[ExDilbert]

I love the "surprise" factor of radio, of being delighted to hear something great that someone else curated. I never quite get that from Spotify or shuffle in my personal library

I don't get any surprises from the radio around here. It's all computer generated playlists and rather narrow ones at that. Throw in 30% or so Cancon and Canadian radio is downright dismal. Spotify does tend to be a bit repetitious with their generated playlists. They leave out a lot of less popular and obscure music but it can be searched and put into a personal playlist. Even SiriusXM which should and claims to have a lot of variety in music tends to be very repetitious.

LiveXLive tends to be a bit better because the proportion of favourite, popular and related music can be adjusted on their generated playlists. Even better is the price. Sign up for the free service (with ads) and wait for the US$20/year offer. For that price you only get curated "stations" and generated playlists but there are lots of them. Those can be modified by selecting favourite and banned songs and it will create a "favourites radio" based on your music choices and mix preferences.

 

[NeilN]

Uhh yeah, nobody's missing out on buying a home because they're paying for a Spotify subscription.

Math and facts aren't the OP's strong suits. I believe he lives in the GTA so let's look at Toronto home prices. https://www.torontohomes-for-sale.com/Toronto-average-real-estate-property-prices.html#Price trend graph

The first graph shows inflation adjusted prices. You'll see a massive increase from 1997 onwards (well before the current first-home buying generation was in the market), even after accounting for inflation.

I could not find an equivalent income chart for the GTA but here's one for Ontario: https://www.fao-on.org/en/Blog/Publications/income-report-2019#Family income in Ontario

So while the average home price has more than doubled since 1997, again, accounting for inflation, the median household after-tax income has gone up by 13%, adjusted for inflation. As ExDilbert and I have pointed out, music is now much cheaper to access than it was 20-30 years ago. It's kind of hard to see how $180/year (family plan) makes a dent in the extra $500,000 an average home costs.

 

[majortom]

I am with the OP, I too would never bother streaming music or tv over the internet.
money is not a factor.

 

[NeilN]

Which is fine, I likely would never bother participating in some of your leisure activities. But I wouldn't write a public rant claiming some moral high ground and spouting off dubious assertions about cost and technology, either.

 

[Bpke]

Math and facts aren't the OP's strong suits. I believe he lives in the GTA so let's look at Toronto home prices. https://www.torontohomes-for-sale.com/Toronto-average-real-estate-property-prices.html#Price trend graph

The first graph shows inflation adjusted prices. You'll see a massive increase from 1997 onwards (well before the current first-home buying generation was in the market), even after accounting for inflation.

I could not find an equivalent income chart for the GTA but here's one for Ontario: https://www.fao-on.org/en/Blog/Publications/income-report-2019#Family income in Ontario

So while the average home price has more than doubled since 1997, again, accounting for inflation, the median household after-tax income has gone up by 13%, adjusted for inflation. As ExDilbert and I have pointed out, music is now much cheaper to access than it was 20-30 years ago. It's kind of hard to see how $180/year (family plan) makes a dent in the extra $500,000 an average home costs.

Yup, music is so much more accessible now than it ever was. It's awesome to be able to seek out new artists - especially independent ones - on Spotify vs. listen to the same 20 songs on the radio over and over.

 

[Mr.6]

Spotify is cheap compared to buying CDs or even individual songs separately. A CD and song collection that would compare to the selection on Spotify would cost 100s of thousands of dollars. A 1000 disc CD collection at 1990's prices cost about $10,000 in 1990's dollars. At $10/mo for Spotify, it will take 90 years to reach $10,000. It's no wonder everyone in the music industry is crying the blues. They've lost the power to become instant millionaires by selling a few hit singles on price fixed discs.

How many new songs do you listen to in a month?

 

[ExDilbert]

That depends but I often hear several new songs in a day on a music streaming service or in TV shows and movies. (Shazam is great for identifying unknown songs.) When I have Spotify, I'll sometimes listen to one or more entire new albums a day that I've never heard before. I'll also listen to an artist's entire catalog on occasion. From the late 1980s through to the early 2000s I listened to FM radio and purchased one or two CDs a week at an average price of about $20 each. Spotify and similar services at $10/mo are much cheaper. My currently subscribed service, LiveXLive (formerly Slacker), is about $2/month. The main drawback is that I cannot play songs or entire albums on demand. If another service like Spotify has a special offer at $5/mo or less, I'll take them up on it for as long as the special price lasts. I've been continuously subscribing to music streaming services for about 15 years. CD purchases have dwindled to almost nothing in recent years and prices for ones I did purchase were usually under $10. I've seen several music services cease operation in that time.

 

[Bpke]

The freedom to be able to listen to as many new songs per month as you want I think is huge.

 

[NeilN]

It's not just new songs, but "new to you" songs you want to hear. With Spotify, the six Daily Mixes are a mix of songs you've repeatedly listened to and songs in the same genre that you haven't heard before (or have rarely played). And the personalized weekly Release Radar always has at least one "x has a new single/album out? Cool!" moment for me.

 

[17671]

Spotify is cheap compared to buying CDs or even individual songs separately. A CD and song collection that would compare to the selection on Spotify would cost 100s of thousands of dollars. A 1000 disc CD collection at 1990's prices cost about $10,000 in 1990's dollars. At $10/mo for Spotify, it will take 90 years to reach $10,000. It's no wonder everyone in the music industry is crying the blues. They've lost the power to become instant millionaires by selling a few hit singles on price fixed discs.

Spotify on its own may be a miniscule expense at $10 per month, but it is part of a bigger trend of the newer generation wanting experiences and living for the moment. It's not spotify alone which will break the bank, and if you could not comprehend that in my earlier post then I dunno why you cant see the problem, maybe your part of the problem, but for the last 25 years I spent very little on music, i only buy the music albums I wish to listen to, Radio is FREE, there is also tons of FREE online radio broadcasts, with great music, theres fta music, Theres a whole society out there who listens to gREAT MUSIC, some with entertaining music talk shows too, who do NOT need to pay a monthly subscription for music. A lot of people are so quick to grasp new technologies and think oh man this is the best, and are quick to shun other technologies and platforms then when they realize oh wait a minute, spotify is great but its missing all these things that traditional radio broadcasts have, radio is not just music, its waay more than that, but spotify is just music, so for those who think apples vs apples, its not, and they are the ones who do not think deep enough and are quick to dismiss something, so go figure. people will never want to admit their wrong too thats why people are so defensive about new technologies and quick to dismiss everything else because it does not suit them

 

[NeilN]

Serious question: do you enjoy flaunting your ignorance on here? From "Netflix only shows Netflix created movies" to "Spotify is just music". I mean...

And I doubt Spotify users "shun" other technologies any more than CD-listeners shunned radio. It's just a different, very convenient, very cheap, delivery system.

 

[ExDilbert]

Using Spotify to listen to music is a completely different experience that listening to radio. I agree that there are some great radio stations out there but they are the exception and not easy to find. Most radio stations are run for profit and answer to owners, shareholders and advertisers, not listeners. A lot of the good ones are directly listener supported or run at a loss as part of a larger operation. Like broadcast TV and newspapers, broadcast radio has been going downhill for many years.

 

[JamesK]

Like broadcast TV and newspapers, broadcast radio has been going downhill for many years.

That started back in the late '90s, but I think it had more to do with the content and business decisions.

 

[ExDilbert]

I think concentration of ownership by large corporations has done more to lower quality, variety and innovation in the broadcast radio industry. That accelerated in the 1990s and since due to economic downturns, the loss of local advertising and competition from internet based services. Radio is now marketed like hamburgers. Every city has the same bland, indistinguishable mix of corporate outlets with little room for any meaningful competition. Gone are the days when most stations had a distinctive formula of on air personalities and music.

 

[JamesK]

^^^^
A lot of companies don't seem to realize that if you take away what the people want, the people will stop coming. Bean counters and MBAs kill creativity.

 

[Tridus]

There's entire genres of music that I love now that I didn't even know existed back when I listened to radio instead of streaming, as radio doesn't play them. Especially in a smaller market, you get the pop station, the other pop station, the classic station, the country station, and... that's it. Plus you get piles of ads and endless yammering about pointless crap.

At this point the only radio I listen to at all is CBC, because it's got decent local news (of which the primary other source is the Irving owned newspaper). For music, radio is a wasteland compared to what's available online.

 

[ExDilbert]

It wasn't always that way. Until the mid 1970s FM was mostly ad free and relegated to things like jazz, classical and album oriented rock (AOR,) which emerged in 1969. A lot of it was free form with DJs choosing the playlist. Some AOR stations had an "anything goes" mentality with occasional on air studio parties and musical guests. AOR became very popular, something that didn't go unnoticed by station owners. When FM radios hit critical mass, broadcasters started switching to top 40 pop, country and rock formats which had previously been on AM. It took a few years for AOR to disappear as the stations morphed into more formally regulated AOR formats with advertising and eventually changed formats to other top 40 genres. By the time Classic Rock was introduced, advertising free AOR was pretty much history. A new station would occasionally launch in AOR format to build an audience and obtain advertisers. As soon as that was accomplished, it would switch to top 40.

The CRTC had a large role in suppressing AOR, rock music and other alternate formats on FM radio in Canada. Their opinion was that FM should be reserved for formats they thought suitable for Canadians such as classical, jazz and religious broadcasts. When they were allowed to broadcast popular music, they were barred from broadcasting it on Sunday. The FM station here would carry church services Sunday morning and classical music the rest of the day. On other days it played top 40. Another CRTC opinion was that only stations in larger cities should be allowed to play alternate formats like AOR since other Canadians were not sophisticated enough to handle it. (Their opinion, not mine.) On one occasion, the CRTC licensed a second top 40 country station in Toronto and ignored applications that would have served minority groups. So much for diversity.

The CRTC has also used regulations like Cancon requirements to reduce diversity on Canadian radio. At one time the level was set at 5% for FM. That was gradually increased over the years. It currently rests at about 30% for some FM stations but I've seen figures as high as 50%. The big beneficiaries of this were popular Canadian groups who raked in huge sums from being played for the last 45 years on top 40 stations. It tended to forced smaller, less popular musical genres off the Canadian airwaves as they often have few Canadian musicians.

The local college station became quite popular when they switched to AOR. The for profit local stations, all top 40, became upset because they were losing listeners and filed a complaint with the CRTC. The college station was told to change formats and threatened with the loss of its licensed. Their call letters should have been changed to CRAP after that.