Spotify Envy

Around this time of year, people are always buzzing about their Spotify Wrapped playlists. They post screenshots of what songs are in them and discuss their year in music. I have to admit, as an Apple Music user, I get a bit jealous. The cool designs that go along with the Spotify Wrapped playlists are really well done and make you feel like this year-end ritual is something special.

Chaim Gartenberg writes about Spotify's yearly celebration of your personal year in music for the Verge.

2021 is no exception, with Spotify offering what feels like its most lavish recaps yet. My wife (who is a Spotify user) spent the morning showing off her bespoke playlist to me, which included (among other things) specially curated songs for specific moods, rankings of where she placed among global Doja Cat listeners, a color-changing “audio aura,” and an interactive quiz. All of it is designed to be shared and shown off on other social media platforms.

Gartenberg's tweet shows how left out he feels when he sees everyone else showing off their playlists and stats on social media.

He goes into how easy it would be for Apple to do massive marketing for their music service by copying Spotify.

Spotify in the Terminal

Another reason I've been a bit green with envy for Spotify users: you can run Spotify in the terminal.

Spotify around here, today…

Thanks to Spotify TUI.

The bare text rendering looks fantastic with the Rigel theme.

Apple Music

I still love Apple Music, particularly for the way I can incorporate music that is not in the catalog from my own library. With some fairly esoteric music in my collection, this feature is invaluable. I can't help but look over the hedge at my neighbor's house, though. Especially since my son, who has Apple Music with our family subscription, still chooses to use the free version of Spotify with ads so he can see what his friends are listening to and display his "now playing" in a Discord chat. When someone prefers the free tier of one service over the premium tier of another, that's saying something.