this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2025
670 points (97.9% liked)
Microblog Memes
9935 readers
2736 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
Rules:
- Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
- Be nice.
- No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
- Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.
Related communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
"tracking you"
It's their service, of course they know what you listened to.
They also collect a bunch of telemetry. There are ways to disable that of course
Wait? What? Is there a guide?
Look up spotx, that's the patch I use. There are others, and on mobile you'd need a modded apk which is annoying as spotify are currently in a war against those
That's sort of missing the point - there are alternatives for finding and listening to music that don't involve a "service". Choosing those is always better than having a service not only track you, but deciding what you listen to. For some reason people seem to be okay with Spotify despite the mountains of red flags.
Deciding what you listen to is a feature, you can just choose a playlist and go about your day.
And I have discovered some amazing shit letting Spotify 'decide what I listen to'
I use YouTube music, but same here.
The majority of the cool music I've found has been through carefully curating a playlist, and then going to Playlist Radio.
"always better"? Really?
Maybe you can use that brain of yours to imagine why people use and like the service rather than assuming they must have the exact same preferences as you but just be idiots
Yep, you're right - some folks evidently just love stepping up to a trough of music slop without thinking about it.
You tried. Not very hard though.
What do you mean "music slop"? I've found tons of great music through Spotify recommendations.
And they also push a bunch of literal AI-created music and allow others to do the same. So literally AI-slop taking away the few meager fractions of a cent that would go to actual musicians.
I mean, maybe that's just your algorithm? All the AI music I've seen has been goofy novelty stuff like Obscure Vinyl, which I sought out intentionally and doesn't affect my other listening. They haven't pushed anything I didn't look for.
This is a well-documented and much written about story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy_over_fake_artists_on_Spotify
Huh, TIL
And what reason do you have to believe that the person you're chastising listens to that AI slop?
Never said they did. But they're supporting a platform that has been literally caught doing it.
What do you recommend for finding new music?
Usually I go with recommendations from friends and also listening to a lot of stuff I don't know if I'll like or not. NPR Tiny Desk concerts are great to figure out if you vibe with an artist. Also a huge fan of the Sofar Sounds channel on YouTube - found a bunch of artists I wouldn't have found otherwise. Also like to find interviews with artists I already like and find out what influenced them or what they're listening to now. I don't collect much vinyl, but love going to record shops and seeing what I can find.
Ah, I was hoping for something a little less time consuming, but that may have been too optimistic. I've listened to NPR and their music is good, but it's pretty much always the sort of pop and pop-adjacent stuff that you can easily find without much effort. Same deal with recommendations from friends.
The most promising non-Spotify recommendation system I've found so far is listenbrainz. It's still not giving any good recommendations though.
Look, if you're an enthusiast, that sounds great. Me, I don't get recommendations from friends - even if a friend recommends something, I don't usually bother listening anymore because in my personal case, the only ones who mention the artists they discover, have such a wildly different taste in music I just get nothing out of it.
The NPR Tiny Desk concerts sound cool, actually there's a similar concept in a local public radio in my country called "mini live" where an artist or group of artists present one or two songs (sometimes an original and a cover). But that's one episode a week and who knows if I'm even listening to the radio at that time. I don't really seek out radio programmes, I just listen to radio while driving.
I just find it easier to... Put on a song I know I like on YouTube Music, and let it autoplay similar shit. If I run into shit I dislike, I skip it and click dislike. If I find something new I like, I check out the name of the song, click like and if it's something I really like, then next time I might just start from that song, or listen to other songs from the same artist.
Currently the song I most often start off with is NF - Story which usually gives me, in some order, some of his other great tracks, and many other great hip-hop artists. Put it this way, the algorithm already knows not to give me Drake or Ye, but also knows I like Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, etc. And occasionally sprinkles in lesser known artists that tend to be good too. That's how I discovered NF in fact. Not that he's super unknown, but compared to Em and Kendrick, he might as well be nameless lol
I find I'm just so drained from all that's going on in my life, I don't have the energy to put into a discovery process like yours. I'm literally minmaxing finding music I like for as little effort as possible lol
Also just to add, I just do this on desktop with adblock enabled. On my phone I listen to podcasts and in the car it's public broadcast radio (so no ads)
"That's sort of missing the point..."
Boy now that's the single best encapsulation of Lemmy comments I think I've ever seen.
We have indeed successfully rebuilt the old reddit spirit that so many of us missed!
It's sort of difficult to provide good "recommendations" without user data.
I guess you could look at recent releases, and let users pick what genre they prefer. But with users play history, playlists, etc available, it becomes a lot easier to create a good recommendation engine
It does what I want nothing more nothing less. And they even managed to tasteful integrate AI.
this is irony, right?
Nar man. I selfjosted jellyfin for media cos streaming is fucked but Spotify gives me everything I want (well except for ye's new song). Look I like the privacy of self hosted an decentralised but I an willing to surrender some degree of privacy if it grants me greater liberty and convenience. I was considering writing my own recommendation algorithm and making it Activpub compatible but their just isn't the necessary data available.
It would probably be harder for them to anonymize your account.