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A dislike button would be handy. There is that feature on some of the generated playlists, but I don't think they do anything. My two biggest issues with Spotif

A dislike button would be handy. There is that feature on some of the generated playlists, but I don't think they do anything. My two biggest issues with Spotify right now are: 1. Release Radar filled with re-releases and remixes, often from artists who have long since passed away. I want new music as in released for the first time. 2. Name collisions. I'm surprised this is an issue, but I will often get songs from different artists with the same name. And then I'm unsure if selecting "I don't like this song" or "I don't like this artist" will affect the actually intended artist. I've also reached a tipping point where I no longer find new music through algorithmic recommendations. To be fair it's taken about 5 years to reach this point. Now the good music I find comes from searching for curated playlists. It's come full circle as before streaming I got my music recommendations from blogs and friends.

tehjoker 5y ago
How do you find good music blogs? I've basically given up on the recommendation engines and I don't have a ton of musically tuned in friends.
- kfarr 5y ago
  I still like https://hypem.com https://hypem.com as a meta music site aggregator. Also https://www.indieshuffle.com/ https://www.indieshuffle.com/
  - gundmc 5y ago
    I used hypem religiously from 10 years ago or so. Good to see them still around!
- tkgally 5y ago
  A few months ago, I started listening to new-music programs on BBC Music Introducing [1], particularly the London program [2]. As you might guess from how I spell “programs,” I’m not British and have never lived in the U.K. But I’m an older guy who responds most viscerally to the same old songs I liked as a teenager. Listening to music created by young people today helps to get me out of that rut. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/M6hmZj0X5c8nxQQydfWjBW/bbc-music-introducing-radio-shows https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/M6hmZj0X5c8nxQQydf... [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p025tszp https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p025tszp
- brenainn 5y ago
  It was a manual process for me personally, finding them through message boards and forums (I know that's not much help). I'd also use https://www.music-map.com https://www.music-map.com. /r/listentothis on reddit is also a good source of tracks. What I mainly do now is look for Spotify playlists by record labels that represent artists I like, or look for playlists made by artists I listen to. Shout out to holyfuckingshit40000 on blogspot, it's long gone now. But that was my favourite music blog, to the point I wanted to meet the person who ran it and buy them a drink or something, because almost everything they recommended I loved. Just now I've found that someone compiled a list of the recommendations, check it out: https://joseph.pallamidessi.fr/2020/05/03/holyfuckingshit40000-retro https://joseph.pallamidessi.fr/2020/05/03/holyfuckingshit400... (it's missing some from memory, but it's a diverse collection of some good music).
- philipps 5y ago
  Sasha Frere-Jones used to be the music critic at the New Yorker and writes a fantastic (although somewhat irregular) substack blog > https://substack.sashafrerejones.com/ https://substack.sashafrerejones.com/
- VortexDream 5y ago
  I've been enjoying the "All Songs Considered" podcast from NPR. Discovered a lot of great music through them.
- ryantgtg 5y ago
  I frequent the bandcamp daily blog, and I follow a few people on bandcamp who tend to actively buy music I’m interested in (I just go through the users who have bought an album I like, then I look at their other purchases). On top of that bandcamp sends me a weekly “you may be interested in” email that often has at least one thing I’m actually interested in. I read some blogs. But overall I discover a lot on bandcamp - more than I can process.
S0und 5y ago
2. "Name collision" unfortunately that's not Spotify's fault but the artist who set the wrong Artists ID. So instead of creating a new one for themself, they just use an already existing one with the same name. What I did in the last i just email the record label ( if they have one ) and ask them. In my case i listen to metal, but every know and then a mediocre rap song shows up in my RR. Usually because the artist is clueless and they just "put they new song" on Spotify.
- johnsoft 5y ago
  Is it really that easy? Can anyone just sign up for Spotify as an artist and upload a Beyonce album?
  - vintermann 5y ago
    No, you have to sign up with a company Spotify has a deal with. Spotify seems to no longer have a deal with the sort of "artist services" companies that don't check if the uploaded music is a Beyonce album. Spotify, or rather the old Echo Nest folks I suspect, actually do a lot to combat spam compared to the other streaming services. I tried out the French service Deezer for a while, they had a huge compilation spam problem. I found one spammer in particular, who around four times per months would upload 300+ albums, all with the same title and cover art, only the artist name would be different. Thus you would get the album "Angry Man" by Frank Sinatra, "Angry Man" by Charles Aznavour, "Angry Man" by Johnny Rivers, etc. for another 300 artists. Thing is, they would contain music from the actual artist. The spammer probably speculated that if you wanted to add, say, Doc Watson's "Sitting on top of the world" to a playlist, searching would lead you to one of his "compilations" instead of the original. Or maybe it's part of a scam with hacked accounts "listening" to these teams. Either way, it must have been profitable, because with some searching I found out he'd been at it for almost a decade. He uses one of the "artists services" companies that lets him pick a new label name every time, but his laziness in generating images reveals it's the same guy (and I'm pretty sure I know his name, too). He's not on Spotify, they kicked him off ages ago. But he's on literally every other streaming service that I know.
- playpause 5y ago
3np 5y ago
Agree on the above (though are duplicates really that much of a practical issue? I did discover some Russian rap through that). I'd like to add: 3. Discover Weekly stuck recycling through the same songs over and over again (it's also years since the algorithm found anything new for me, apart from name collisions) 4. Geo-language-locking. My CC will apparently only be accepted with its registered address in Spain. I barely speak a word of Spanish and don't have interest in the music popular in Spain. Yet it's what they keep pushing me, especially podcasts (including any episode in generated lists). Long-standing issues on all their community forums for this, eg https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Browse-Allow-to-change-Country-Origin-Suggestions/idi-p/3286802 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Browse-Allow-to-... I recall a 100+ page forum thread on 4 but can't seem to find it now.
- grvdrm 5y ago
  Curious: how repetitive is your listening history? I also notice that my Discover Weekly and Daily 1-5 playlists are recycling much of the same material. But I also frequently listen to my Liked Songs (< 40 songs) on shuffle, so I assume Spotify's algorithm is looking at that data and saying "you do actually just want to listen to these songs over and over again" Otherwise, a fun experiment I tried last year: deleted all liked songs, all playlists, etc. to refresh my recommendations. I didn't pay close attention to how new suggestions compared to old, but it was one sort of trick to find new stuff rather than heading back to existing playlists. My Liked songs definitely aren't those from last year. Also, this may seem counterintuitive but I regularly listen to playlists that seem like they are out of my interest pool (e.g. will deliberately check out a country playlist) as another way to move away from my own recommendations.
  - jniedrauer 5y ago
    I listen to a workout playlist on shuffle frequently while training, while slowly adding new music to it throughout the year. Like others have mentioned, Spotify has completely stopped recommending new music for years now. Even if I start a song radio from a song I've never listened to before, Spotify immediately just starts playing songs from my current year's workout playlist. That is not the behavior I want. Yes, I listen to that playlist a lot, but when I'm not listening to that playlist, I'm trying to find new music. It seems really obvious that that would be the expected behavior, to me at least.
atombender 5y ago
My problem with "Release Radar" are all the singles (and, as you say, remix stuff; sometimes it's an EP with one original track and multiple remixes). If a musician I follow releases a single, I'm not really interested until it's actually released on an album. So the only way to consume "Release Radar" is to click into every release to look at what's inside.
pc86 5y ago
Unfortunately the only thing they seem to do is exclude that song from that playlist. I've had things I disliked on one radio station come up on a different station 30 minutes later. I just recently switch to Spotify from YouTube Music (as a former diehard Google Play fan) maybe 6 weeks ago. Everyone raved about how great the recommendation system was but I'm certainly not seeing it yet after spending several weeks diligently liking/disliking songs, entering in favorite artists, etc.
suction 5y ago
As for the "dislike an artist and I'll dislike all artists with the same name", you could theoretically compare the two by artist-ids, which you can see when sharing the artist through the Spotify client or using a browser to show the profile. Spotify usually doesn't just give the same ID to several artists with the same name, but of course it's not impossible.
IanSanders 5y ago
>Name collisions. I'm surprised this is an issue, but I will often get songs from different artists with the same name This is potentially by design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify#2016%E2%80%9317:_%22Fake_artists%22_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify#2016%E2%8...

tehjoker 5y ago

How do you find good music blogs? I've basically given up on the recommendation engines and I don't have a ton of musically tuned in friends.

kfarr 5y ago
I still like https://hypem.com https://hypem.com as a meta music site aggregator. Also https://www.indieshuffle.com/ https://www.indieshuffle.com/
- gundmc 5y ago
  I used hypem religiously from 10 years ago or so. Good to see them still around!
tkgally 5y ago
A few months ago, I started listening to new-music programs on BBC Music Introducing [1], particularly the London program [2]. As you might guess from how I spell “programs,” I’m not British and have never lived in the U.K. But I’m an older guy who responds most viscerally to the same old songs I liked as a teenager. Listening to music created by young people today helps to get me out of that rut. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/M6hmZj0X5c8nxQQydfWjBW/bbc-music-introducing-radio-shows https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/M6hmZj0X5c8nxQQydf... [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p025tszp https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p025tszp
brenainn 5y ago
It was a manual process for me personally, finding them through message boards and forums (I know that's not much help). I'd also use https://www.music-map.com https://www.music-map.com. /r/listentothis on reddit is also a good source of tracks. What I mainly do now is look for Spotify playlists by record labels that represent artists I like, or look for playlists made by artists I listen to. Shout out to holyfuckingshit40000 on blogspot, it's long gone now. But that was my favourite music blog, to the point I wanted to meet the person who ran it and buy them a drink or something, because almost everything they recommended I loved. Just now I've found that someone compiled a list of the recommendations, check it out: https://joseph.pallamidessi.fr/2020/05/03/holyfuckingshit40000-retro https://joseph.pallamidessi.fr/2020/05/03/holyfuckingshit400... (it's missing some from memory, but it's a diverse collection of some good music).
philipps 5y ago
Sasha Frere-Jones used to be the music critic at the New Yorker and writes a fantastic (although somewhat irregular) substack blog > https://substack.sashafrerejones.com/ https://substack.sashafrerejones.com/
VortexDream 5y ago
I've been enjoying the "All Songs Considered" podcast from NPR. Discovered a lot of great music through them.
ryantgtg 5y ago
I frequent the bandcamp daily blog, and I follow a few people on bandcamp who tend to actively buy music I’m interested in (I just go through the users who have bought an album I like, then I look at their other purchases). On top of that bandcamp sends me a weekly “you may be interested in” email that often has at least one thing I’m actually interested in. I read some blogs. But overall I discover a lot on bandcamp - more than I can process.

S0und 5y ago

2. "Name collision" unfortunately that's not Spotify's fault but the artist who set the wrong Artists ID. So instead of creating a new one for themself, they just use an already existing one with the same name. What I did in the last i just email the record label ( if they have one ) and ask them. In my case i listen to metal, but every know and then a mediocre rap song shows up in my RR. Usually because the artist is clueless and they just "put they new song" on Spotify.

johnsoft 5y ago
Is it really that easy? Can anyone just sign up for Spotify as an artist and upload a Beyonce album?
- vintermann 5y ago
  No, you have to sign up with a company Spotify has a deal with. Spotify seems to no longer have a deal with the sort of "artist services" companies that don't check if the uploaded music is a Beyonce album. Spotify, or rather the old Echo Nest folks I suspect, actually do a lot to combat spam compared to the other streaming services. I tried out the French service Deezer for a while, they had a huge compilation spam problem. I found one spammer in particular, who around four times per months would upload 300+ albums, all with the same title and cover art, only the artist name would be different. Thus you would get the album "Angry Man" by Frank Sinatra, "Angry Man" by Charles Aznavour, "Angry Man" by Johnny Rivers, etc. for another 300 artists. Thing is, they would contain music from the actual artist. The spammer probably speculated that if you wanted to add, say, Doc Watson's "Sitting on top of the world" to a playlist, searching would lead you to one of his "compilations" instead of the original. Or maybe it's part of a scam with hacked accounts "listening" to these teams. Either way, it must have been profitable, because with some searching I found out he'd been at it for almost a decade. He uses one of the "artists services" companies that lets him pick a new label name every time, but his laziness in generating images reveals it's the same guy (and I'm pretty sure I know his name, too). He's not on Spotify, they kicked him off ages ago. But he's on literally every other streaming service that I know.
playpause 5y ago

3np 5y ago

Agree on the above (though are duplicates really that much of a practical issue? I did discover some Russian rap through that). I'd like to add: 3. Discover Weekly stuck recycling through the same songs over and over again (it's also years since the algorithm found anything new for me, apart from name collisions) 4. Geo-language-locking. My CC will apparently only be accepted with its registered address in Spain. I barely speak a word of Spanish and don't have interest in the music popular in Spain. Yet it's what they keep pushing me, especially podcasts (including any episode in generated lists). Long-standing issues on all their community forums for this, eg https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Browse-Allow-to-change-Country-Origin-Suggestions/idi-p/3286802 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Browse-Allow-to-... I recall a 100+ page forum thread on 4 but can't seem to find it now.

grvdrm 5y ago
Curious: how repetitive is your listening history? I also notice that my Discover Weekly and Daily 1-5 playlists are recycling much of the same material. But I also frequently listen to my Liked Songs (< 40 songs) on shuffle, so I assume Spotify's algorithm is looking at that data and saying "you do actually just want to listen to these songs over and over again" Otherwise, a fun experiment I tried last year: deleted all liked songs, all playlists, etc. to refresh my recommendations. I didn't pay close attention to how new suggestions compared to old, but it was one sort of trick to find new stuff rather than heading back to existing playlists. My Liked songs definitely aren't those from last year. Also, this may seem counterintuitive but I regularly listen to playlists that seem like they are out of my interest pool (e.g. will deliberately check out a country playlist) as another way to move away from my own recommendations.
- jniedrauer 5y ago
  I listen to a workout playlist on shuffle frequently while training, while slowly adding new music to it throughout the year. Like others have mentioned, Spotify has completely stopped recommending new music for years now. Even if I start a song radio from a song I've never listened to before, Spotify immediately just starts playing songs from my current year's workout playlist. That is not the behavior I want. Yes, I listen to that playlist a lot, but when I'm not listening to that playlist, I'm trying to find new music. It seems really obvious that that would be the expected behavior, to me at least.

atombender 5y ago

My problem with "Release Radar" are all the singles (and, as you say, remix stuff; sometimes it's an EP with one original track and multiple remixes). If a musician I follow releases a single, I'm not really interested until it's actually released on an album. So the only way to consume "Release Radar" is to click into every release to look at what's inside.

pc86 5y ago

Unfortunately the only thing they seem to do is exclude that song from that playlist. I've had things I disliked on one radio station come up on a different station 30 minutes later. I just recently switch to Spotify from YouTube Music (as a former diehard Google Play fan) maybe 6 weeks ago. Everyone raved about how great the recommendation system was but I'm certainly not seeing it yet after spending several weeks diligently liking/disliking songs, entering in favorite artists, etc.

suction 5y ago

As for the "dislike an artist and I'll dislike all artists with the same name", you could theoretically compare the two by artist-ids, which you can see when sharing the artist through the Spotify client or using a browser to show the profile. Spotify usually doesn't just give the same ID to several artists with the same name, but of course it's not impossible.

IanSanders 5y ago

>Name collisions. I'm surprised this is an issue, but I will often get songs from different artists with the same name This is potentially by design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify#2016%E2%80%9317:_%22Fake_artists%22_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify#2016%E2%8...