Spotify Rant - reactions encouraged

[spiritualized]

I've almost had it with Spotify, having been in the process of adding my favorite albums and tracks for the last two days to Google Play, but before I cancel my sub with the Swedish company, I thought I'd throw my thoughts to the lion's den.

Spotify pros :
Solely used by this forum
Discoveries of the week is indeed great, but not a paid-for feature...

Spotify cons :
Handling of "personal" tracks (ones which are not in the Catalog) is diabolical. You can't add local tracks to your library on Spotify.
The syncing of these local tracks (portability of your library to other devices) is simply incomprehensible
Playlist max at 10,000 but no way to put all your tracks in the library.

So basically, if you have in excess of 10,000 tracks, and a fair share of these are not on the catalog, there is no way of putting all of these in the same place. I like to put all these in random order and listen as I go along. It is simply impossible with Spotify.

Google Play allows you to upload 50000 songs on the cloud, but once they're there, you can access them from any device and include them in your library.
Content is very similar to Spotify, with only a handful of albums I couldn't find on google play, but could on Spotify.

This far outweighs the weekly discovery playlist in my opinion.

Anyone cares to share their opinion ? I'm quite sure I am not the only one with a large library of favorites. Has anyone done the switch, or do you remain loyal to Spotify ?

[Jirin]

If the main use case you're interested in is putting all the songs you've ever liked in one playlist and playing them on random, sounds like Spotify does not offer the service you want.

I generally use Spotify to listen to specific albums, and it has maybe 96% of the albums I ever want to listen to on it, and for 3% of that remaining 4% I probably already own the physical disc. I have one playlist with only 'all time great' songs I play on random but that's only like 650 songs so far for me. I'd be awesome if I could get tracks the physical albums I own on the same playlist as Spotify. But that's not as important to me as the fact that I can try out almost any album I want and decide if I like it before putting money down on it.

Don't know much about Google Play. If I can use it to try out 96% of the albums in existence before paying anything and also upload songs from physical albums, something to consider. Because it is kind of annoying that my 'Great singles' playlist can't include my favorite Pere Ubu, Jay Z or Joanna Newsom tracks.

[BleuPanda]

I'm in the same boat as Jirin. The few songs I regularly listen to that aren't on spotify I usually download and connect through my computer, which solves any problem I personally have.

[Listyguy]

Much like the others have said, I mainly use spotify for listening to new music and music that I don't own yet. So if I'm going to listen to an album that I already I own, I use iTunes.

Handling of "personal" tracks (ones which are not in the Catalog) is diabolical. You can't add local tracks to your library on Spotify.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting what you mean by this, because Spotify does have a "local files" section and you can add tracks from your local files to your Spotify playlists. Just to make sure I wasn't crazy, I added some King Crimson to one of my playlists and it was able to shuffle between their tracks and my local tracks.

[prosecutorgodot]

I use Amazon Music, which does allow mixing of local and online songs. Dunno how many total songs it allows in a single playlist.
I would recommend somehow getting digital files of your desired music, and then using whatever music player is on your computer. It is the easiest way to shuffle all your songs.

[Jirin]

Cherry picking singles from hundreds of physical CDs is a bit of a tedious process. I did that once in college, don't feel like repeating.

[spiritualized]

Thanks for your feedback to all,
So far, the Google Play experience is positive. I listen to a LOT of music (long commute, an office where I can play my music, understanding family members) and when I am not discovering new music, I like to listen to the albums I have rated highly.

Hence this "library" is about 13000 songs long, with around 3000 which are not directly offered by Spotify or Google Play. It was necessary for me to be able to have a one stop shop, a playlist that could play both my local files everywhere and which was not limited to 10000.

I'd be awesome if I could get tracks the physical albums I own on the same playlist as Spotify. But that's not as important to me as the fact that I can try out almost any album I want and decide if I like it before putting money down on it.

Don't know much about Google Play. If I can use it to try out 96% of the albums in existence before paying anything and also upload songs from physical albums, something to consider. Because it is kind of annoying that my 'Great singles' playlist can't include my favorite Pere Ubu, Jay Z or Joanna Newsom tracks.

The Google Play catalog is virtually the same as the Spotify one. However, this is only for paying subscriptions.Not sure how GP handles free listening, if you're not a subscriber.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting what you mean by this, because Spotify does have a "local files" section and you can add tracks from your local files to your Spotify playlists. Just to make sure I wasn't crazy, I added some King Crimson to one of my playlists and it was able to shuffle between their tracks and my local tracks.

Yes, to your Spotify playlist. However, if you want to listen to these files on your phone, they have to be uploaded by Spotify whilst your two devices are on the same wifi network even if the files are on your phone. GP is far simpler, you upload the tracks to the cloud (50,000 !) and u can listen to them on all your devices.
The 10,000 tracks limit is also a problem if you have more songs. The "library" however, does not accept local files...which is insane.

Downside to all of this is of course the fact that this forum is Spotify-only, which means listening to any playlist posted here either on the free Spotify if one can handle the adverts...

[Jirin]

I can see that being a problem if you don't have good streaming quality and need your entire library to be locally downloaded. I just stream, I only keep a few hundred downloaded for plane flights and such.

I'm curious what you're listening to it that a third are not on Spotify. Out of my top 500 albums probably ~470 are on Spotify. And if I really want to listen to the other 30 I just bring the CD.

[Jirin]

One annoying thing about Spotify is that once in a while, you see big singles missing from albums lists. They show back up later but it's easy to miss if you don't know they should be there. For example, Blue Monday is currently not listed as part of Power, Corruption and Lies,

[StevieFan13]

One annoying thing about Spotify is that once in a while, you see big singles missing from albums lists. They show back up later but it's easy to miss if you don't know they should be there. For example, Blue Monday is currently not listed as part of Power, Corruption and Lies,

For a long time "Nothing Compares 2 U" wasn't a part of I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, but now that all the Prince stuff's there it came back. And I know "Blue Monday" is also on Spotify - a solution could be making a playlist with the songs in the order they appear on the album, and you can put "Blue Monday" (for example) where it'd normally be.

[Pierre]

One annoying thing about Spotify is that once in a while, you see big singles missing from albums lists. They show back up later but it's easy to miss if you don't know they should be there. For example, Blue Monday is currently not listed as part of Power, Corruption and Lies,

For a long time "Nothing Compares 2 U" wasn't a part of I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, but now that all the Prince stuff's there it came back. And I know "Blue Monday" is also on Spotify - a solution could be making a playlist with the songs in the order they appear on the album, and you can put "Blue Monday" (for example) where it'd normally be.

Actually, it's because the version of Power, Corruption & Lies on Spotify is the standard international edition. The version with "Blue Monday" (and "The Beach") is the U.S. only version. Sometimes, Spotify uploads several editions of the same album (for reasons that should be obvious but are actually a bit blurry, as sometimes these several versions happen to be exactly the same) to account for these regional differences. Obviously, that's not presently the case.