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Spotify would do better to get back to basics on song suggestion instead of trying to guess emotional state - Pandora still finds similar songs by musical eleme
by dv_dt 6y ago
Spotify would do better to get back to basics on song suggestion instead of trying to guess emotional state - Pandora still finds similar songs by musical elements better than Spotify. A good example to try is to select a song that is out of genre for an artist - an acoustic version of a song that usually doesn't do acoustic for example. The suggestions for similar songs from Spotify all have to do with the artist genre not the actual song.
- peteretep 6y agoMy Spotify Most Hated Bug is that I have to be careful what I name playlists now as it’ll completely fuck over the recommend songs if you’ve named it something it thinks it knows about
- ssss11 6y agoInteresting! Like what.. a genre name?
- nameequalsmain 6y agoI named a playlist "metal", it started recommending metal songs without me having added anything yet.
- piva00 6y agoThat would be just one signal for the recommendation engine, given that you only named the playlist without any songs that probably weighed in quite heavily on the recommendations. Did it change after you added songs or kept suggesting metal songs?
- p49k 6y agoJust tested it and yes, it keeps recommending metal even after adding a handful of obvious non-metal songs.
- IndySun 6y agoThis playlist name thing I've also noticed. More widely, many, if not all, of any recommendation algorithm in any field (music and beyond) are not 'intelligent' (meaning smarter than the right human) in any way whatsoever; as noted, usually some tag sorting going on - and where items have been auto-tagged vs manual makes no difference to the quality; you're still dealing with a programmed personality when auto-tagged. However, they do (appear to) 'work' (exhibit intelligence) when it's performed on a topic of which you know little; there they offer a helping hand.
- xxpor 6y agoSpotify has all of their resources focused on podcasts, because that's where they'll be able to become a real aggregator and start making Real Money. It's a damn shame because the open nature of podcasts is one of the most appealing things about them. I get where they're coming from though. If they weren't spending ungodly amounts of cash on podcasts (cough joe rogan) they could probably buy pandora (just guessing, not looking at any actual numbers) and replace their recommendation engine with theirs.
- shaoonb 6y agoI don't understand this business model. How does taking podcasts (something people are used to getting for free with few or no ads) and breaking the currently open ecosystem there is around them benefit anyone, least of all Spotify themselves?
- TaylorAlexander 6y agoI assume they believe exclusive podcasts will gain them paying subscribers. Of course by fracturing the open ecosystem they may find themselves unable to acquire some podcasts, but given that they are a large player they are well positioned to out bid the competition.
- nitrogen 6y agoThey might also make a cut off of dynamic sponsorship/ad segments within podcasts.
- squeaky-clean 6y agoThese were quite eery the first time I heard them. I was listening to an episode of Conan O'Brien's podcast from early 2019 and in the middle was an ad (read by Conan) for enjoying Miller lite at home during the covid quarantine. I spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out what the hell had just happened until I found a page promoting Spotify's dynamic ad insertion for podcasts.