Why Did Spotify Do That?

I used to ride my bike outside as often as I could. Now I have turned into a warm-weather cyclist. The weather has turned cooler so I prefer to ride on my trainer inside instead of out in the cold even though I have the clothing for it. Unfortunately riding inside is insanely boring and so I pass the time listening to music. Normally I listen to songs on Spotify but I am thinking about finding a new streaming service because of problems that recently surfaced.

I have painstakingly gone through and created a list of my 150 or so favorite songs to listen to while exercising. Recently I started hearing the same song played over and over. At one point the same song played 3 times in a row. That prompted me to go through my playlist and remove duplicates of the same song. Once I confirmed only one version of the song exists in my playlist, things went well for awhile.

Since Friday I have noticed another problem with my Spotify playlist. It has started playing "recommended" songs. I don't know what changed and can only assume Spotify did this. The problem is I don't like a lot of the songs that streaming music services recommend based on the songs on my list. While I like most Blink-182 songs, I don't like them all and have purposely left them off my playlist for a reason. I also don't like a lot of songs by All American Rejects but keep getting them recommended because they are similar to Blink-182.

Today during my indoor workout I got angry hearing "recommended" songs instead of the ones I chose for my playlist. I almost stopped listening to music altogether. Instead I just skipped the songs not on the list. The downside to that is I get to listen to more ads as I use the free service and don't pay for Premium Spotify. Basically the ad-to-song ratio went from 1:1 to an abysmal 4:1 which means I had to listen to 4 ads for every song. Secretly I think Spotify is trying to get me to start paying a monthly fee.

After my workout I immediately headed to my desktop computer and did a bit of research. I went into my settings and turned off the "Autoplay similar content" setting. My hope is that Spotify will now only play songs explicitly added to my workout playlist. If not, I will move on and give Amazon Music a try. After all I pay for Amazon Prime so I don't have to sign up for another streaming service. 

Pandora vs. Spotify

My kids introduced me to Pandora streaming music several years ago and I have to say that I like the service. Recently another service has been gaining in popularity called Spotify and so I thought I would give it a shot. Once again it was my kids that told me I was behind the times and should move to Spotify. When I asked them why, they gave a number of reasons and so I thought I would check it out for myself.

My primary usage for streaming music is during my daily workout session. It makes getting on an indoor bicycle much easier when there is something upbeat to listen to. I never listen to music unless it is on a stationary bike inside a building. That means I always have a WiFi connection to the Internet. Riding outdoors with earphones on is a good way to get hit by a car or another cyclist. My preferred platform is my Android phone.

A second reason for listening to streaming music isn't really for music but for comedy. This is generally done as I travel to and from the airport using public transportation. It also means there isn't any WiFi and I use my phone's LTE Internet connection. For this, I will alternate between my iPhone and my Android phone. It just depends on which one is more easily reachable.

Finally, when I am working from home I like to listen to music and so I will have some sort of streaming music during mundane tasks that don't require much thought like doing expense reports. This is generally run on my Linux computer as I have a really nice sound system connected to it.

Given this background, here are my simple and initial observations:

I started listening to Pandora first and so I have the most experience with it. My memory of it initially is that it is very easy to set up. I created one station called "A Little Bit of Everything" where I entered a number of artists that I like and Pandora plays music from those artists as well as similar bands. After a while I found that my taste in music is so varied that I often end up listening to a lot of stuff I don't really like. Instead of constantly rating songs with the "thumbs down" button, I created a new station for just one artist: Angels and Airwaves. Pandora streams me music from Blink 182, Boxcar Racer, +44 as well as Angels and Airwaves along with other similar bands like Simple Plan. It is great music to listen to while working out.

When my kids had me look into Spotify, I set up an account on my Linux box and was immediately turned off as I was told to download the Spotify computer program. With Pandora I can just use my browser and don't have to install anything. Both streaming music applications require apps for smartphones and provide them for both Android and iOS. I assume they are also both available for Windows Mobile devices but don't really care. I don't have one of those, nor will I ever.

The first platform I loaded Spotify onto was my Android phone and it was a painless process. I typed in "Angels and Airwaves" into the artist section and saw a listing for a number of songs from that band and only that band. I assume that if I wanted to add Blink 182, I could do so but have not played around with the app enough to figure out how to do it. I did notice that there are a lot more Angels and Airwaves songs than I have heard on Pandora and so I believe there is a lot more music to choose from with Spotify, it just takes more effort to set things up the way you want them.

My son claims that Spotify has higher quality music than Pandora. At first I thought that meant more music song choices. Then my son explained that Spotify uses a higher sampling rate for their music and so the same song on Spotify will sound better than on Pandora. I'm not sure about that as they both sound pretty good to me. Perhaps I need a better set of earphones to tell the difference.

Currently my Spotify experience is rather rudimentary and so I still need to spend more time setting up the service. My initial impression is that if I take the time, it will be a lot better than Pandora, I just haven't done so yet. Until then it is easier to continue listening to Pandora and occasionally switch to Spotify when I want a more concentrated "Angels and Airwaves" experience.