Category Archives: Music

Yet another follow up on the case of reporting wrong song names to Spotify is useless

SpotifyThis is the third (and final?) part of the “Reporting wrong sone names to Spotify is useless” trilogy. In the first part told how it was quite hard to find how to report wrong song names and in the second part I told how the reporting really is a waste of time as nothing really happens after the report. It’s been almost 12 months since the part two so maybe it is time to check has anything progressed.

No. The song name I reported to test the hypothesis is still wrong so why should anybody waste their time reporting wrong song names?

But some time ago I had a little Twitter conversation with some Spotify customer service person. According to him/her the feedback is important (don’t they always say that?). But:

“It’s worth noting that we make music available in the way it’s presented to us. If you believe a track name is incorrect, then we’d recommend contacting the distributor, so they can make a change”

Why should I, as a Spotify customer, need to contact some music distributor? Why should I even know about music distributors, should I know how music business works to be able to improve the quality of Spotify service? I am a Spotify customer, not a customer of gazillion different music distributors.

The proof: Reporting wrong song names to Spotify is a waste of time

SpotifyThree months ago I wrote about how reporting wrong song names to Spotify is a waste of time. I think it is time to check back on what has happened to the song name I reported.

Yep. Nothing. It has not been fixed, as can be seen on the albums Spotify page. The wrong song name of the track 7, “Coraxi” is still there. It should be “Coraxo”.

Q.E.D.

So I will no longer waste my time to report for example “Demons of the Fall” by Opeth (close but not quite right) and several others I have found.

Reporting wrong song names to Spotify is useless

Sometimes you notice a broken song or album name in Spotify. Have you ever thought that you may want to report it to Spotify? Of course you thought. But it is pointless. Spotify does not care about wrong song or album names.

I have reported wrong song names several times to Spotify and what has happened? Nothing. The wrong song names persist. Wrong song names are not just an annoyance, they can be really distracting. You want to find a particular song? Well, impossible if Spotify has messed up its name.

Well, I’m not just complaining about song names. I am telling you how to report wrong song names and I use this as a kind of “you’ll see, reporting those to Spotify is pointless” post which I will return to later to check that “haah, so I reported those song names in February and they are still not fixed.” Or maybe they will because instead of just reporting them, this time I also wrote this blog. (You know, when I wrote a blog post about Spotify, for example about not having some artists in Spotify, things usually start to happen) ;-D

So how do you report wrong song names? It is quite well hidden in Spotify web-pages, but here is how to get there. At the bottom of the front page there is About link and that page has link to contact form. And on that page is link “I want to report a broken song or wrong song information.”

As a case study on “Reporting wrong song names to Spotify is useless”, I’ll report a typo in Impaled Nazarene song Coraxo form their album Ugra Karma. Sometimes I found myself wanting to hear this jolly tune, but search for “Coraxo” returned only the live version of the song and some other songs with similar names. Searching for the album Ugra Karma gave the album as the result but I was surprised to find that the song was there as it should be, but mistyped as “Coraxi”.

So here it goes, report on wrong song name.

Coraxi is just wrong

Coraxi is just wrong

Shortly after sending that, I got an email confirmation, “We just wanted to let you know that we’re looking into your query and we will get back to you as soon as possible.”

Let’s just say that I’m not holding my breath 😉

Thank you Rammstein and Spotify

spotify_logoTwo weeks ago I wrote how bands that are not on Spotify just don’t exist. I mentioned two bands that I have really been missing, AC/DC and Rammstein. They haven’t been on Spotify, so I haven’t been listening to their music. And they haven’t been getting any money from me.

And today, it felt like a miracle, like somebody had been reading my complaints. Rammstein has landed on Spotify!

Tack så mycket Spotify! Danke Schön Rammstein!

So AC/DC. It is now your move.

Please…

 

Dear artist, if you are not on Spotify, you don’t exist

spotify_logoLately there has been some discussion about Spotify and how much artists get money from Spotify plays. Is it even worth being on Spotify if you are either a successful artist or a so-far-never-heard-but-desperately-wannabe-artist?

Well, to put it shortly.

Dear artist, if you are not on Spotify, you just don’t exist.

And why is that?

Spotify is the perfect “tool” for finding new music. Back in the 1900s there was this thing called radio that was quite useful for finding new artists and music. Well, finding new artists who were already popular enough to get some airtime on radio. But it was totally ruined by playlists and “hit music only”-attitude. What if you are into some more obscure music genre, for example death metal or avant-garde rock? Sorry, there was no radio station for you. Radio was quite useful at the time, but I really don’t know what happened to radio stations after internet came to everybody 😉

Also, back in 1900s, there were all these music TV channels. One of the most popular channels was actually once upon a time called MTV for Music Television. But a long time ago it turned to reality TV channel where ancient rock stars are collecting dog poo (Ozzy, I love you) or pregnant teenagers got their fifteen minutes of fame. But even if there still is some TV channel showing music videos, who would be watching them? On short attention span internet age? Who would wait for one week for the special show that shows your kind of music when there is Youtube? And the death metal-avant-garde rock fans favourite music would not be shown on TV anyway. So also TV is quite obsolete for younger generation for finding interesting new music.

But now, we are in the 2010s. You know, even school kids have smart phones with video capabilities. And of course these streaming music services, like Spotify. It is just so convenient to be able to check out some music you’ve never heard and find something new. Some artists that I have found through Spotify are for example Mastodon, Opeth and oh.. The Who. Yes, the CSI band. Those young angry men. How could I have ever found those bands, if I had not been able to check out their music the way I wanted to, when I wanted to? Sometimes even by accident when clicking at the wrong link.

Yes, I have a cd collection. I have even bought cds from bands that I found on Spotify. But my cd collection is basically collecting dust. Spotify is everywhere I go. And how could you, as an artist, become a little part of my cd-collection if I have never heard about you. Basically, if you are not on Spotify, you don’t exist. I will never find out about you.There are some bands that I would love to listen to, but I won’t. I have your cd:s but yes, they are covered in dust. Yes, AC/DC and Rammstein. You are not on Spotify. You don’t exist anymore. Metallica and Led Zeppelin, thank you for making the wise decision of joining Spotify. I missed you so, it is great that you are back in my life.

So if you are an artist and you think that you gain something by NOT being on Spotify, I think you should think again. As far as I am considered, you don’t exist. I never hear your music, I will never come to see your show, you don’t get a penny of my money.

By the way, who is Taylor Swift?

Why does Spotify break my playlists?

Diary of a madman

Sometimes when listening to my favorite Spotify playlists, some song just stops playing. You wonder what is going on, you album name of the songand everything looks ok. The album where the song originally appears look correct, the song is there on the album. You click on the song on the album page but the song is not played.

But then you search for the album and notice that there is now yet another remastered rerelease and the old release has been just somehow disabled on Spotify. So you have to replace the old song on the playlist with the new one from the latest rerelease.

Now it happened with Diary of a madman album by Ozzy Osbourne. My playlist just stopped working with the Diary of a madman songs. Annoying.

Sometimes in these situations you get the “chain” icon next to the song name on the playlist. In this case the “substitute” for the song is available and automatically handled by Spotify so the playlist works ok (well, in some cases the substitute version of the song is not exactly what you had wanted but that is not so critical). But this does not seem to always work.

Why? Spotify please. Why do you break my playlists?

A modest proposal for the Formula 1 noise problem

This year there has been two hot topics Formula 1. The noses and the noises. The nose-topic has of course been about the ugly noses. And it does not mean that Alain Prost has made a comeback, it is the noses of the 2014 cars that are considered ugly. Well, I guess I could drop that word “considered” from that sentence, because they really are ugly.

The other issue has been the noise, or the lack of noise. And this is what I am really writing about. The noise of Formula 1 cars has been really big issue this year. Because there is no noise. The cars just hum along on the track as the new spec engines just… THEY ARE SO DAMN QUIET! Some people are even complaining that the F1 fans are being ripped off because they don’t get permanent ear damage at the F1 races anymore.

This all sounds (pun intended) a bit silly. But having experienced the brutal noise of a F1 race (only once, back in 2004)… It was really something special, you just sort of felt the power of the cars. That sound is not really captured on TV. I claim that my little pocket camera with its simple video recording capability somehow captured the raw sounds of F1 better than the TV broadcasts. So I sort of understand the disappointment caused by the new cars.

So here is my modest proposal for getting the noise back to F1. Lets take the loudest heavy metal band in the world, Manowar, and offer them the job of being the “Formula 1 house band”. They would play at every F1 race, during every practice session, qualifying session and of course during the race. PA would broadcast the thunderous sound of heavy metal as the F1 cars hum quietly on the track.

Nobody would anymore complain that there is not enough noise. Problem solved.

Photo by Sergio Alcántara is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Manowar – The Formula 1 house band?

Garageband 6 still available after updating to the latest version

Photo by Gordon Irving is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0In December I updated my MacBook Air to OS X Mavericks and at the same time also the iLife applications to their newest versions. I’ve been only using GarageBand with BFD Eco as audio unit when playing drums and for a while I had no time for drums. One day I wanted to play drums but I just couldn’t get BFD Eco working with the new GarageBand version 10. BFD Eco as audio unit inside GarageBand 10 could not find its licence manager. GarageBand offered a nice dialog for lowering some security settings but I just couldn’t get it all to work. It seems that the new sandboxed GarageBand has caused problems for other audio unit users too.

Then I noticed that there was Garageband 6.0.5 folder in the Applications folder. The upgrade to GarageBand 10 had been so nice that it did not overwrite the earlier version of GarageBand! Fantastic! I could easily revert to the old version. Well, it is not that old as the version number jumped from 6 to 10, so it is really the previous released version of GarageBand 😉 But with GarageBand 6, BFD Eco worked right away and I was more familiar with the user interface. In GarageBand 10 some important features seemed to be very well hidden.

Well, I also lost some features, like support for Logic remote control iPad application, but fortunately I had not even tried it yet, so I don’t know what I am missing 😀