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Lack of New Release Notification (Google Spreadsheets)
The last Google doc detailing what's new on Spotify was made available on November 24th 2009. Since then, 601,993 new tracks have been added. Without the Google spreadsheet (or equivalent), many community sites are crippled: Spotifyfm, Freshspotify, Spotifyrelease etc. There was also a thriving community of bloggers and tweeters who used new release notifications to help promote the artists.
Please prioritise a solution so that the Spotify community can continue to help promote the service and artists. Thanks!
Please prioritise a solution so that the Spotify community can continue to help promote the service and artists. Thanks!
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The company has acknowledged this problem.
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Inappropriate?Most likely the only way we're going to solve this is in client or via API. The main reason is that we're changing our system to allow much more frequent updates and get content in faster which would make manually posting unlikely.
Unfortunately these solutions are much more work to implement and not an immediate priority. However, I'll keep pushing to get it done until I'm blue in the face because I fully agree that our community needs this!1 Comment
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Can the search tag:new help? -
Inappropriate?I don't think that the addition of a "upload date" field to the tracks lookup API is very hard to implement and i have to disagree, Andres: a new solution should have a VERY HIGH priority to support all the communities build around Spotify's service.
I’m confident
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I agree that it should be high, however as much as I hate to admit it, not all business priorities line up with what I believe. :) But I miss this as much as everyone else and will be pushing it internally as much as I can.
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Inappropriate?I really liked the service offered by freshspotify so until I get it back I'm going to have to give you a sad face.
I’m missing out on music
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Inappropriate?In rely to comments on the Spotify blog, Andres clarified the situation as follows:
we’re not withholding from publishing all new releases on purpose. We’ve made technical changes that make it hard for us to pull the new data and we’re working on means to show them all again. Until we resolve that I thought it would be good at least to notify of the newest commercial releases we’re adding rather than not say anything at all when we add new music.
I agree that it's good to tell us about some of the new releases - for my own personal preference, please be sure to tell us about any new synthpop, electro, industrial, or other electronic albums. This way I can listen to the new songs and help generate some revenue for these bands. Thanks :p
I’m frustrated
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I'm happy to point out any new releases I can find. Do you know of any site where I could find release dates for synthpop, electro, etc releases?
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This really does highlight a fundamental problem that Spotify must address. If Andres, a Spotify employee, needs external sources and guesswork to locate newly added content in Spotify then something is very wrong.
It's hard to see how the rights holders and the artists themselves can be happy with this situation either. There has already been criticism that artists earn too little from individual plays on Spotify, but they won't earn anything if their music is sitting in Spotify but no one can find it.
Spotify's ambition to have all the worlds music might already be a reality, we and they just don't know! It seems no one knows what is or isn't in Spotify's library! -
hehe well that's the problem: "release date" to me now means "released on Spotify" !
I assume you cherry-pick artists to mention based on their popularity, so I guess the point here is that the long tail of releases is not getting represented anymore. Surely publication of new release info is to the benefit of your shareholders (and record labels), since the only way we can listen to new releases is if we know about them.
Sorry to go on moaning about this,but I just don't understand the low-priority of this issue. -
@digithed: Totally agreed. Even Spotify's search function seems to have some holes. Try for instance the search for "genre:jazz" and it delivers ONLY 107,000 tracks out of over 6,230,000 tracks. And the Spotify radios (genre and artist) need more tweaking too. Spotify is bad for discovering music actually, be it new or old one. :-(
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The genres are set/specified by the record labels, so not really Spotify's fault if jazz isn't labeled as-such. Agree on your last point though ;)
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Ah, the bad labels again, i forgot. ;-) But i think that it should be possible for Spotify to add additional metatags, shouldn't it? Spotify could use AMG's services for example to add additional genre tags... :-)
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Inappropriate?Found this site for information on new and upcomning metal releases:
http://www.metalstorm.ee/events/new_r...
http://www.metalstorm.ee/events/new_r...
Cheers!
I’m confident
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Inappropriate?I was hoping that a search for tag:new could help (like it is documented at the bottom of this page: http://www.spotify.com/en/about/featu...) however it seems patchy.
e.g. (using the api)
http://ws.spotify.com/search/1/album?... does include the new Eels album
but
http://ws.spotify.com/search/1/album?... returns no results.
How does tag:new work? Shouldn't tag:new be able to return new albums (as claimed on the advanced search syntax page)?
I'm not complaining about this, just trying to find a solution.
I’m hopeful
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Perhaps the scariest thing I've seen in ages. :)
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Inappropriate?Hi Andres, all,
AMG seems to be a very good source for release dates.
For example, for this week, there are three pages of releases, in various genres :
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=...
Would it be possible for you (I don't know the tools you're using) to easily search and generate URIs for the available releases ? It should be possible with the public APIs (and even probably easier with the private APIs you might use for an internal use).
This would be very helpful for the Spotify community. Right now, I manually search every release (for the genres I'm interested in) and this would probably save me (and many other users) a lot of time to find out what is available and what is not.
Already a big thank you for having changing the way I listen to music (even if I still need to be convinced that the independent labels will have a significant benefit from you).
Stephane
I’m excited
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I'm sure some bright spark can code a mashup that looks at that list and creates Spotify URIs... of course this workaround neglects all the back-catalogue content that gets added to Spotify every week: older albums, singles etc. from artists that perhaps don't have a current new release to promote.
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Afront, I totally agree with you. Around the half of my CD library is not available on Spotify and I have no choice but to search again and again and again, without any notification when an old album is finally available on Spotify.
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This reply was removed on 01/20/10.
see the change log -
Inappropriate?Another source : http://pitchfork.com/news/37446-the-p...
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Inappropriate?6,517 albums were added in Spotify for France today! What are they?
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Inappropriate?7-800.000 songs has been added since the last published spreadsheet! I know the spreadsheet was not optimal but sites like spotifyfm and others did wonders for me. When a new spreadsheet was published i used to check not only new releases for my own last.fm account but also for friends accounts on spotifyfm. I would then notify my friends of new music and in that way giving you free promotion (I have recriuted at least 3 new premium members in recent months). I Simply love Spotify and wouldn't dream of cancelling my premium membership, but i am sure the lack of a replacement for the spreadsheets are hurting your business. Please bring back the spreadsheets until you have a better way of notifying us of new releases.
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this solves the problem
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I concur, until you have a new solution for releasing new album information with frequent updates; less frequent catalog-updates WITH album info really is more favorable for (almost) everyone!
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Inappropriate?I'm wondering if anything legal is preventing you (Spotify) from also having a complete file of all tracks available for download? If it's bandwidth you could just provide it as a .torrent. It would help you (and us :) massively. Excuse my ignorance if this is a daft suggestion. -
Inappropriate?Please fix this via API, not in-client. In-client wouldn't allow third party tools to access the new release information and this would cripple hugely useful tools such as Last.fm mashups.
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Inappropriate?I blogged about this:
http://pansentient.com/2010/01/whats-...
Some of the comments may be useful when considering a fix.5 Comments Add a comment
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I put a comment on your blog that might be useful.
The people that were already using the spreadsheet with their own applications and websites should be able to use the Search API with the "tag:new" attribute which can return an XML file of all albums tagged as new. With a bit more work they should be able to parse the XML file instead of using the spreadsheet and come up with the same results as before. -
Unfortunately the tag:new isn't a perfect solution. tag:new will give you up to 1,000 random albums (selected when the new search index is built when we add music, not when you search) with a release date at
most one week in the past (i.e. a newly added album from 1972 won't
show up). So it's not an total accurate picture of what's new. Best might be for us to add the 'date added' field that i've been pushing for -
Oh, date added would be sweet, that would solve all this hassle (and it seems like a simple change...). Push for it Andres! Push!
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@Andres What's the thinking behind "tag:new"? What did the API developers intend it to be used for?
It doesn't really do anything useful in the client either. You don't get a list with the 1000 random albums that you talked about. You just get a summary in the top right hand corner on which you can only see and click on the first six albums returned. -
A "date added" would be MUCH more useful than this mysterious tag:new. If they could tag the new tracks with "new", why not tag them directly with the upload date instead?
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Inappropriate?i'd really like someone to try digitheds suggestion. seems like an easy enough plan in theory, although it would only find new content from the past 7 days and we'd lose out on the other 6 weeks worth of content, but it would be the best thing until Spotify sort it out.
I’m using torrents again, at least i know when they're added :)
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This comment was removed on 01/22/10.
see the change log -
Inappropriate?OK, thanks to digithed's suggestion and Andy Smith's (spotibot) coding skills, here's a webpage that might do in the meantime:
http://pansentient.com/new-on-spotify/
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Inappropriate?checked that out.. seems okay... i'm guessing the stuff that has'nt got any region settings means its on Spotify but is new release for monday? Or is it in limbo?
I’m looking for NEW Drum and Bass - what's been added in these last 7 weeks?
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Those are albums that can only be played in countries that do not legally have Spotify... yeah, go figure I don't understand it either!
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Inappropriate?So... this tag:new - what triggers a refresh? Is it updated whenever new content is added (doesn't seem like it) or periodically e.g. once a week? Thx.
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Inappropriate?One of the reasons why I moved from Napster, which had downgraded its 'new releases' section, was because Spotify was boasting this feature - a full regular update of music added to the service. This would seem to me to be a fundamental basic.... telling us what's there!!!! Otherwise, how do we find out????
Please sort this out, or I'm heading back to Nap. A reduced New Releases section is better than none.... -
Inappropriate?According to this item on Mashable, Daniel Ek said the following at the New Music Seminar in Los Angeles:
Spotify’s front page generates huge exposure for unknown artists. The “What’s New” section includes a mix of 50% established artists and 50% randomly generated new artists. In Europe, three million people see this page per day and get exposed to on average 40 new artists per day. Artists featured in “What’s New” get an immense amount of new traffic.
So even Mr. Ek seems to clearly see the value of What's New information. Perhaps this data is considered so valuable in fact that giving it away "for free" in google spreadsheets was deemed a missed revenue-generating opportunity? I'm sure labels would pay to have their new releases featured in the "What's new?" tab.
As for the mix of 36 featured new releases, it seems to me that the mix is more like 70% established artists and only 30% new artists.2 Comments Add a comment
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A little conspiratorial? :)
Releasing all the data stills gives us the same value, probably even more as it enlarges the base of music users are checking out. As for labels paying - I think you overestimate what they're willing to pay for. :) -
Ahh well maybe I was just putting two and two together and getting 51 ;)
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Inappropriate?I was wondering why i got no alert mail from freshspotify, i have the answer now...
Since i'm a premium user, spotify is my #1 source of music. Freshspotify improve significantly my experience of your product, and i guess i'm not the only guy in this situation.
But you're right, this "new release list" feature deserves a real API, so do it well, but do it quick !
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?
I'll keep pushing to get it done until I'm blue in the face
Any progress? We're coming up to one million new tracks added since the last notification of What's New.2 Comments Add a comment
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There's a lack of progress in many areas since long time now: no metadata corrections/updates, no AMG updates, client still beta 0.3.x (only MINOR bugfixes in last release besides related artists feature), no scrobbling for mobile apps, and so on. --> Spotify client, mobile apps, metadata need updates. New content and deals is only one part of the story about satisfied customers!
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There's a lack of progress in many areas since long time now: no metadata corrections/updates, no AMG updates, client still beta 0.3.x (only MINOR bugfixes in last release besides related artists feature), no scrobbling for mobile apps, and so on. --> Spotify client, mobile apps, metadata need updates. New content and deals is only one part of the story about satisfied customers!
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Inappropriate?An absolute must as far as solutions go in my opinion.
I have an interest here as both a user who can't keep in-touch with the latest additions at present... but also as Admin for Spotify-Forum.com... I'd like to be able to display a cut of the latest additions... an API would be great and would ensure new additions don't go unnoticed on Spotify. -
Inappropriate?Andreas commented 28 days ago
There's a lack of progress in many areas since long time now..
This is so true, I am sure there is lots going on behind the scenes but when you look at the client, it really needs some work. I actually think this sounds a bit like griping, because Spotify is a brilliant service and is well on the way to being my No. 1 source for listening to music - old and new - but... having just shelled out for a years premium service (so now I really have an investment!!) I would hate to think something else is going to come along and I might find myself having to move :-/
I’m left in the dark too much!!
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Inappropriate?OK, solution time. Spotify dev Rasmus came up with this the other day:
http://hunch.se/spotify/new-releases/
I assumed it was a hack, but the latest Spotify blog post implies this is the official solution.
To help you guys get your third-party apps back on track, I've rejigged it to output the list as JSON. I've posted the link and a small explanation here:
http://andysmith.co.uk/blog/2010/03/1...
Hope that helps. Get in touch with me if there are any problems/amends.
~A
I’m hopeful that this will help!
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This comment was removed on 03/11/10.
see the change log
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