Feb 9, 2011

Mr and Mrs Spotify plug my oozing holes

I usually cough up a monthly Oozy Bleeps playlist around about now, but January is to decent electronic music what a trip to Disneyworld is to Charlie Brooker.

And the meagre crumbs that were released in January appear not to be on Spotify. At least, not the ones I want. As Glasgow collective Lucky Me tweeted a few days ago, "Spotify will never pay folks like us because they refuse editorial: they are only sales responsive."

It's a strange animal, Spotify. The Cynical Musician is right when he asks if Spotify is not a money maker, what is it good for.

Putting revenue aside (I'll let proper musicians discuss that), as a music lover, it's about as useful as a chocolate tea cosy. My recent plays on Spotify include Resoe, SBTRKT and Flying Lotus. What is the front page recommending to me at the moment? Bonnie Tyler, Mozart and Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise.

It's almost as if Mr and Mrs Spotify in their little green Spotify cottage with their little green Spotify umbrellas took a look at Amazon's cookie-monster recommendations system and thought, "no, that won't do, that won't do at all. What we want is the equivalent of walking into Starbucks to buy a coffee and being sold wellington boots instead."

Spotify is good for playlist recommendation, hence my oozing and my bleeping, but when whole record labels are missing from the service because Spotify can't put food on their table - can't even give them a table - then what's the point?

Anyway, the Oozy Bleeps will bleep again next month. I will soldier on with Spotify because, I hope, some of you find it useful. The playlist is still up there, and it will be updated throughout the month.

4 comments:

Robert Rowlands said...

Whatever its failings, I think Spotify is a tremendous resource and I think mixes such as the ones you've been putting up offer a great communal good. As a music library, it is better with older material, and older, fairly mainstream material at that. But for a casual listener wishing to check out the back catalogue of someone like James Brown or the collected works of Bach, it's a very useful starting point. In other words, keep banging out those mixes!

Fat Roland said...

It is good. Although I want it ALL and I want it NOW. I'm basically the techno Freddie Mercury.

steve collins said...

it's especially good for michael jackson playlists ;)

Fat Roland said...

I can't think for a moment how you would have got that impression, Steve.

*moonwalks, leaving a big long trainer streak across the dining room floor*