Sex, Now That I Have Your Attention 2: Spotify, Reviewed
Can You Spot a Fly? Oh, Wait, This Is Spotify
HELLO, Rough Reader. It’s me again, Pierce Aubergine, your humble guide into the world of streaming music in 2020. You know me from my articles about YouTube Music and Apple Music. Now I’m here with the unenviable task of saying snarking things about Spotify. What do you even say about the Jolly Green Giant of music streaming? Spotify is the popular kid in high school that has exclusive podcasts? Spotify is so Spotifucking good, it couldn’t warrant a full cutdown. One of the main giants in the industry, Spotify has a lot to offer listeners, and I’m definitely a fan.
The Good
The library is open. Its library is huge. They have a lot of great podcasts. Their radio algorithm is solid, and they have some fantastic playlists. They’ve even got an exclusive deal with Joe Rogan for his podcast. I doubt anybody who’d read the smut I write would listen to the masc anti-mask stuff he says, but if including his name in this gets me a few more hits in a Google search, I’ll take it. Thanks, bruh. Where was I? Oh yeah.
Gadgets galore! Of the services I’ve used, I have found Spotify to be the most socially connected and well-connected to my gadgets — Sonos speakers, Roku, Apple TV, Google Nest Mini speakers, and Bluetooth headphones. They don’t discriminate — they’ll take everyone’s money! It’s easy to start group listening sessions with other people in the same space by scanning barcodes, which makes it easy to have more democratic listening sessions vs. one person hogging a playlist. But we’re all living in the age of COVID-19 and social distancing, so nobody’s listening to music in the same physical space.
Social Spoti-butterfly. Do you like a social experience? This is the one for you. Sharing playlists with others, collaborating on playlists with others, finding playlists other people use, it’s all there. It’s easy to share the music you’re listening to, either as a feed, or specific images to social networks. You can find friends from social network and contacts, too. If you’re ashamed of your listening (say, you’re a teen and you don’t want parents to see, or you haven’t dumped your snobby judgmental friends for decent humans yet), then you can even have a private session. I blast everything I listen to with no shame. And because of that, my friends list gets shorter every day!
Other features. The sound quality is good enough, and overall, it’s probably my favorite. The radio algorithms create some good stations, and the autoplay feature is fantastic. It’s easy to look up playlists and follow them. The depth of their catalog is immense, and it’s really easy to share playlists. When listening on a smart TV or another gadget, the screen will show lyrics as well as including some back story about the songs or artists, something that I really enjoy. Importantly, looking up with keywords, it’s easy to find playlists for just about… well… anything.
The Bad
No personal locker. I listen to some esoteric shit, and it’d be nice to have access to those albums in addition to their vast library. Some of the deeper cuts of jazz and electronic music aren’t available. You can listen to local files on desktop, but not on mobile.
Weird syncing issues. I’ve run into a few syncing issues. In a group session, the queue kept coming back from the dead and every time we tried to play another album, the queue would resurrect. Only happened once. I had a lot of trouble getting the Apple TV app to log me in.
Only Lara Croft Can Find Barcodes. To start group listening sessions or find your contacts, you can scan a barcode, like a QR code. Cool, right? It’s embedded in like 6 menus and 25 options, with a secret thumbnail view. But you’d better scan that barcode quickly before the ghost of Myspace throws poison darts at you.
Curated Stations Are So-So, Especially Classical. Spotify doesn’t have the best curation for classical music, and it’s so-so for jazz. Their hip hop, blues, R&B, rock & metal are pretty solid. The classical stations I’ve found have mostly been piano, but lean toward the same songs and aren’t great for discovery. But can be quite calming.
To Conclude… The Money Shot
OK, there’s no money shot. Spotify is a really solid choice, so I’m just gonna leave it at — it’s probably the best one for most users to use across a variety of devices, variety of tastes, and platforms. So maybe… it makes you basic to be a fan?
