Spotify's new Showcase tool lets artists pay to promote their music in the Home feed | TechCrunch
Spotify's new Showcase tool lets artists pay to promote their music in the Home feed | TechCrunch
Spotify this week launched a new tool called Showcase that allows artists to promote their work directly in the streaming app's revamped Home feed
Another reason to never listen to anything recommended by spotify
deeply deeply twisted company
they think of music simply as 'content'. cynical, disgusting.
Yeah it’s unfair.
The music industry is famous for being run on love and passion, and not advertising manufactured hits.
Uh, music is content. Some music has more heart than others, but I wouldn't say that Target is disgusting because they sell cheap prints and wall art.
They also max out at 192kbps. Despicable.
They use 320 ogg for Premium’s Very High Quality, which is awesome, arguably audiophile quality and near indiscernable compared to FLAC (lossless). Ogg is much better / more compact than mp3 so you can expect much better quality at the same bitrate. It is 96 kbps ogg for Normal Quality, and 160 ogg for High Quality, both accessible in the Free tier. I am a musician of twenty years with good ears and sound equipment, years of experience listening to FLAC and converting to mp3 vs ogg at various bitrates to test, I think they’re doing a great job on this front.
Payola by any other name.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Muh-muh-muh myyyyy payola!
DROOL (x6)
This is payola in the modern age. If a record company gives enough money to Spotify, they'll promote the hell out of it and guarantee it's a hit. So the record labels with the most money are the only ones that can make serious money.
Does Spotify disclose that this is paid promotional content in the app?
It's shown right there in the thumbnail. The text reads "Sponsored recommendation". After some initial conditioning, it seems easy to ignore it after a while, just like the first few Google results or other ads seen across the web.
Tidal crew. We don't have podcasts either. It's nice.
Tidal is way nicer than Spotify. No bullshit promos for right-wing dipshit podcasts or shitty playlist payola schemes. It's like what Spotify originally claimed to be; an agnostic platform for streaming music.
I switched to Tidal over a year ago. I thought I would miss SOMETHING about Spotify after 1 year but there's nothing. The curated playlists are better, my recommended tracks are better, the UI is cleaner and easier to navigate. I actually learn about new genres and musicians that I otherwise wouldn't have been exposed to. It's the best.
Spotify enshitification any%
If it's anything like any other social media site that that let's you pay to promote, they will do it once...
And then half ass it a second time...
Then they just tell you they are, but you won't see any more people listening to it.
Do folks reminiscing of the good old days of physical media not remember how much label promotion media was packed with media? I have records where the sleeve is basically an order catalog for other artists on the label. I don't see Spotify promoting albums on a discover feed to really be that much different than the marketing old except adopted for a digital interface and streaming economic structure.
Meh I moved back to the old trick where I torrent download bulk music and store it on my phone. No internet no problem.
That sounds great in theory, but the thing I haven't been able to replace is seamless discovery.
I would have trouble finding new music without torrent sites. The trackers I use have a web of related artists at the bottom of the artist page.
The users add to the community through comments, uploads, suggestions, organizing, et cetera.
Using a tracker has helped me discover music that ain't even on Spotify. It's the tits!
I never stopped
I hate Spotify so much, but every other attempt I've made to move away failed.
I used tidal for a bit, but it seems to break frequently from any privacy tooling I would use. I know they give artist a better payout, but if you don't work with my privacy method, it's a non starter.
I just download or copy all the music/audio I want to have, and put that all on my phone. Then I listen to it anywhere, anytime.
500GB SDcard is <100$
Yeah, that's a great option, but then the artist who created the music gets definitely zero for their product. It's not like Spotify really pays fairly for the product, so it's become pretty similar. The money grabbing Spotify does sounds like it'll pump up business (making artists pay to promote) but I would be so hugely behind a streaming app that actually paid their artists fairly and promoted new unknown stuff, just because. The novelty alone!
How did you get for less than 100$?
I switched to Qobuz. Mainly for sound quality, but they also pay artists more than ten times as much and they have pretty neat long read articles and deep dives, which is a way more satisfying way to discover new stuff. It's pretty great.
Another reason to just use local player. Just buy physical albums and rip them, buy the actual digital files (from eg Bandcamp) or if you can't afford it right now, I'm sure you can find the files floating around the internet. Just make sure to buy the physical album when you can afford it.
Artists will receive far more support from buying their music this way rather than through Spotify which pays artists very little and the algorithm is against mid and small size creators.
You'll also get higher quality files. Spotify can't play CD quality music. Apple and Tidal make a massive deal about being able to play "high quality audio", but it's a lot less impressive when you find out they really just meant CD quality, which had been around for almost 30 years. A real 24 bit flac takes longer to download than to play. Real high quality audio will never be streamed.
I wouldn't have found like half the music I listen to now if I was only buying releases I already knew about.
Yes, stresming service music players are trash compared to local music players. I use musicolet as a player that have the cool feature of switching between playlist without losing tje position of the latest player songs
What local players do you use? I haven't found a good one on Windows so I just use the default (formerly Groove Music).
I like Audacious. The UI does not look modern but that's not something I care about. It has every feature I need, it's lightweight and does not have any telemetry.
I'm still using an older version of Winamp. It supports pretty much every audio format ever, visualizations, and has an excellent media library format. There is a new Winamp, but I haven't tried it.
I also use VLC, which supports fewer formats, but supports all the major ones out of the box and is open source and under active development.
Wtf im a paying costumer &@#)!!!
Oh no, the promotional feed shows promotional music?
Imagine paying for spotify to get rid of ads to end up having ads in another form
Oh, i remember the drake takeover from 5 years ago.
Never used Spotify. I have my own methods of finding new music and once I have something I want to listen to I usually just type "[artist] [album] full album" on YouTube and if it's not there (which is very rare) it's usually on Bandcamp or SoundCloud. I do pay artists though, I buy their music if I enjoy it and always make sure to see them if they are in town, I think it's healthier than a subscription service model.
I'll stick to InnerTune. Got rid of Spotify over a month ago, don't miss it at all.
Ah, yet another reason to never use their home page. YouTube music seems to be the only decent recommendation engine these days
Time to cancel Spotify then.
Man, people here really overreact to artists paying money to promote their stuff.
People get mad that Steam shows them games. It's like loading up Netflix, seeing the list of movies, and yelling "look at all of these ads"!
Streaming services was supposed to recommend stuffs based on listening or watching habbits not who pay the most
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Spotify this week launched a new tool called Showcase that allows artists to promote their work directly in the streaming app’s revamped Home feed introduced earlier this year.
The new feature was announced earlier this year at Spotify’s Stream On event in LA, alongside a range of other growth and discovery tools for artists, like the full-screen recommendations known as “Marquee” and a new “Discovery Mode” tool that allows artists and their teams to identify songs they want prioritized on the streaming service.
The company says that Showcase is opening up to artists and their teams with U.S.-based billing with 1,000 or more monthly streams in the last 28 days in at least one of the target markets.
By default, Spotify says it will show the campaign to those who are likely to stream the release — a broad audience.
“While playlist pitching is an opportunity for artists to find new audiences and Marquee helps them make a splash for their new releases, today there are more moments than ever where promotion can drive impact.
Showcase gives them the ability to do just that: now artists can amplify a new release, give their catalog an encore, turn viral buzz into long-term fandom, and more – right at the moments that matter most and on the most visited place on Spotify: Home,” she added.
The original article contains 487 words, the summary contains 223 words. Saved 54%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I never understood the love for Spotify. It's always felt so much more commercial to me. I've had a pandora acct for about 10 years now and I love it. Ad-free is awesome and I can just skip over the artist spotlights and sponsored stuff.
I'm so glad I stopped updating the app, I am lucky to still have the recently played at the top of my home page and then daily mixes right below it, I have to scroll to see the nonsense