Goodbye Spotify
Today I said goodbye to one of my favourite apps in the world. I started using it more than 10 years ago and at some point I've even paid for the service via monthly direct debit. When it came out, it was a much needed disruption and as a small startup, it enjoyed the backing of cutting edge tech geeks the world over. It grew so large over the years, becoming the number one music streaming system we have today. However today, I waved goodbye to it after over a decade of passionate curation of playlists. I deleted the app from my iPhone and MacBook. Goodbye Spotify.
So what happened?
Well, I went to log into it to listen to some music with my new headphones that I've been enjoying for more than a week now. I've been delving into my old stash of music because I thought I lost my Spotify password as mentioned in this post. However, when I contacted Spotify support in order to resolve the issue, it turned out they'd "disabled" my account due to "suspicious activity".
"Well alright then, thanks Spotify. Can you verify me so I can get my account back?"
Apparently not. All my playlists had been wiped. There was "no other information" on my account apart from songs I'd liked. I don't do that very often, so any "liked" song would have been from many years ago, which I don't remember. I tried guessing some, which were "incorrect", of course.
This is clearly a free account. Actually it's not free - it's ad supported, plus they harvest my data and listening habits amongst other things. So it's not free-free, but you get the picture.
I was advised in the end by the agent to create a new account, at which point I politely thanked him for his help and ended the conversation.
Hacked?
Maybe. It could be that my account had been taken over by someone else. I noticed today that many accounts, premium and otherwise, are being advertised for sale on Twitter. These accounts must come from somewhere. The agent told me that the "suspicious" activity was multiple password reset attempts. It could be that someone attempted a brute-force attack on my account.
I don't know why someone would want my free account, apart from the fact that it's location is the UK, so it has access to music that may not be available in other regions of the world. Why they'd not just use a VPN instead, I don't know.
Yes, of course I could create a new account, but what would be the point? I'd use it for another ten years, curate new playlists of my favourite songs again, all so that it could be wiped once again whenever Spotify's defences get breached?
I'm very careful with my things. I have only ever used Spotify on my iPhone and Mac, and have used Keychain to store passwords cryptographically, so there is no way someone got a hold of my password. Any breach would have been on Spotify's own end, which isn't rare. My account had been hacked before back when I was paying monthly for it. It was the reason I decided to move the the free option. That time, I could be verified via my debit card details.
Moral of the story?
Spotify is a private, centralised and very insecure data leaking service. Not only are they mining our data, just like Facebook, Instagram and Google services, they don't give a damn about data security.
Another moral of the story, which is recurring at this point is this. Not your keys, not your stuff. That playlist data was important to me, not the account itself. The decade's worth of curation. That's what was sad to lose.
Way forward?
Again, what we need is a decentralised version of Spotify. A service where I can own my own data which sits on a cryptographic blockchain so that it cannot be "wiped" or "disabled" at the whims of some guy sitting in a call centre in India, or anywhere else for that matter.
Thinking of it, this could be yet another Hive based project. I'm not saying the music itself has to be released on a decentralised system, just the curation system. A kind of blockchain playlist maker with the ability to point to other sources of music. I don't know what that would entail, but it's just an idea.
What I'd done in the past 10 years was decorate my dream home in rented property. The landlord has now decided that someone else tried to get into the house so he's trashed all my decor and renovated the property while I was on holiday. What I should have been doing is building my own house.
I'm going to miss Spotify, I'm not going to lie, but it's probably time I start weaning myself off these centralised services one by one anyway.
Peace & Love,
Adé
Have you looked into Emanate, being built on EOS? There's not much there yet but looks promising! https://emanate.live/
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Check out this too: Stream Card, also by Emanate https://www.streamcard.io/
Never heard of it.
There is @dsound, but not very sure if they have playlists or not
They don't. And they also don't have RSS. Two simple tools that would catapult them to fame and fortune :)
If they are open source this could be something to contribute. Sadly it is not :\
I suggested the RSS thing two years ago, and how they could have cornered the Podcasting market so easily, but alas! :)
A blockchain-based music curation system sounds like a pretty great idea.
It definitely does, and I think it will do pretty well.
It's precisely storing the sort of information you want to be persistent and under your own control that blockchains are best at.
To be honest the way things are going, it's only a matter of time before this is the norm.
What sort of data should there be?
Thats tough to swallow. But so true about 'Centralized' entities
Indeed. I've come to terms with it haha.
I'm not sure how a blockchain music service would work, but being able to tip bands for songs you like would be great. The infrastructure behind it is vast and complex, as well as negotiating all the rights.
A Hive collaboration with Bandcamp would be cool as I buy a lot of music there.
I have started using Spotify recently as the family all wanted it. I just tend to pick out albums by bands I am interested in, but do not already own. I have hundreds of albums I bought, but sometimes I want something new to me.
The negotiations are why it may never work. Even Apple had problems negotiating with record labels back when the iPod first came out.
I have heard of Bandcamp but only just visited it for the first time today (after seeing your comment). Reminds me of some of the indie music platforms that have since closed down.
Yes, it would be cool if Bandcamp could plug into Hive for a reward token implementation - maybe an SMT if that's still on the books.
themonetaryfew also suggested https://emanate.live/ which looks quite nice.
There are a lot of bands I like on Bandcamp and they seem to do a good deal for them. We have a lot of musicians on Hive so it would be cool to have a player app that could give you a stream of whatever you are into. Someone did something for the old Open Mic contest using the Youtube videos.
There were few...all of them fail in a way or other until now...
The decorating a rented home analogy is most appropriate, could apply to so many things!
I put up vintage shelves and everything man. I even installed hard wood flooring. Sigh.
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BEER.I have been contemplating developing something like this as we have a streaming service for independent musicians built in to our HIVE game Rising Star. It would be fairy easy to spin this off as a separate entity and add playlists.
However the biggest issue is that we would not be able to include any mainstream artists so it would always be quite niche.
Have you played Rising Star yet? Created by musicians and featuring an in game radio stream where you can submit your music!
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Musicians - submit your mp3s to be played on the in-game radio.
Interesting. I'd never heard of Rising Star. I'm not a musician, but I'll check it out thanks. Looks interesting.
It's not actually a game for musicians but we include Hive musicians in the game.
I developed Atom Collector Records before which does actually let you build playlists for popular streaming services like SoundCloud & BandCamp but it's not the same as having the music on your own service where you are not at the mercy of the big companies.
Actually that is kind of what I was thinking about - the ability to build playlists from other services. I don't think any decentralised service can match the likes of Apple or Spotify in actually attracting big name musicians.
Lets say I'd been building my playlists for the past decade on a decentralised system, with the data on a blockchain.. Even if Apple or Spotify remove my accounts, the metadata (Name, Artist, Album) etc, is independent of Apple or Spotify. I could then plug it to Amazon, say, and still have the playlist be valid.
I'm not sure what the user experience would be like though as Spotify for example only allow 30 second song previews with their embedded player so you would still need to use their app. If there was a way to import playlists then it would be achievable but I am not sure that's possible on any of these services but I could be wrong.