I got YouTube premium (or at least doing a free 3 month) trial mainly to end the ads because I found myself concocting plans to murder the LiMu Emu Guy and his Emu when watching youtube videos 
I figure $10 / month is cheaper than hiring a defense team 
I havenāt used the music version too much, but they do have some rare songs for artists that are not on spotify and apple because they use the YouTube database.
Iāve been having pretty good experience with the youtube recommendations too! For regular entertainment videos, but for music listening/discovery as well.
Just a matter of hitting that ānot interestā mark enough times until the recommendation-robot gets to know you.
For me it seems to have phases. The algorithm will be very good at knowing what I would want for a few weeks or months and then it will have an absolutely terrible week or two as it tries to expand my taste.
i purchased myself a DAP without streaming options to remove myself completely from streaming services. i think its going to be a good way to interact with music more intentionally in general. way too many things are about sitting there and being given things to consume, its soul poison.
on the contrary, soundcloud stays one of the only organic music feeds out there. depending on who you follow, you get way better suggestions because theyre coming from people in the community. kind of restricted to specific genres unfortunately, but i enjoy those genres. yes, there are label reposts and those kind of coordinated moves but even then, its more organic than someone/some algorithm at spotify showing you a playlist. they just need to get their head right and bring back groups
it does suck that soundcloud made the user experience horrible for noncreators. the amount of ads can get insane, and i hate the idea of only paying for ad removal. i guess you can download tracks for offline play too but that doesnt feel worth it when so many songs on soundcloud are free downloads anyways. on the other end of that, i feel like i get a pretty decent amount out of my next pro subscription because im uploading really long radio shows to soundcloud. i really dont think that a simple listener should be paying any more than $1 a month to remove ads. also its incredibly stupid to lock some tracks behind a paywall. soundcloud really has the numbest minds at work but im actually glad theyre so incompetent because they cant seem to totally fuck up everything just yet.
It got pulled
Iāve been considering this. What did you buy? Modern ones are so expensive and have such a small amount of storage space unless you spend an incredible amount of money. I donāt need 1 million features or āaudiophileā grade playback - just lots of storage and Bluetooth whatās the with the ability to play WAV, OGG, v0, etc. Availability also seems to be a bit rough. I owned a COWON years ago and it was fantastic but it seems like you canāt buy those anymore in the US.
i just got the Hidizs AP80 Pro and a 512gb SD card, its a little pricey but i like the form factor. i saw that Hiby has a similar one under $100, but i dont like the look of that one as much.
im a device fiend these days so a piece of this is fueled by that
Perspective on why it was a loss to sidestep Spotifyās (better) curation-
My particular neurodivergence has me deep diving a lot and not quite āobsessingā but devoting a lot of my life energy to seeking out new things.
I can only juggle so much fixations in a day/week and since when i go i go hard, algorithms working in good faith can help take some of that load off.
If iām doing it manually, iām going to randomize myself and go off on independent tangents and literally do research on bands, movements, scenes, tech and gearā¦
Itās like āAIā, as tools and used in good faith these algorithms arenāt themselves shitty, itās the dark patterning or other business practices crafted around them that cause me to leave whatever ecosystem.
Iāve moved to TIDAL but thereās a bit more work and I havenāt seeded it with enough info on my patterns for it to extrapolate.
Do wish they didnāt halfass Youtube Music so bad when iām logged in. Iām rarely in the mood for live music as background or deep listening efforts.
And yeah, Youtube Platinum is a must for a decent experience if you watch any number of videos, but i just VPNād into a country where i can get it as a MUCH cheaper sub, wouldāve chosen India but required some local banking or tel# information.
Honestly thatās way less than I expected it to be. Any complaints?
its still in the mail, but ill report back. from other reviews i read on reddit it seems to have a good reputation
im a big fan. put on some tunes today and the quality difference im hearing in my car between my iphone 8+ going audio through usb and the hidizs ap80 pro going audio through aux is very noticeable and clean. im a guy that always has my music all the way up in the car and its super clean and crisp at top volume. it feels like my car sound system got an upgrade.
i havent used headphones yet as i mostly listen to tunes in the car but iād imagine its a similar experience
the file transfer process was super easy, but i had fairly organized metadata on my files so that probably helped when updating the library on the device
I saw a tweet or something that said something along the lines of āThe way to avoid an AI dystopia is to make the algorithm work for you.ā I thought that was an interesting take on the situation and might compel me to interact more with platforms I use. I just canāt in good faith contribute to strengthening a platform which does so poorly by the artists on whose work it depends, however good the algorithm is.
YT for me is ad free if I use it through a browser with adblock. Not ideal, I know, but Im not ready to pay yet.
It really is impossible for me to do with social media, with actual creative tools yeah I can harness āmagicā fills and modeled upscaling. Or I can ask plenty of childishly simple questions to the DaVinci model, can seed my own models with ingested data.
I wish you well with your personal journey, the statement as they intended it is pretty patronizing, as I understand the problem. The algorithm-driven dystopia we are actually concerned about would be forced into your life with no option to ātake controlā, you donāt have any feedback to become empowered by it. It will affect your life whether you visit a website or install an app or not.
You are not given a choice, entirely powerless to affect the decisions made about and for you. No consequences possible for, and certainly no responsibility from the business or governmental agency.
Modeled by a specific type of person using the similarly structured human decisions that came before, a certain class and quality of person will be unaffected or championed by this AI. Persons who donāt fit in by design will be forever externalities, and with even less possibility of human kindness/empathy getting in the way of crushing outliers.
Technologies are not neutral things that people can either put to āgoodā use or ābadā use. That is a myth. Technologies have inherent biases as well. Some technologies are naturally destructive while others are not. For example we are not making solar powered bombs, while we do make the nuclear kind. We donāt have to, but it is inherent in the technology itself. AI tools may also have inherent problems and it wonāt be up to users to just āmake the algorithm work for youā.
Yes, I understand xidnplss was using it more to refer to opt-in media and apps, the tweetās take was amusingly not considering the meat of complaints against how algorithms are used to avoid having to explain human bias and consequences, the near-infinite ignorance of their models creating externalities out of anyone they arenāt designed to fit.
So yes, the tweeter who has never been an externality to an algorithm in the past and isnāt likely to become so in the future (socially, economically, politically) will remain unbothered by how others are treated when ruled by algorithm.
Theyāre (tweeter, not xid) happy to become high-tier serfs to the āCalifornian Ideologyā where state function is replaced by somehow less responsible corporate structure.
I bet weāll have the futurologist set clamoring to āeliminate warā by putting our weapons systems in AI control and out of the hands of ābiasedā humans, eliminating possibilities like all the times failing systems have warned of imminent doom and society has been spared by single humans not retaliating.
Old, no time, no friends.