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So basically they’re developing a product marketed to streaming platforms to identify what’s “more attractive” to consumers. The algorithms are still optimized

So basically they’re developing a product marketed to streaming platforms to identify what’s “more attractive” to consumers. The algorithms are still optimized for increasing sales and engagement, not improving recommendations (for the user). That’s exactly why I’m unhappy with Spotify lately. I feel I’m being sold a bunch of corporate portfolios on what’s currently in vogue, and not just artistically but politically, with playlists like this-gender-race supporting this-cause. I actually just want to listen to music. I still use it but stumble my way through looking at related artists while avoiding playlists and recommendations.

wara23arish 5y ago
100% I remember seeing a promoted playlist about empowering women voices (this is music) I was so confused. In literally most of the world, this isn’t even a point of contention.
- snthd 5y ago
  They're probably trying to offset the guilt they feel from payola[0]. https://newsroom.spotify.com/2020-11-02/amplifying-artist-input-in-your-personalized-recommendations/ https://newsroom.spotify.com/2020-11-02/amplifying-artist-in...
  - leppr 5y ago
    If the product is free, you're the product. And if the product is paid, you're also the product.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      If the product uses your data as AI inputs you are the prodict.
- rhcom2 5y ago
  "In honor of the revolution, it's half-off at the Gap"
schmorptron 5y ago
Yeah, this is the exact reason I switched to Apple Music even though I'm on Android, since their playlists (for the most part) seem to actually be made based on what they think will be interesting for the listeners, not what they got paid to promote. I might be wrong though and just getting played.
- j56no 5y ago
  similar experience here, after 12 years with spotify I had enough of the confusing UI and poor recommendations. They literally know all the music I like and still I don’t discover enough new music as I did just listening to the car radio. Bought into Apple One and will see how that goes, I just need to migrate some playlists.
  - ranieuwe 5y ago
    Did the migration last night with tune my music[1] and it worked flawlessly. Also, they didn’t want yet another account to spam mail me for months. [1] https://www.tunemymusic.com/ https://www.tunemymusic.com/
    - fermentation 5y ago
      whoa thanks for the heads-up! I've always wanted to try other platforms but I've thought it impossible since I have so much data in Spotify. Any gotchas here?
      - dewiz 5y ago
        You will have to share access to your data, so expect them to sniff a lot about you and your friends from Spotify. Highly recommended to remove access once the migration is complete. The free version transfers only 1000 tracks, about 1-2 songs per second, and some might be missing in the destination, e.g. when moving from Spotify to Apple. Favorite artists cannot be transferred to Apple Music.
      - ranieuwe 5y ago
onion2k 5y ago
So basically they’re developing a product marketed to streaming platforms to identify what’s “more attractive” to consumers. The algorithms are still optimized for increasing sales and engagement, not improving recommendations (for the user). It's possible that the recommendations are both good for users and good for corporate interests. They might not work for you, but for millions of Spotify users they seem to work. People listen to them a lot. I listen to my recommended "Discover" playlists occasionally. They're decent. They include things I haven't heard and quite like. Maybe record labels are paying to be on them. Oh well.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Hokusai 5y ago
  > They might not work for you, but for millions of Spotify users they seem to work. That is the most reasonable explanation. HN users are not the average user of Spotify.
  - DoneWithAllThat 5y ago
    I’ve never really understood what variations of the rejoinder “you are not the target user” are intended to accomplish, at least in conversations like this. When discussing things like product strategy it makes some (more than a little) sense. But in a conversation about personal preference, what do you expect the reader to take away from it? “Oh okay, sorry, I didn’t realize I wasn’t meant to like this. I guess my opinion’s invalid.” Who cares who the average user is, when someone is saying something doesn’t appeal to them? Is the sentiment some kind of scolding for not liking it? I sincerely don’t understand.
    - spiffytech 5y ago
      I think the remark is meant to address internet comments' tendency to jump from "this product doesn't meet my needs", to "consequently it is a bad / mismanaged product".
    - 5y ago
loudtieblahblah 5y ago
Crap like this is why, to this day, my collection is digital files, cds, vinyl and streaming only for radio - like pandora
- echelon 5y ago
  I want a service where I can upload my own files and easily access them from a player interface in the browser, mobile, etc. I want the ability to rate music across multiple user-configurable dimensions. Add tags. Create smart playlists that interpolate between these. I want to be able to pay a fee to subscribe to music discovery, then be able to mix these with my own library. If I really like a track, I'd like to buy it and add it to my collection. I want an open API so desktop apps can be written to use it. Also, let me export my annotations and music library on demand. Music for power users. Don't give me a single button. Give me hundreds of them. I'd pay $30/mo or more for this.
  - f1refly 5y ago
    funkwhale has the web interface, the subsonic api (dunno how well that works i dont use it), you can create your own "radios" based on genre and artist
  - loudtieblahblah 5y ago
    I used to host my own Java based one for a while out of my house. Worked OK on my phone. The software just wasn't as good of an experience of just having my trusty 400gb sdcard.
  - banana_maker 5y ago
    Check out Navidrome [0]. It's the closest one that I've found. It supports the Subsonic API so there are plenty of mobile apps and probably some desktop ones that work with it. I use play:Sub on iOS. 0: https://github.com/navidrome/navidrome https://github.com/navidrome/navidrome
    - Fnoord 5y ago
      What's the advantage compared to Airsonic? I use Airsonic right now, it is basically Jellyfin for a music collection. I use both of these as reliable alternative to Netflix/.../Spotify (where ... is a plethora of other video services such as Disney+).
psKama 5y ago
That's the exact reason I switched to YouTube Music. I remember even about 10 years ago, last.fm's algorithm on bringing songs I would enjoy basing on previously listened/liked songs was far more accurate than Spotify's today.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago
  I just switched to youtube music, its leagues better than spotify. YouTube music seems to have a pretty solid recommendation algorithm, and I frequently find music more in tune with my tastes there than on spotify. Honestly, I would not mind seeing spotify disappear.
  - didibus 5y ago
    I'm thinking of going the other way, I just dislike how YT Music doesn't have some small feature like saving my queue to a playlist. But perhaps I should hold out.
- aeyes 5y ago
  Does the algorithm of YouTube Music behave similar to standard YouTube? YouTube (not Music) basically always recommends the same tracks in the same order and within the same genre bubble. It is hard to discover anything new which makes me not want to try YouTube Music.
  - ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago
    My experience is the algorithm is a bit different. I have not been on the platform for long, but my recommendations have been great. I've also been listening to music on the same youtube account for 10+ years, so I assume they have alot of data.
  - notatoad 5y ago
    This was my experience with YouTube music - no matter what genre station I started off with, it eventually settled back onto the same small number of currently-trending songs. I get much more diverse recommendations from Spotify.
intricatedetail 5y ago
It's only a matter of time comment like this will decrease your social score...
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Do you want a high social score? A good citizen badge?
  - intricatedetail 5y ago
    You will have no choice if you don't want to be excluded.
Strs2FillMyDrms 5y ago
- tibbar 5y ago
  With respect, your comment illustrates the issue - a burden to reeducate people by shaping their culture. Music can make a statement, sure, but a world where people are force-fed curated playlists designed to mold them into some Standard Issue set of beliefs, this is a dystopian vision.
  - jcims 5y ago
    Typically there's another p-word used to describe this.
- AbrahamParangi 5y ago
  I think that people bristle at it in the same way that people used to bristle at having Christian-normative culture pushed on them. Not everyone enjoys cultural imperialism.
- sabellito 5y ago
  Sarcasm and belittlement are a terrible way to engage in conversation. You seem more interested in aggrandizing yourself than to actually make a point or bring some food for thought.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
rumblerock 5y ago
On top of that, if you listen to a wide range of genres the attempt to shoehorn your history into 6 Daily Mixes yields some comical results. Like Doobie Brothers followed by Nirvana. Give me a home screen with 12 or more Daily Mixes that segment my listening behavior at a finer resolution, and I'd be a lot happier with the service. I understand why all the other playlists exist, but I generally have an idea of exactly what I'm trying to listen to, so these low effort curated playlists are pretty useless for my listening style.
- leppr 5y ago
  Then you can simply find a song that matches what you're exactly wanting to listen to and start the "song radio" from there. For me the problem is exactly the contrary, I can't find enough diversity in the daily mixes, it's mostly all songs I've either explicitly "liked" or heard a couple times before.
  - rumblerock 5y ago
    Diversity in daily mixes is an issue for sure. I do use the song radio feature but find it's hit or miss - they usually start off strong, but seem to lose the thread at a certain point. It's a fine balance between existing liked songs and expanding within sub-genres, but I have at least noticed the recommendations improving over the past few years. I suspect it would help to port over my entire pre-Spotify music library into Spotify to provide a bit more data, my current library is all post-Spotify so it fails to capture the breadth of my music taste. I've just never gotten around to it.
- ufo 5y ago
  And for those that are actually into the sort of thing, I recommend Doobie Brothers + Linkin Park: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cXjcKTRWcg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cXjcKTRWcg
- stevewillows 5y ago
  I've considered getting a spotify family account, using separate accounts for major genres and one for browsing. I have a browsing profile for Netflix so I can freely explore without messing up the suggestions. For me, I listen to a lot of 40s, 50 - 60s lounge / exotica, early to mid 90s hip hop, 80s metal, and the standard indie stuff... then I have a bunch of chillwave and synthwave stuff that throws another wrench in the mix. The daily mixes I get are a total mess, much like yours. The genre-specific mixes they make are pretty decent, but discovery is low.
raffraffraff 5y ago
I've never used Spotify or any other recommendation service. Music is like food: it's far too important too substitute with junk. I won't eat Subway, I won't listen to auto-generated recommendations. I browse (and support) rateyourmusic.com, I use the last.fm API (to find out what my neighbors are listening to) and I listen to music for free on YouTube before I buy it. I also heavily use tags on my purchased music so I can easily put together a playlist matching my mood.
- amelius 5y ago
  The problem: you don't want to be DJ-ing at work, where your time is better spent on more important things than what music you will listen to.
  - tjr225 5y ago
    “More important” :P
  - imajoredinecon 5y ago
    Disagree with the premise - you don’t have to sacrifice productivity to put time into finding good music. For one, you don’t have to do your music research during working hours. But even if you do, it doesn’t mean you’re trading off productivity in order to do it.
    - andreilys 5y ago
      you don’t have to do your music research during working hours. But even if you do, it doesn’t mean you’re trading off productivity in order to do it. Trying to find music when you could be focusing is by definition, trading off productivity. I’d rather have an algorithm dictate what songs I want to listen to (in order to focus) than spend an hour wading through junk to find something i like before I start coding.
      - tjr225 5y ago
        And I would rather not. Obviously plenty of music enthusiasts here are disappointed with the results the algorithms come up with!
krono 5y ago
Anything that can be exploited by the user for self-exploration and discovery is being removed - for the purpose of serving content that generates more revenue, I assume.. At first it was subtle, but the gloves came off with the recent UI overhaul. Playlist search result page is just an endless grid of images and truncated names. For the playlist duration, description, number of songs, follower count, etc. you have to actually open each individual playlist. Good luck finding what you were looking for. More and more Spotify-fabricated content is being pushed. Most of which contains the same limited selection of songs that Spotify keeps feeding you over and over anyway. Podcasts aren't my thing, Spotify wants me to listen to them really badly though. Majority of the ones they're suggesting I'm not at all interested in, and sometimes some of the podcasts they're advertising seem to contain some pretty disturbing content. On a sidenote: I don't know who he is, or what he does, but I hate Joe Rogan and Spotify is to blame for it. There is a setting hidden under advanced that is supposed to make Spotify stop messing with the shuffle functionality. It is labeled "Allow smooth transitions between songs in a playlist" vague huh, it's also placed directly underneath the song crossfade slider. I'm fully convinced that this was done on purpose. Also this setting seems to do precisely nothing at all, so I'm not sure why they even went through all the effort. Shuffle is not random. If this is so on purpose, that purpose does not involve happy users. Else perhaps their devs are afraid of touching some jank script that might be holding it together. Edit: Almost forgot about the new artist's pages! They used to consist of a long list of all songs grouped by album. This was far too convenient for us users, so with the redesign they simply removed the lists of songs leaving only a grid of albums, forcing you to go into each individual album to find a specific song and play it play it. After many complaints they implemented something vaguely resembling what we had before, but with such odd UX that it must be sabotaged on purpose again. But of course, adding this overview back to the artist page was out of the question. Instead what they implemented as the only way to access this, and I kid you not, is a plain text link in the most random place ever. No one is going to use this feature if they don't know it exists. All this just to get a reason for removing it that is spinnable. Machiavelli would have been proud.
- wincy 5y ago
  What’s funny is that I used to love listening to the Joe Rogan podcast and hate Spotify just as much, because I tried to listen to his podcast and somehow ended up listening to about TEN MINUTES of ads and the podcast NEVER started playing. I finally uninstalled Spotify and haven’t listened to his podcast since, sorry. It’s mind boggling that Spotify could drop the ball so hard, as ostensibly they were trying to funnel people like me into their platform, and whiffed in an absolutely astounding manner while also alienating people like you who already use Spotify.
blacktriangle 5y ago
Get a CD player. It's what I did when I got fed up with Spotify.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> I feel I’m being sold a bunch of corporate portfolios on what’s currently in vogue, and not just artistically but politically, with playlists like this-gender-race supporting this-cause. I feel the same way. It's not just music either. I get this feeling every time I try to consume anything. Everything is just so fake. Like it was made just to push some silly agenda. "Recommendations" are ads in disguise. I already block them on YouTube. Wish I could block them everywhere.
Waterluvian 5y ago
It’s fascinating to hear this feedback on Spotify because I’ve never used it this way. I don’t let it guide anything. I just use it as a music repository and I pick the albums and make my own playlists. Do others generally find that auto play (or whatever it’s called) works well? Or does it just feel like payola radio?
- ChildOfChaos 5y ago
  Yeah it's odd to me to see comments like this. Why would you let a streaming service choose what you want to listen too or a premade playlist by someone else? Then you might as well just listen to the radio. All these on any service are always rubbish. I make my own playlists and I only listen to them, sometimes I search others for some inspiration to see what songs I forgot etc, but most of them include a lot of trash so I make my own. The only 'auto' feature I use, is my release radar playlist which I check every Friday to find new songs from Artists I like and then add those to my playlist titled for the current year.
- Teknoman117 5y ago
  I use it for both. "Discover Weekly" tends to be one of my primary sources of new content discovery. I tend to listen to a significant amount of Death Metal, Doom Metal, Folk Metal, German metal and rock, random music in languages I don't understand because the sound is cool to me, and various other never-been-pop subgenres. Discover Weekly has been pretty on point for me to find new and interesting stuff in a way that hasn't felt like them pushing a message or some corporate catalog. I don't tend to listen to the genres that are full of artists who are trying to push politics through their music (at least that I've consciously recognized) (except maybe System of a Down). Not because I'm necessarily against their messages, it just the sets haven't overlapped much for me at this point. It could also be that music isn't much about lyrics for me, it's about if it's something that sounds good to me. I have a bunch of playlists and saved albums, but I do listen to discover weekly in the first few days of the week. Sometimes it's meh and I just go choose what I want to listen to, sometimes it's really good and it's on loop through the week. Their "Daily Mix" playlists seem to be 90% stuff I've clicked "like" on in the past, so I listen to those as well.
ravenstine 5y ago
Tidal is a pretty good alternative and also has lossless.
dr_dshiv 5y ago
I think it is sad that there isn’t a way to recognize the development of competence in music listening— with an achievement motivation. Like, mastering genres with a music collection. Aesthetic pleasure in pleasant recommendations without any principles makes me feel vacant after a time.
qq4 5y ago
I went back to my iPod. Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, they all suck compared to good ol' mp3s at my leisure.
batiudrami 5y ago
I just wish I could turn off fucking podcasts. I am a paying customer, I have been for years! I podcast elsewhere, and am never going to switch to Spotify for it, just let me turn it off!
lugged 5y ago
Check out Tom McDonald, will fix up your recommendations real quick.

wara23arish 5y ago

100% I remember seeing a promoted playlist about empowering women voices (this is music) I was so confused. In literally most of the world, this isn’t even a point of contention.

snthd 5y ago
They're probably trying to offset the guilt they feel from payola[0]. https://newsroom.spotify.com/2020-11-02/amplifying-artist-input-in-your-personalized-recommendations/ https://newsroom.spotify.com/2020-11-02/amplifying-artist-in...
- leppr 5y ago
  If the product is free, you're the product. And if the product is paid, you're also the product.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    If the product uses your data as AI inputs you are the prodict.
rhcom2 5y ago
"In honor of the revolution, it's half-off at the Gap"

schmorptron 5y ago

Yeah, this is the exact reason I switched to Apple Music even though I'm on Android, since their playlists (for the most part) seem to actually be made based on what they think will be interesting for the listeners, not what they got paid to promote. I might be wrong though and just getting played.

j56no 5y ago
similar experience here, after 12 years with spotify I had enough of the confusing UI and poor recommendations. They literally know all the music I like and still I don’t discover enough new music as I did just listening to the car radio. Bought into Apple One and will see how that goes, I just need to migrate some playlists.
- ranieuwe 5y ago
  Did the migration last night with tune my music[1] and it worked flawlessly. Also, they didn’t want yet another account to spam mail me for months. [1] https://www.tunemymusic.com/ https://www.tunemymusic.com/
  - fermentation 5y ago
    whoa thanks for the heads-up! I've always wanted to try other platforms but I've thought it impossible since I have so much data in Spotify. Any gotchas here?
    - dewiz 5y ago
      You will have to share access to your data, so expect them to sniff a lot about you and your friends from Spotify. Highly recommended to remove access once the migration is complete. The free version transfers only 1000 tracks, about 1-2 songs per second, and some might be missing in the destination, e.g. when moving from Spotify to Apple. Favorite artists cannot be transferred to Apple Music.
    - ranieuwe 5y ago

onion2k 5y ago

So basically they’re developing a product marketed to streaming platforms to identify what’s “more attractive” to consumers. The algorithms are still optimized for increasing sales and engagement, not improving recommendations (for the user). It's possible that the recommendations are both good for users and good for corporate interests. They might not work for you, but for millions of Spotify users they seem to work. People listen to them a lot. I listen to my recommended "Discover" playlists occasionally. They're decent. They include things I haven't heard and quite like. Maybe record labels are paying to be on them. Oh well.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Hokusai 5y ago
> They might not work for you, but for millions of Spotify users they seem to work. That is the most reasonable explanation. HN users are not the average user of Spotify.
- DoneWithAllThat 5y ago
  I’ve never really understood what variations of the rejoinder “you are not the target user” are intended to accomplish, at least in conversations like this. When discussing things like product strategy it makes some (more than a little) sense. But in a conversation about personal preference, what do you expect the reader to take away from it? “Oh okay, sorry, I didn’t realize I wasn’t meant to like this. I guess my opinion’s invalid.” Who cares who the average user is, when someone is saying something doesn’t appeal to them? Is the sentiment some kind of scolding for not liking it? I sincerely don’t understand.
  - spiffytech 5y ago
    I think the remark is meant to address internet comments' tendency to jump from "this product doesn't meet my needs", to "consequently it is a bad / mismanaged product".
  - 5y ago

loudtieblahblah 5y ago

Crap like this is why, to this day, my collection is digital files, cds, vinyl and streaming only for radio - like pandora

echelon 5y ago
I want a service where I can upload my own files and easily access them from a player interface in the browser, mobile, etc. I want the ability to rate music across multiple user-configurable dimensions. Add tags. Create smart playlists that interpolate between these. I want to be able to pay a fee to subscribe to music discovery, then be able to mix these with my own library. If I really like a track, I'd like to buy it and add it to my collection. I want an open API so desktop apps can be written to use it. Also, let me export my annotations and music library on demand. Music for power users. Don't give me a single button. Give me hundreds of them. I'd pay $30/mo or more for this.
- f1refly 5y ago
  funkwhale has the web interface, the subsonic api (dunno how well that works i dont use it), you can create your own "radios" based on genre and artist
- loudtieblahblah 5y ago
  I used to host my own Java based one for a while out of my house. Worked OK on my phone. The software just wasn't as good of an experience of just having my trusty 400gb sdcard.
- banana_maker 5y ago
  Check out Navidrome [0]. It's the closest one that I've found. It supports the Subsonic API so there are plenty of mobile apps and probably some desktop ones that work with it. I use play:Sub on iOS. 0: https://github.com/navidrome/navidrome https://github.com/navidrome/navidrome
  - Fnoord 5y ago
    What's the advantage compared to Airsonic? I use Airsonic right now, it is basically Jellyfin for a music collection. I use both of these as reliable alternative to Netflix/.../Spotify (where ... is a plethora of other video services such as Disney+).

psKama 5y ago

That's the exact reason I switched to YouTube Music. I remember even about 10 years ago, last.fm's algorithm on bringing songs I would enjoy basing on previously listened/liked songs was far more accurate than Spotify's today.

ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago
I just switched to youtube music, its leagues better than spotify. YouTube music seems to have a pretty solid recommendation algorithm, and I frequently find music more in tune with my tastes there than on spotify. Honestly, I would not mind seeing spotify disappear.
- didibus 5y ago
  I'm thinking of going the other way, I just dislike how YT Music doesn't have some small feature like saving my queue to a playlist. But perhaps I should hold out.
aeyes 5y ago
Does the algorithm of YouTube Music behave similar to standard YouTube? YouTube (not Music) basically always recommends the same tracks in the same order and within the same genre bubble. It is hard to discover anything new which makes me not want to try YouTube Music.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago
  My experience is the algorithm is a bit different. I have not been on the platform for long, but my recommendations have been great. I've also been listening to music on the same youtube account for 10+ years, so I assume they have alot of data.
- notatoad 5y ago
  This was my experience with YouTube music - no matter what genre station I started off with, it eventually settled back onto the same small number of currently-trending songs. I get much more diverse recommendations from Spotify.

intricatedetail 5y ago

It's only a matter of time comment like this will decrease your social score...

ipaddr 5y ago
Do you want a high social score? A good citizen badge?
- intricatedetail 5y ago
  You will have no choice if you don't want to be excluded.

Strs2FillMyDrms 5y ago

tibbar 5y ago
With respect, your comment illustrates the issue - a burden to reeducate people by shaping their culture. Music can make a statement, sure, but a world where people are force-fed curated playlists designed to mold them into some Standard Issue set of beliefs, this is a dystopian vision.
- jcims 5y ago
  Typically there's another p-word used to describe this.
AbrahamParangi 5y ago
I think that people bristle at it in the same way that people used to bristle at having Christian-normative culture pushed on them. Not everyone enjoys cultural imperialism.
sabellito 5y ago
Sarcasm and belittlement are a terrible way to engage in conversation. You seem more interested in aggrandizing yourself than to actually make a point or bring some food for thought.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

rumblerock 5y ago

On top of that, if you listen to a wide range of genres the attempt to shoehorn your history into 6 Daily Mixes yields some comical results. Like Doobie Brothers followed by Nirvana. Give me a home screen with 12 or more Daily Mixes that segment my listening behavior at a finer resolution, and I'd be a lot happier with the service. I understand why all the other playlists exist, but I generally have an idea of exactly what I'm trying to listen to, so these low effort curated playlists are pretty useless for my listening style.

leppr 5y ago
Then you can simply find a song that matches what you're exactly wanting to listen to and start the "song radio" from there. For me the problem is exactly the contrary, I can't find enough diversity in the daily mixes, it's mostly all songs I've either explicitly "liked" or heard a couple times before.
- rumblerock 5y ago
  Diversity in daily mixes is an issue for sure. I do use the song radio feature but find it's hit or miss - they usually start off strong, but seem to lose the thread at a certain point. It's a fine balance between existing liked songs and expanding within sub-genres, but I have at least noticed the recommendations improving over the past few years. I suspect it would help to port over my entire pre-Spotify music library into Spotify to provide a bit more data, my current library is all post-Spotify so it fails to capture the breadth of my music taste. I've just never gotten around to it.
ufo 5y ago
And for those that are actually into the sort of thing, I recommend Doobie Brothers + Linkin Park: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cXjcKTRWcg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cXjcKTRWcg
stevewillows 5y ago
I've considered getting a spotify family account, using separate accounts for major genres and one for browsing. I have a browsing profile for Netflix so I can freely explore without messing up the suggestions. For me, I listen to a lot of 40s, 50 - 60s lounge / exotica, early to mid 90s hip hop, 80s metal, and the standard indie stuff... then I have a bunch of chillwave and synthwave stuff that throws another wrench in the mix. The daily mixes I get are a total mess, much like yours. The genre-specific mixes they make are pretty decent, but discovery is low.

raffraffraff 5y ago

I've never used Spotify or any other recommendation service. Music is like food: it's far too important too substitute with junk. I won't eat Subway, I won't listen to auto-generated recommendations. I browse (and support) rateyourmusic.com, I use the last.fm API (to find out what my neighbors are listening to) and I listen to music for free on YouTube before I buy it. I also heavily use tags on my purchased music so I can easily put together a playlist matching my mood.

amelius 5y ago
The problem: you don't want to be DJ-ing at work, where your time is better spent on more important things than what music you will listen to.
- tjr225 5y ago
  “More important” :P
- imajoredinecon 5y ago
  Disagree with the premise - you don’t have to sacrifice productivity to put time into finding good music. For one, you don’t have to do your music research during working hours. But even if you do, it doesn’t mean you’re trading off productivity in order to do it.
  - andreilys 5y ago
    you don’t have to do your music research during working hours. But even if you do, it doesn’t mean you’re trading off productivity in order to do it. Trying to find music when you could be focusing is by definition, trading off productivity. I’d rather have an algorithm dictate what songs I want to listen to (in order to focus) than spend an hour wading through junk to find something i like before I start coding.
    - tjr225 5y ago
      And I would rather not. Obviously plenty of music enthusiasts here are disappointed with the results the algorithms come up with!

krono 5y ago

Anything that can be exploited by the user for self-exploration and discovery is being removed - for the purpose of serving content that generates more revenue, I assume.. At first it was subtle, but the gloves came off with the recent UI overhaul. Playlist search result page is just an endless grid of images and truncated names. For the playlist duration, description, number of songs, follower count, etc. you have to actually open each individual playlist. Good luck finding what you were looking for. More and more Spotify-fabricated content is being pushed. Most of which contains the same limited selection of songs that Spotify keeps feeding you over and over anyway. Podcasts aren't my thing, Spotify wants me to listen to them really badly though. Majority of the ones they're suggesting I'm not at all interested in, and sometimes some of the podcasts they're advertising seem to contain some pretty disturbing content. On a sidenote: I don't know who he is, or what he does, but I hate Joe Rogan and Spotify is to blame for it. There is a setting hidden under advanced that is supposed to make Spotify stop messing with the shuffle functionality. It is labeled "Allow smooth transitions between songs in a playlist" vague huh, it's also placed directly underneath the song crossfade slider. I'm fully convinced that this was done on purpose. Also this setting seems to do precisely nothing at all, so I'm not sure why they even went through all the effort. Shuffle is not random. If this is so on purpose, that purpose does not involve happy users. Else perhaps their devs are afraid of touching some jank script that might be holding it together. Edit: Almost forgot about the new artist's pages! They used to consist of a long list of all songs grouped by album. This was far too convenient for us users, so with the redesign they simply removed the lists of songs leaving only a grid of albums, forcing you to go into each individual album to find a specific song and play it play it. After many complaints they implemented something vaguely resembling what we had before, but with such odd UX that it must be sabotaged on purpose again. But of course, adding this overview back to the artist page was out of the question. Instead what they implemented as the only way to access this, and I kid you not, is a plain text link in the most random place ever. No one is going to use this feature if they don't know it exists. All this just to get a reason for removing it that is spinnable. Machiavelli would have been proud.

wincy 5y ago
What’s funny is that I used to love listening to the Joe Rogan podcast and hate Spotify just as much, because I tried to listen to his podcast and somehow ended up listening to about TEN MINUTES of ads and the podcast NEVER started playing. I finally uninstalled Spotify and haven’t listened to his podcast since, sorry. It’s mind boggling that Spotify could drop the ball so hard, as ostensibly they were trying to funnel people like me into their platform, and whiffed in an absolutely astounding manner while also alienating people like you who already use Spotify.

blacktriangle 5y ago

Get a CD player. It's what I did when I got fed up with Spotify.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> I feel I’m being sold a bunch of corporate portfolios on what’s currently in vogue, and not just artistically but politically, with playlists like this-gender-race supporting this-cause. I feel the same way. It's not just music either. I get this feeling every time I try to consume anything. Everything is just so fake. Like it was made just to push some silly agenda. "Recommendations" are ads in disguise. I already block them on YouTube. Wish I could block them everywhere.

Waterluvian 5y ago

It’s fascinating to hear this feedback on Spotify because I’ve never used it this way. I don’t let it guide anything. I just use it as a music repository and I pick the albums and make my own playlists. Do others generally find that auto play (or whatever it’s called) works well? Or does it just feel like payola radio?

ChildOfChaos 5y ago
Yeah it's odd to me to see comments like this. Why would you let a streaming service choose what you want to listen too or a premade playlist by someone else? Then you might as well just listen to the radio. All these on any service are always rubbish. I make my own playlists and I only listen to them, sometimes I search others for some inspiration to see what songs I forgot etc, but most of them include a lot of trash so I make my own. The only 'auto' feature I use, is my release radar playlist which I check every Friday to find new songs from Artists I like and then add those to my playlist titled for the current year.
Teknoman117 5y ago
I use it for both. "Discover Weekly" tends to be one of my primary sources of new content discovery. I tend to listen to a significant amount of Death Metal, Doom Metal, Folk Metal, German metal and rock, random music in languages I don't understand because the sound is cool to me, and various other never-been-pop subgenres. Discover Weekly has been pretty on point for me to find new and interesting stuff in a way that hasn't felt like them pushing a message or some corporate catalog. I don't tend to listen to the genres that are full of artists who are trying to push politics through their music (at least that I've consciously recognized) (except maybe System of a Down). Not because I'm necessarily against their messages, it just the sets haven't overlapped much for me at this point. It could also be that music isn't much about lyrics for me, it's about if it's something that sounds good to me. I have a bunch of playlists and saved albums, but I do listen to discover weekly in the first few days of the week. Sometimes it's meh and I just go choose what I want to listen to, sometimes it's really good and it's on loop through the week. Their "Daily Mix" playlists seem to be 90% stuff I've clicked "like" on in the past, so I listen to those as well.

ravenstine 5y ago

Tidal is a pretty good alternative and also has lossless.

dr_dshiv 5y ago

I think it is sad that there isn’t a way to recognize the development of competence in music listening— with an achievement motivation. Like, mastering genres with a music collection. Aesthetic pleasure in pleasant recommendations without any principles makes me feel vacant after a time.

qq4 5y ago

I went back to my iPod. Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, they all suck compared to good ol' mp3s at my leisure.

batiudrami 5y ago

I just wish I could turn off fucking podcasts. I am a paying customer, I have been for years! I podcast elsewhere, and am never going to switch to Spotify for it, just let me turn it off!

lugged 5y ago

Check out Tom McDonald, will fix up your recommendations real quick.