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I keep bumping into this problem: a company that has a large media library (video, music, books) offers a client that lacks the basic search, filtering, and sor

by nihonde 10y ago

I keep bumping into this problem: a company that has a large media library (video, music, books) offers a client that lacks the basic search, filtering, and sorting functions that any half-decent programmer would consider Step One of a client app. I don't want clever discovery and recommendation algorithms (which never work, by the way); I want faceted search, filtering, and sorting. Amazon's storefront is just about the only AAA online service that gets this more or less right. I just don't understand what is going on at Apple and Netflix.

vintermann 10y ago
I don't want clever discovery and recommendation algorithms (which never work, by the way) I take it you haven't tried discover weekly, then? To be fair, it needs a fair bit of listening history to start making recommendations. But it is ridiculously good. Since what you will like isn't a deterministic function of your listening history, it has to take some chances, you have to accept that it won't always hit. When it does, though, oh boy.
- nihonde 10y ago
  I don't use Spotify. I'll take your word for it, though. I grew up with radio, and I used to like to listen to the college stations where there was no format and the selections came from the personal taste of another person. On Apple Music, the curated playlists are OK in that respect. Also, since I live in Japan, the "Top 100" lists change really quickly and can include some interesting and surprising discoveries. My gripe isn't so much with the efficacy of recommendation engines, anyway. I'm complaining about the lack of useful basic search/sort/filtering. I would say about 50% of the searches that I run on Apple Music end with a blank artist placeholder page, or re-route me into the iTunes Store, or pull up totally irrelevant results, or otherwise end in confusion because there app, the store, the library, and the streaming service are all whipped up into a tangle that no one can seriously be expected to navigate.

by nihonde 10y ago

vintermann 10y ago

I don't want clever discovery and recommendation algorithms (which never work, by the way) I take it you haven't tried discover weekly, then? To be fair, it needs a fair bit of listening history to start making recommendations. But it is ridiculously good. Since what you will like isn't a deterministic function of your listening history, it has to take some chances, you have to accept that it won't always hit. When it does, though, oh boy.

nihonde 10y ago
I don't use Spotify. I'll take your word for it, though. I grew up with radio, and I used to like to listen to the college stations where there was no format and the selections came from the personal taste of another person. On Apple Music, the curated playlists are OK in that respect. Also, since I live in Japan, the "Top 100" lists change really quickly and can include some interesting and surprising discoveries. My gripe isn't so much with the efficacy of recommendation engines, anyway. I'm complaining about the lack of useful basic search/sort/filtering. I would say about 50% of the searches that I run on Apple Music end with a blank artist placeholder page, or re-route me into the iTunes Store, or pull up totally irrelevant results, or otherwise end in confusion because there app, the store, the library, and the streaming service are all whipped up into a tangle that no one can seriously be expected to navigate.