The Spotify Car Thing cost $100, but I can't use it anymore.

airportline@lemmy.ml to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 1234 points –

EDIT: The only reason why I still had it at this point was because I could use it with other apps. However, now that my Spotify Subscription is cancelled, it doesn't work with anything. It's mildly infuriating because today, I can't still use it with other apps like I was able to yesterday.

Please don't make the same mistake I made. No one should buy this.

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I've been pretty happy with YouTube music. I got legacied in due to Google Music shutting down and thought I would hate it, but I've had zero complaints. Plus, it comes with free YouTube Premium, so I haven't seen an ad in years.

I have so many complaints, Google Play music was fine. It did exactly what I wanted it to.

YouTube music is like an alien looked at that app, and tried to recreate it exclusively by smashing it's forehead against a keyboard until an app that started most of the time came out.

I would actually argue that Google Play Music was the best music streaming app that I've used. It was great being able to upload music from CDs of small local bands and have it right in there with the other streaming music.

Just today I had a hankering to listen to a specific song through my android auto, and instead of just being able to verbally ask the unit for that song, or even being able to search through the atrocity that is the YouTube Music interface on my head unit, I had to pull over, pull out my phone, search for the band, then click the uploads tab (because uploaded music does not show with the regular search results) and then click the song to get it to play.

Yes and the glorious "playing near you" feature of Play Music. That made the best recommendations for local shows, and I mean local, within a few miles, not just bands I'd listened to but always relevant and often small shows! That feature, I found several new bands I liked that way and good live music. YouTube has nothing like that. Also interface not as intuitive, more cluttered. My kids like it better because they do like having the videos available, but as I do not give a fuck about that but do like live music this is still not as good as the Play Music.

It's not optimal, and I would like for uploaded music to just show up in the regular search, but there is a top navigation bar where you can just switch between where to search (uploads being one of the options). Also YTM has the upside of showing YouTube uploads as well, I could always find obscure bonus EPs that only came with the physical CD because someone uploaded it, which is really handy

I'm still pissed ytm no longer allowed me to view playlist songs like it would in gpm

It's definitely not Google play music, but I treat it a bit like Pandora twenty years ago and it's ok for that.

YouTube music is like an alien looked at that app, and tried to recreate it exclusively by smashing it’s forehead against a keyboard until an app that started most of the time came out.

You think they that much care and attention into the app?

But seriously, yeah, I had pretty much the same experience -Google Play Music just worked beautifully, whereas YouTube Music was a steaming turd on Android. I gave up after six months and two phones and went to Deezer, never looked back

I would say the same myself. They don't do the worst job for music discovery either which is important to me. Amazon Music drove me nuts constantly recommending Cage the Elephant and other well-known (profitable) artists instead of obscure music similar to my tastes.

The algorithm on YT music is vastly superior to Spotify for new discoveries

Oh, you used to listen to Metallica back in the day?

YT music - Here, you'd probably like Shaka Ponk, Gin Wigmore and Royal Blood

Spotify - hAvE YoU hEarD of A bANd cAllEd KiSs?

Same. Honestly, I expected YTM to make things worse. That's usually how those kinda things go. But it actually did get better for me. I jumped to Google Play Music because it had better selection than Spotify (at least back then). YTM kept that, but fixed the issues I was having with the desktop browser player sometimes getting stuck. And the more recent support for lyrics that are synced to the music is great.

Their queueing system sucks. All I want to do is queue up some songs but instead YTM fills my queue with tons of crap I've never listened to before because that's how they make money. They put my manually queued songs at the END of the queue so I have to move them up 20+ spaces. There's literally no way to do it other than creating a custom playlist every time I listen to music, and they intentionally made that take more clicks/taps than queuing. I don't get how people are ok with the YTM app, it's terrible.

I hate YTM and I hate that I can't cancel it because they bundle it with YouTube premium, which my partner uses every day. Screw Google and they anti-consumer manipulative bs.

Yeah, you can use the play next button but it's not ideal

Their queueing system sucks. All I want to do is queue up some songs but instead YTM fills my queue with tons of crap I’ve never listened to before because that’s how they make money. They put my manually queued songs at the END of the queue so I have to move them up 20+ spaces. There’s literally no way to do it other than creating a custom playlist every time I listen to music, and they intentionally made that take more clicks/taps than queuing. I don’t get how people are ok with the YTM app, it’s terrible.

wrong.

  1. you can disable automatic queuing by hitting the 'auto-play' switch in UP NEXT
  2. you can queue songs by long-pressing and hitting 'play next' (which will put it in front of the queue) or 'add to queue' (which will put it in my the end

No, I'm not wrong. Option 1 does not exist on my phone. There is no switch.

And the "play next" feature also sucks. I don't want to "play next". I want to build a queue like literally any other music app and that isn't what "play next" does.

Edit: I don't see that "auto-play" switch on the web app in Safari either.

yes you are, it must be there unless you're using an obsolete release of the app. Below is a screenshot how it looks like

yes, you can build a queue by "adding to queue".

So I finally figured it out. this is how that toggle works:

  • it only appears when you manually search for a song or select a song from certain groups on the home page.
  • it does not appear to appear if you select a song from "listen again" or "quick picks" in which case the app forces you to listen to whatever is in their queue unless you manually clear the queue.

So no matter what it's still a bad experience.

oh yeah, you are right-ish. it doesn't show up if you launch a "radio", which innately is a automatic, end-less playlist of similar music. I do agree though that this should be more visible in the UI

No. I'm not wrong, and I don't appreciate you repeatedly telling me I am when you obviously have no clue what I'm looking at.

It isn't there. I'm on Android 13 with the latest version of the app. There is no "auto-play" toggle anywhere. I'd upload screenshots to prove it but lemmy is throwing exceptions. I've checked every tab and settings page as well.