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Slightly different but spotify’s algorithmic recommendations have been great. I’ve found some really amazing stuff through “discover weekly”, “new releases”, an

Slightly different but spotify’s algorithmic recommendations have been great. I’ve found some really amazing stuff through “discover weekly”, “new releases”, and “related artists”. Same with Bandcamp. (Maybe the problem is easier for music?) For content, I also find that user curated lists can be far better than automated systems. They give me an upfront sense of the curator’s tastes and define niches that algorithms would never recognize

rhizome 8y ago
Are the categories you mention sorted by confidence? That is, is any part of what you like about them oriented around not having to scroll for the stuff you like the best?
- mattbierner 8y ago
  "Discovery weekly" and "new releases" are not sorted as far as I know, but related artists may be. A key factor at play here may be that there is no "best", the variety of the recommendations feels like a positive for music whereas it could be a negative for a larger commitment like novel or for a consumer product. Even Spotify's objectively terrible recommendations (such as once recommending an album called "Music of Lorestan 1" for the synthwave artist "Saffari") turned out to be nice discoveries
gfo 8y ago
I agree with you here. Certainly Spotify has a different scenario - whether you pay or not, there's an extraordinary amount of content you can consume, and you do that with no added cost per consumption. Not to mention, they probably have several hundred times the amount of data to use for recommendations since a user changes song around every three minutes. Multiply that by the number of users and average number of songs someone listens to in a session... that's going to be a big number. Also, music choice is mostly preferential. Some preference is used when buying products but most of the time I feel like there's a need which influences the product purchase and this factors more heavily into the decision. Netflix I would say is a good counter-example of a content provider which is based more on preference but again, the content takes longer to consume so there's likely less data than Spotify. Not to mention, it seems they've been giving more recommendation preference to their originals lately.

rhizome 8y ago

Are the categories you mention sorted by confidence? That is, is any part of what you like about them oriented around not having to scroll for the stuff you like the best?

mattbierner 8y ago
"Discovery weekly" and "new releases" are not sorted as far as I know, but related artists may be. A key factor at play here may be that there is no "best", the variety of the recommendations feels like a positive for music whereas it could be a negative for a larger commitment like novel or for a consumer product. Even Spotify's objectively terrible recommendations (such as once recommending an album called "Music of Lorestan 1" for the synthwave artist "Saffari") turned out to be nice discoveries

gfo 8y ago

I agree with you here. Certainly Spotify has a different scenario - whether you pay or not, there's an extraordinary amount of content you can consume, and you do that with no added cost per consumption. Not to mention, they probably have several hundred times the amount of data to use for recommendations since a user changes song around every three minutes. Multiply that by the number of users and average number of songs someone listens to in a session... that's going to be a big number. Also, music choice is mostly preferential. Some preference is used when buying products but most of the time I feel like there's a need which influences the product purchase and this factors more heavily into the decision. Netflix I would say is a good counter-example of a content provider which is based more on preference but again, the content takes longer to consume so there's likely less data than Spotify. Not to mention, it seems they've been giving more recommendation preference to their originals lately.