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. 

Disney+ Following Netflix

This morning my oldest daughter set all of the grandkids down to let them watch "Home Alone." Being lazy, I just logged into my Disney+ account and started the movie there. The kids enjoyed "Home Alone 2" last night and so it only seemed fitting to watch the first installment of the series today. I then headed out with my two sons for an entertaining morning activity. I didn't get a mile down the road before Disney+ decided to stop the movie and ask for a subscription verification. My daughter just found the movie on my Amazon Prime account and automatically charged me $4 so they could continue the movie. I am a little miffed as I do own a copy of the movie and now have to pay to watch it again. I'm not mad at my daughter though as it is only $4.

The reason Disney+ kicked my daughter off is because they are following Netflix and cracking down on multi-home account usage. I actually don't have my own Disney+ account and have been piggybacking on my son's. At the time I started doing that, Disney said it was perfectly fine for up to 8 accounts regardless of household. Now it seems they realize that is why the streaming video service continues to lose money.

If you are sharing a Disney+ account with someone else and all of a sudden discover you no longer have access, now you know why. I'm not sure if I will sign up for my own account as my wife and I don't watch a lot of television on our own. I will have to look at how often my grandkids are here and see if it warrants getting an account. Until then, I'll utilize the other 2 video streaming services I get for free: Amazon Prime and Netflix, thanks to my T-Mobile account.

Daytime Television Blows

Last night I got a nasty case of the stomach flu. I woke up every 90 minutes to empty my stomach contents. Fortunately towards the end of the night, my stomach would cramp up, waking me, but I didn't need to go pray to the porcelain god. I think my body recognized I didn't have anything else to expel. I ended up staying in bed until 8am, which is late considering I usually get up at 6am. When I finally did wake up, I didn't feel like doing anything and so I turned on the television to see what I could find on broadcast TV. From the title of this post you can tell I came away disappointed.

When all of the streaming services became ubiquitous, I cancelled my cable subscription and increased my Internet speed. Now I really only use broadcast television to watch the nightly news every evening. Being too lazy to look for something to watch online, I cycled through the normal TV channels. Some of them had local news shows and others had national morning news shows. None of them interested me. I looked at a few of the public broadcasting networks and again came away disappointed. Ultimately after 30 minutes I turned off the TV and headed to my office to read e-mail.

I did the bare minimum e-mail for work and attended an hour-long meeting that got shortened to 15 minutes when I explained I spent the night with the stomach flu. Then I headed to my TV room to watch what I wanted in the comfort of my soft-padded-leather couches. While I could watch shows coming over the airwaves, I also had all of my streaming services including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and even YouTube. I entertained myself while eating a very soft and bland breakfast without the hassle of channel surfing. After about an hour and seeing that all the food I ate stayed down, I ate some grapes and yogurt as my energy is low and my stomach empty.

I have not really watched daytime-broadcast TV in about a decade and I have to say I haven't missed much. It is filled with the same programming I used to hate when I stayed home from school because of illness. Fortunately we have many more entertainment options and are not stuck watching VHS video tapes with their lousy 320x240-pixel resolution. Technology really does make being sick easier to deal with.

Bad Christmas Movies

There does not seem to be an end to bad Christmas movies on all of the various streaming services. In an effort to break away from the traditional Christmas movies, I have tried expanding what I am watching this Season. Unfortunately you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a good movie. For the record, these are the Holiday movies worth watching and where you can find them:

• It's a Wonderful Life on Amazon Prime
• The Santa Clause on Disney+
• The Santa Clause 2 on Disney+
• Home Alone on Disney+
• Home Alone 2 on Disney+
• White Christmas on NetFlix
• A Christmas Story on several different streaming services including Amazon Prime
• I'll be Home for Christmas on Disney+
• Miracle on 34th Street (both versions are good) on Disney+
• A Christmas Carol on on Amazon Prime
  

I would publish a list of movies to avoid but it is a long one. Please let me know in the comments below if you have found a good movie I should add to my list. Also, there are a lot of movies that take place during Christmas but that doesn't make them Christmas movies. Die Hard is not a Christmas movie!