DeGoogle Yourself

Yeah it sucks that the Spotify algorithm for both automated playlists and "shuffle" is a mess now. It used to be half-decent, but now from what I've heard from insiders, though no official confirmation or anything, is that the algorithms were modified to heavily favor sponsored artists, and so only really works with popular genres with lots of sponsored artists from major record labels, and "popular" songs, which means the more a song is played, the more often it gets played which becomes a self-fulfilling popularity cycle that excludes less well known songs. Really does a bad job for me with interests across many genres and wanting to hear more "b-sides" from artist I follow.

To be fair,i switched to Tidal for a bit because i got a several moth discount for talking with a product manager about what I thought the app needed (though they didn't seem to take any of my advice anyway), and it's no better than Spotify with finding new music. It paid artists better at the time and streaming quality is a bit better (not sure about now), but it was also missing a lot of artists I listen to, unfortunately.

I really miss the early days of Pandora when it used to use the "components" of music to cross genres and didn't rely as heavily on how popular a song was and had just about all artists I could possibly want. Sure, I did a lot more skipping of songs back then, but now I just hear the same 50 or so songs over and over. I get really tired of it and don't have the time to make my own playlists, not to mention even if I make a list, I want it shuffled, and even that just plays the same songs over and over way more than "random" would.

I'd love if there was a service for finding new music that allows me to hear new songs and then choose to purchase them if I want to hear them again.

And even better if it gives me a list later to review if I want to purchase so when I listen in the car I don't have to touch 4 or more buttons to "like" a song. Never understood why Spotify, Tidal, etc., car apps always bury the like button and instead present a back button that doesn't work if you aren't in a predefined playlist anyway, and a shuffle button that I'm not going to want to turn off and on on the fly anyway. The like button should be immediately after the next and pause buttons in priority order. Such bad Ux design.

I also really miss Aimee Street that Amazon bought and killed. It was a cool way to get less popular music for cheap as well as getting the artist more exposure and more money the more often a track was purchased. Got so much stuff for pennies that I ended up really liking and buying a lot more from the artist.

Anyway, that's my rant about music apps for today.