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Which music service's discovery features actually work? For me the only one that worked was Google Play Music. The rest have been total and utter crap at discov

Which music service's discovery features actually work? For me the only one that worked was Google Play Music. The rest have been total and utter crap at discovery.

erfgh 6y ago
Youtube.
bigyikes 6y ago
I have been reasonably happy with Spotify’s discovery. It hasn’t been impressive as YouTube recommendations, but it’s still the primary way I find new music. Their generated “Discovery Weekly” playlist is a favorite of mine.
tristanMatthias 6y ago
I love Spotify’s. I discover new stuff every week because of it in a very broad range of musical categories
chrisweekly 6y ago
Spotify is outstanding in this regard. "Go to radio" from any given track or album; works every time. For even more passive discovery, their "discover weekly" and "release radar" do a good job of surfacing things too.
- rapnie 6y ago
  "discover weekly" was okay, but it is now completely broken to me. It suggests 80-90% of songs I already downloaded, and the remainder are always the same. Also discover weekly stops after, what, 2-3hrs of listening. Then the list is done and apparently Spotify thinks there's no more to discover. Luckily indeed there's the radio feature.
- greggman3 6y ago
  Sorry but Spotify is absolutely horrible in this regard. At least for me. Every group I like pick "Radio" and with in 2 to 4 songs it's playing completely unrelated stuff. The rest has all been crap too. "discover weekly" has never once suggested a single thing I'm interested in ever.
52-6F-62 6y ago
> Which music service's discovery features actually work My best experience has been talking with people or listening to artist interviews on influences.
crispyambulance 6y ago
> Which music service's discovery features actually work? It depends on what you mean by "work". Discovery capabilities have certainly gotten vastly better. 10+ years ago, the only decent one was the now (effectively) defunct Last.fm. These days, they're all pretty good. Spotify, pandora, google music, and now youtube music will do a good job of giving you recommendations based strictly on what you've been cue-ing up. But the recommendations from these services are the equivalent of going into a record store and getting advice from a dim-witted and disinterested employee. You'll get all the obvious stuff, maybe things you forgot about, and if you happen to like popular stuff the recommendations will work OK. But you won't get challenging, provocative recommendations that expand your taste. You'll get cloying recommendations that try to cater to your taste like it was a static attribute. Oh, yeah, and there's "the surveillance capitalism thing" which happens to be the centerpiece of all these services. Is that a problem? Yes. The best "discovery algorithm" is still HUMAN BEINGS. If your cool friends aren't available, then the next best thing is a mag like pitchfork (https://pitchfork.com/ https://pitchfork.com/), xlr8r (https://xlr8r.com/ https://xlr8r.com/) or in-depth reviews like Anthony Fantano's channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/theneedledrop https://www.youtube.com/user/theneedledrop).
- greggman3 6y ago
  > These days, they're all pretty good Your experience is vastly different than mine. Youtube music seems to be recommending nothing but what's popular. Justin Bieber is being recommending to me. I've never listed to him or anything remotely related. No good recommendations on any of the others. Maybe you have a different definition of "good" Good to me means "sounds similar and in the same genre as what I'm currently listening to". It does not mean "people who liked this song also liked that song"
  - crispyambulance 6y ago
    > It does not mean "people who liked this song also liked that song" Actually, yes, it does (and many other things too), but to be fair "good" is a highly subjective judgment which is going to be different for everyone. I don't think, at this point in time, we have recommendation engines that can do much more than fling out recommendations based on an unknown convolution of your listening history combined with music meta-data combined with social network data and a mix of paid stuff courtesy of your surveillance capitalism purveyor. I know it's possible to capture some characteristics from the music track itself, like bpm (perhaps usable for EDM DJ's?). The "holy grail" would be to have a system that can truly assess the nature of a piece of music based on audio and use it make "interesting" and non-obvious recommendations. We are very far from doing that in software, but humans are still very good at it.
m-p-3 6y ago
I personally enjoy Spotify discovery a lot, the "Discover Weekly" and "Release Radar" playlists made me discover some bands I would have otherwise missed.
riedel 6y ago
I think it depends in personal taste. Spotify and amazon give me mostly boring mainstream ... . The only discovery algorithm i keep enjoying is pandora. due to semi effective geoblocking in my vountry, I, however , hesitate to go for the ad-free subscription.
davidwparker 6y ago
I use Spotify and have great luck there. Playlists: Discover Weekly tends to result in ~3-5 (new to me) musicians/week that I hadn't heard of that I would actually listen to. That's a pretty high ratio IMO. Release Radar tends to result in ~1 (new to me)/week. Granted, it's supposedly mostly ones I listen to, but still has several I've never heard of. Daily Mix 1-6 are a mixed bag and sometimes result in something new, but mostly just things I like (and may have forgotten about too).
- aidenn0 6y ago
  Discover Weekly was rather boring for me. It was about 6 weeks before I heard a song I hadn't heard before and only one musician I hadn't heard before in the 3 months I used it. I had much better success with Pandora when I tried it, but it still wasn't exactly deep cuts.
  - ddoeth 6y ago
    Maybe that's just because I'm too young, but most of my music discovery since I was 16 maybe was done through spotify, so spotify knows pretty much exactly what music I know and what music I don't know.
GrinningFool 6y ago
When Pandora first did discovery based on the attributes of the music you're listening to, it was amazing. Then it became trendy to provide discovery based on what other people who listen similar things like. Not so amazing ever since. Not _bad_... just not great. I haven't found any (even GPM) that do a good job at pulling together suggestions that fit into my eclectic listening habits.
ynac 6y ago
If by Music Discovery we mean finding music that's new to us as apposed to finding particular music we already have / own, I have two main sources: * Freeform radio stations (preferably with live playlists): WMFO, WFMU are my favorites. Even people who are immersed in music can't help to hear something new every hour. For me, it's a constant wave of new-to-me music. Many free form radio stations are also layering tracks, interviews, noise, and other audio treats that make for unique experiences that may never (or should never, haha) happen again. Just under free form radio there are countless excellent LPFM and college stations around the country - Hollow Earth Radio, nearly every college radio station from Boston to Milford PA. * I also use Bandcamp for getting deeper into a genre or trying out new ones. They write up articles that profile maybe a dozen artists that represent the boundaries of a style - whether you read them through or just listen, it's an amazing value. Easily on the level of what the New York Times does for classical music. Bandcamp is obviously growing like a weird and wonderful weed the last year - I would really like them to add a few more features for building random playlists within a few criteria. https://wfmu.org https://wfmu.org https://www.wmfo.org https://www.wmfo.org https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/arts/music/five-minutes-classical-music.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/arts/music/five-minutes-c... https://www.hollowearthradio.org https://www.hollowearthradio.org http://www.csgnetwork.com/lpfmradiotable.html http://www.csgnetwork.com/lpfmradiotable.html
alias_neo 6y ago
GPM worked very well for me and I've used it since the beginning; it was great for new releases and finding new music I like. I ditched it recently due to the YouTube music thing and moved to Spotify. I find im always listening to the same playlist because I just can't find anything I want to listen to on Spotify unless I search explicitly.
syoc 6y ago
I would pay the monthly spotify fee for their "discover weekly" playlist alone.
cyrialize 6y ago
Spotify is quite great at the Daily Mixes (I don't check the other playlists that much). I go through phases where I deep dive into genre's. Each Daily Mix ends up representing one of the genre's I've been listening to lately pulling in music that I like and other songs that I may like. That being said, that may be due to the fact that I deep dive into genres that don't have that much of a cross over, e.g. Japanese Hip-Hop & Lo-fi beats, R&B, 90's indie rock, etc. Still, the Daily Mixes are a great way to listen to music I like separated by genre. Last.fm's discovery feature is pretty neat too. I don't use it as much as Spotify's because I don't listen to music on Last.fm but I think the key feature of Last.fm over other music discovery tools is that it has a profile for many artists. Spotify, Apple Music, etc. are limited by what music is on their platform. If an artist isn't on Spotify, then they won't have a profile. Last.fm isn't limited that way so you can find even more artists, including artists that may be more underground or niche.
gavin_gee 6y ago
all depends on how niche or diverse you previous listening history is
glenstein 6y ago
>The rest have been total and utter crap at discovery. Strongly agree that music discovery is, in some sense, generally 'broken' across most platforms and not very good. I have been deeply dissatisfied with just about every system. I found Google Play music to be okay. My best luck these days is what I would call a "brute force" search through record labels, last.fm similar artists, bandcamp pages for genres, sputnik listings for particular genres, etc. It's very hit or miss, but I feel like it leads to me to my occasional lightning strikes, which are what I really want. These discoveries are quite different from the guesses put forward my recommendation engines, which seem to smooth out the interesting edges and signatures of personality and gradually draws toward a lowest common denominator, with no lightning strikes.

Which music service's discovery features actually work? For me the only one that worked was Google Play Music. The rest have been total and utter crap at discovery.

erfgh 6y ago

Youtube.

bigyikes 6y ago

I have been reasonably happy with Spotify’s discovery. It hasn’t been impressive as YouTube recommendations, but it’s still the primary way I find new music. Their generated “Discovery Weekly” playlist is a favorite of mine.

tristanMatthias 6y ago

I love Spotify’s. I discover new stuff every week because of it in a very broad range of musical categories

chrisweekly 6y ago

Spotify is outstanding in this regard. "Go to radio" from any given track or album; works every time. For even more passive discovery, their "discover weekly" and "release radar" do a good job of surfacing things too.

rapnie 6y ago
"discover weekly" was okay, but it is now completely broken to me. It suggests 80-90% of songs I already downloaded, and the remainder are always the same. Also discover weekly stops after, what, 2-3hrs of listening. Then the list is done and apparently Spotify thinks there's no more to discover. Luckily indeed there's the radio feature.
greggman3 6y ago
Sorry but Spotify is absolutely horrible in this regard. At least for me. Every group I like pick "Radio" and with in 2 to 4 songs it's playing completely unrelated stuff. The rest has all been crap too. "discover weekly" has never once suggested a single thing I'm interested in ever.

52-6F-62 6y ago

> Which music service's discovery features actually work My best experience has been talking with people or listening to artist interviews on influences.

crispyambulance 6y ago

> Which music service's discovery features actually work? It depends on what you mean by "work". Discovery capabilities have certainly gotten vastly better. 10+ years ago, the only decent one was the now (effectively) defunct Last.fm. These days, they're all pretty good. Spotify, pandora, google music, and now youtube music will do a good job of giving you recommendations based strictly on what you've been cue-ing up. But the recommendations from these services are the equivalent of going into a record store and getting advice from a dim-witted and disinterested employee. You'll get all the obvious stuff, maybe things you forgot about, and if you happen to like popular stuff the recommendations will work OK. But you won't get challenging, provocative recommendations that expand your taste. You'll get cloying recommendations that try to cater to your taste like it was a static attribute. Oh, yeah, and there's "the surveillance capitalism thing" which happens to be the centerpiece of all these services. Is that a problem? Yes. The best "discovery algorithm" is still HUMAN BEINGS. If your cool friends aren't available, then the next best thing is a mag like pitchfork (https://pitchfork.com/ https://pitchfork.com/), xlr8r (https://xlr8r.com/ https://xlr8r.com/) or in-depth reviews like Anthony Fantano's channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/theneedledrop https://www.youtube.com/user/theneedledrop).

greggman3 6y ago
> These days, they're all pretty good Your experience is vastly different than mine. Youtube music seems to be recommending nothing but what's popular. Justin Bieber is being recommending to me. I've never listed to him or anything remotely related. No good recommendations on any of the others. Maybe you have a different definition of "good" Good to me means "sounds similar and in the same genre as what I'm currently listening to". It does not mean "people who liked this song also liked that song"
- crispyambulance 6y ago
  > It does not mean "people who liked this song also liked that song" Actually, yes, it does (and many other things too), but to be fair "good" is a highly subjective judgment which is going to be different for everyone. I don't think, at this point in time, we have recommendation engines that can do much more than fling out recommendations based on an unknown convolution of your listening history combined with music meta-data combined with social network data and a mix of paid stuff courtesy of your surveillance capitalism purveyor. I know it's possible to capture some characteristics from the music track itself, like bpm (perhaps usable for EDM DJ's?). The "holy grail" would be to have a system that can truly assess the nature of a piece of music based on audio and use it make "interesting" and non-obvious recommendations. We are very far from doing that in software, but humans are still very good at it.

m-p-3 6y ago

I personally enjoy Spotify discovery a lot, the "Discover Weekly" and "Release Radar" playlists made me discover some bands I would have otherwise missed.

riedel 6y ago

I think it depends in personal taste. Spotify and amazon give me mostly boring mainstream ... . The only discovery algorithm i keep enjoying is pandora. due to semi effective geoblocking in my vountry, I, however , hesitate to go for the ad-free subscription.

davidwparker 6y ago

I use Spotify and have great luck there. Playlists: Discover Weekly tends to result in ~3-5 (new to me) musicians/week that I hadn't heard of that I would actually listen to. That's a pretty high ratio IMO. Release Radar tends to result in ~1 (new to me)/week. Granted, it's supposedly mostly ones I listen to, but still has several I've never heard of. Daily Mix 1-6 are a mixed bag and sometimes result in something new, but mostly just things I like (and may have forgotten about too).

aidenn0 6y ago
Discover Weekly was rather boring for me. It was about 6 weeks before I heard a song I hadn't heard before and only one musician I hadn't heard before in the 3 months I used it. I had much better success with Pandora when I tried it, but it still wasn't exactly deep cuts.
- ddoeth 6y ago
  Maybe that's just because I'm too young, but most of my music discovery since I was 16 maybe was done through spotify, so spotify knows pretty much exactly what music I know and what music I don't know.

GrinningFool 6y ago

When Pandora first did discovery based on the attributes of the music you're listening to, it was amazing. Then it became trendy to provide discovery based on what other people who listen similar things like. Not so amazing ever since. Not _bad_... just not great. I haven't found any (even GPM) that do a good job at pulling together suggestions that fit into my eclectic listening habits.

ynac 6y ago

If by Music Discovery we mean finding music that's new to us as apposed to finding particular music we already have / own, I have two main sources: * Freeform radio stations (preferably with live playlists): WMFO, WFMU are my favorites. Even people who are immersed in music can't help to hear something new every hour. For me, it's a constant wave of new-to-me music. Many free form radio stations are also layering tracks, interviews, noise, and other audio treats that make for unique experiences that may never (or should never, haha) happen again. Just under free form radio there are countless excellent LPFM and college stations around the country - Hollow Earth Radio, nearly every college radio station from Boston to Milford PA. * I also use Bandcamp for getting deeper into a genre or trying out new ones. They write up articles that profile maybe a dozen artists that represent the boundaries of a style - whether you read them through or just listen, it's an amazing value. Easily on the level of what the New York Times does for classical music. Bandcamp is obviously growing like a weird and wonderful weed the last year - I would really like them to add a few more features for building random playlists within a few criteria. https://wfmu.org https://wfmu.org https://www.wmfo.org https://www.wmfo.org https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/arts/music/five-minutes-classical-music.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/arts/music/five-minutes-c... https://www.hollowearthradio.org https://www.hollowearthradio.org http://www.csgnetwork.com/lpfmradiotable.html http://www.csgnetwork.com/lpfmradiotable.html

alias_neo 6y ago

GPM worked very well for me and I've used it since the beginning; it was great for new releases and finding new music I like. I ditched it recently due to the YouTube music thing and moved to Spotify. I find im always listening to the same playlist because I just can't find anything I want to listen to on Spotify unless I search explicitly.

syoc 6y ago

I would pay the monthly spotify fee for their "discover weekly" playlist alone.

cyrialize 6y ago

Spotify is quite great at the Daily Mixes (I don't check the other playlists that much). I go through phases where I deep dive into genre's. Each Daily Mix ends up representing one of the genre's I've been listening to lately pulling in music that I like and other songs that I may like. That being said, that may be due to the fact that I deep dive into genres that don't have that much of a cross over, e.g. Japanese Hip-Hop & Lo-fi beats, R&B, 90's indie rock, etc. Still, the Daily Mixes are a great way to listen to music I like separated by genre. Last.fm's discovery feature is pretty neat too. I don't use it as much as Spotify's because I don't listen to music on Last.fm but I think the key feature of Last.fm over other music discovery tools is that it has a profile for many artists. Spotify, Apple Music, etc. are limited by what music is on their platform. If an artist isn't on Spotify, then they won't have a profile. Last.fm isn't limited that way so you can find even more artists, including artists that may be more underground or niche.

gavin_gee 6y ago

all depends on how niche or diverse you previous listening history is

glenstein 6y ago

>The rest have been total and utter crap at discovery. Strongly agree that music discovery is, in some sense, generally 'broken' across most platforms and not very good. I have been deeply dissatisfied with just about every system. I found Google Play music to be okay. My best luck these days is what I would call a "brute force" search through record labels, last.fm similar artists, bandcamp pages for genres, sputnik listings for particular genres, etc. It's very hit or miss, but I feel like it leads to me to my occasional lightning strikes, which are what I really want. These discoveries are quite different from the guesses put forward my recommendation engines, which seem to smooth out the interesting edges and signatures of personality and gradually draws toward a lowest common denominator, with no lightning strikes.