’s meant to be played sequentially. I’ll try and share some more but how about yours?
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The Spotify ‘Discover Weekly’ playlist has played a blinder, this week. From Golden Smog, New Riders of the Purple Sage and Ethan Johns through to John Fogerty, Jason & The Scorchers and The Georgia Satellites, there is hardly a duffer on it. But it is this that has soothed my troubled mind all week. I gather he’s a member of Lambchop but, since they haven’t crossed my path much, I wasn’t aware of him. This is just gorgeous. Sometimes it’s the simplest things in life that make me happy.
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Anyone use it? Any good? Comparisons with Spotify etc … Thanks in advance
For quite some time now I have been being impressed by Spotify’s discovery playlists. Basically they are MILES better than any other algorithm based recommendation thing I have ever seen
Some of you probably feel the same way, so you might like this article.
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As part of the Canon mega-discussion we unearthed quite a few mix albums. However good luck if you want to listen to them on Spotify (and I assume other streaming services). LTJ Bukem is on there, but absent are
Jeff Mills – Live at the Liquid Rooms Carl Cox – FACT 1 and 2 Chemical Brothers – live at the Social Vol 1 Almost everything on Global Underground John Digweed is quite well represented, but by no means is it everything. just to start with
Deep Dish and Sasha for example have their artist output but nothing of their DJ work
I thought that licensing had been sorted – the above are hardly obscure underground artists, or has it not? Anyone come up with any explanations as to why the mix album has been so poorly served by streaming?
Hello, an annual contribution from a long-time lurker:
As is now convention, here’s my Spotify mixtape of my favourite musical discoveries, new and old, from 2015.
If you like this sort of thing, feel free to follow my ‘blog’ at www.facebook.com/christopherconderwriter.
As ever, I remind you humble listener that Spotify pays a mind-bendingly miniscule royalty to artists, so if you enjoy something on here do think about buying the album or going to a live show.
1. Bush Gothic – Female Transport
It’s funny how things work out. I’ve been in e-mail correspondence with Jenny M. Thomas of Bush Gothic for several years. This year she finally made it back to the UK for some shows with the Spooky Men’s Chorale. I invited Jenny and her partner/bassist Dan Whitton round for dinner. I also invited fellow music journal Ken Hunt and his wife Santosh, who is turn bought Indian violinist Kala Ramnath, who happened to be staying with them. Next I knew, I had two world class violinists jamming in our front room. Bush Gothic released their near album at the end » Continue Reading.
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This is the message I now get if I try to save songs to “Your Music” on Spotify. It seems after a couple of years of membership I’ve hit the 10,000 song limit they don’t tell you about when you join. I don’t use Spotty to play any of my own music library either – this is just streaming.
I regard my taste in music to be pretty narrow so I wonder if anyone else has come across this? It seems that creating playlists is a way round it. One of the things I liked about streaming was I could just drag anything I liked into a single folder. It seems that Apple, Google, Deezer and Tidal have no such limits. It leaves me wondering if there’s a playlist limit.
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I’ve mentioned my enthusiasm for the weekly Spotify Discover playlist a couple of times, without much response as far as I can tell. Turns out I’m not alone. Interesting that the guy who runs it used to be responsible for This Is My Jam.
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On another post I was added a Buzzocks YouTube video, and it occurred to me that I haven’t given them any money for probably 25 years (though I can sing every word of their first dozen singles, and play mp3s of their CDs. Got me thinking – if I want to channel (a tiny amount) of money to my favourite struggling artists, what gives them the best return? Should I stream them on (Free) Spotify, Amazon Prime, Googleplay, or YouTube? And on YouTube does it have to be the official channel for them to get money? Any one know?
And here is one of my favourite struggling artists on what I think is his official channel. https://youtu.be/VnEryrw4-G8?list=PL4S3FyuYt-BHIXTfH1O4CJLgATwr4rQY9
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Anybody else come across this? Spotiamb is a reincarnation of Winamp (Windows only – oh, the irony!) which works as an add-on to Spotify, organising playlists etc. It has somehow wormed itself into the range of devices available on Spotify Connect, and hijacks the app and suddenly plays random crap. Really annoying. Seems impossible to get rid of – there was a Spotify update last night which seemed to have dealt with it, but it’s back this morning. The app itself isn’t on my computer – it wouldn’t work anyway – and it looks as though Spotify itself might have been hacked. I think the idea is to get play counts up = $$, though not much as we know.
https://www.reddit.com/r/spotify/comments/3f0n9i/spotiamb_021_appearing_in_connect_and_hijacking/
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Something I’ve been saying for a while is articulated so much better by David Byrne.
Spotify is paying a lot of money to the “music industry”, it’s just not making it to the artists.
In this day and age, I have no idea why a new band would chase a record deal that will just deprive them of a modest income.
Thoughts?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/opinion/sunday/open-the-music-industrys-black-box.html?_r=0
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So, that ramps up the battle quite a bit. Do you want to pay £10/month for music at Itunes or Spotify, or £6/month for music, films and free delivery at Amazon? The ability to download albums and and play them off line is a bit of a boon – can you do that with Itunes? I know you can with Spotify premium.
I’ve got free Spotify, Netflix, and Amazon prime for the delivery mostly. This probably stops me upgrading Spotify or going to the Itunes subscription, even though it has only 1 million tracks which is less than Spotify or Apple music
Price war coming?
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I am a little bit obsessed with this track at the moment & thought I should share. It won’t be to every ones taste but I love it!
It has a really David Byrne delivery & that Tina Weymouth-esque bassline is sublime! The Talking Heads influence is being worn quite brazenly but they have done it well!
The rest of the album is pretty good too.
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As some of you may remember I have created Spotify playlists of all the Word compilation CDs. This link is to the final 2012 one, not a full year because the magazine folded. I’ll repost the links to the others in the comments.
Enjoy!
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Quick check in with others. I’ve lost my mp3 player, and in its absence have finally started using my iphone 5 as a music player when out and about. Having demo-ed both spotify premium (ie offline) and itunes it seems that Spotify drains the battery at a significantly slower rate, but that itunes gives a slightly better sound quality. Would others agree?
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Recently the Last FM community has been gnashing its teeth over the latest itunes update, which moves it to 64-bit and renders it impossible to scrobble to last fm from via its itunes plugin.
What you say? Last FM is a music database website with desktop clients and plug-ins that enables you to consolidate your playcounts from itunes, windows media player, Spotify etc into one place. It’s clearly been struggling recently to sustain itself and the itunes issues shows no signs of being fixed anytime soon though there are unofficial work-arounds in the forums.
I love last fm, wish it well, but can’t help feel it’s time may be drawing to a close. So, should I start to think about somewhere else to scrobble to – their word for recording playcounts. And, crucially, who offers a migration function for the 20,000 odd scrobbles on my last fm profile?
