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The algorithmic recommendation is broken, because it makes wrong assumptions. Every recommendation engine I've encountered appear to be based on the idea that I

The algorithmic recommendation is broken, because it makes wrong assumptions. Every recommendation engine I've encountered appear to be based on the idea that I care about artists or genres, rather than the sound profile of individual tracks. I have no idea, but my take is that streaming services are trying to find other artists within the same genre, or using the listing patterns of other users to match you up with new music. This makes a weird assumption that I actually like everything a band makes, which is rare, or that because I like an artists or a few songs within a given genre, then I must like all music with in that genre. Mostly I listen to music from a wide number of artists, across generes. There a musicians where I like most of their work and some where I just like the sound of one particular track. What I want, is button, when I press that, "The Almighty Algorithm" will analyse the sound, the beats per second, the vocals, the instruments, the lyrics, anything that affect the sound and locate other songs with similar profiles. Bonus points for letting me input stuff like: higher tempo, less bagpipes, the singer has a high pitch voice which hurt my ears. The social stuff is easy and the streaming platforms can quickly implement something similar and put you out of business. Actually analyzing the sound profiles and using that to help you create playlists and discover new artists, that not something I've seen done and I bet it's because it's will require actual work.

rabuse 5y ago
"The algorithmic recommendation is broken, because it makes wrong assumptions. Every recommendation engine I've encountered appear to be based on the idea that I care about artists or genres, rather than the sound profile of individual tracks." Agreed 100% on this. I find I like a certain BPM and "type" of sound to songs I often have on repeat.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  Also agreed. I've had days where I was in a really productive mood and wanted some really high tempo music to go with it, and end up searching for 30 minutes and only finding things that slow me down. And other moods and modes have their own vibe, that has nothing to do with genre and a lot to do with tempo and timbre.
  - rabuse 5y ago
    It's why DJ's are paid well for what they do. I wish there was an actually good A.I. DJ that can blend songs together well.
nerdponx 5y ago
Wasn't this the whole point of Pandora?
- peab 5y ago
  I think so. Pandora actually hired people to manually annotate their corpus with various sorts of traits. See https://www.pandora.com/corporate/mgp.shtml https://www.pandora.com/corporate/mgp.shtml
- NateEag 5y ago
  Yeah, and as a result it's the one music service I pay for. It doesn't give me any control of which attributes I care about, which frustrates me to no end, but it does fairly well at turning up things I haven't heard before and like if I can give it a decent set of seed tracks.
  - aceazzameen 5y ago
    Agreed. Pandora is the only music service I've stayed with because of its discovery system. It's not perfect, but I've found countless artists and songs over the years at Pandora that I might not have known without. I also occasionally go back to Slacker/LiveXLive for it's fine tune controls, DJs and news. But it's discovery system isn't as good and it's had plenty of bugs (like playing wrong songs/titles). So I stick with Pandora for that radio experience tailored to me.
tshaddox 5y ago
> Every recommendation engine I've encountered appear to be based on the idea that I care about artists or genres, rather than the sound profile of individual tracks. And sometimes I don't even know why I like a particular song. This is especially true when it comes to the concept of catchiness. There is certainly some music theory around hooks, chord loops, etc. but I honestly haven't found any of it anywhere near as explanatory or predictive as more well-established classical western music theory concepts like harmonic function or voice leading. So often it really just feels like "that song is super catchy just because it is."
layer8 5y ago
I believe we are very far from the technology necessary to really grok a person’s musical tastes. What currently probably works the best is the "people who liked x also liked y" scheme (generalized to vectors in song space or something). However, that method has the property that the algorithm can’t judge any new music, it always requires existing ratings from members of the platform before it can recommend a song to other people. Then there’s the additional issue that a person’s musical taste changes over time.
politician 5y ago
Do you want something that'll let you define a timespan (e.g. 2:45..3:12) and find tracks like that? I imagine that would be pretty fun from a discovery sense -- for EDM especially.
nitrogen 5y ago
Every recommendation engine I've encountered appear to be based on the idea that I care about artists or genres, rather than the sound profile of individual tracks. Spotify has the tech to do this, they've demonstrated it with a genre explorer tool, but they clearly don't use it in their radio stations and recommendations. As several other comments have mentioned, music companies inevitably end up being redesigned to match the desires of rightsholders, and not users. The only way around this would probably be some kind of legally mandated compulsory licensing, so that any streaming service or end user can play any content if they pay the predetermined price, removing contract negotiations from the picture.
bertr4nd 5y ago
It feels like there’s a bunch of ML technology that exists that could plausibly be pieces of this solution: there are algorithms for computing embeddings, various audio processing models, recommender system networks, etc. I wonder what’s been tried in this space and how/why it’s been lacking…
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
names_are_hard 5y ago
> What I want, is button, when I press that, "The Almighty Algorithm" will analyse the sound, the beats per second, the vocals, the instruments, the lyrics, anything that affect the sound and locate other songs with similar profiles. Bonus points for letting me input stuff like: higher tempo, less bagpipes, the singer has a high pitch voice which hurt my ears. This might be possible in theory but part of the issue is that the algorithms input parameters are not the same from person to person. The parameters you described are mostly technical attributes of the sound, but what about cultural/political affiliation? Do you care if the lyrics are in a different language (some people do, some people don't). Do you care if there is a political or religious message (and are you particular about which religion or political tribe)? Can Spotify take that into account somehow? Maybe, but it seems very difficult to tailor that to the user. Speaking personally, music is more than just an aural experience for me. At times it's about connecting with my social group, or cultural traditions, or a spiritual experience. At other times it's just the music. When I listen to mainstream stuff, Spotify is ok. When I get deeper into edge-case territory, Spotify doesn't really know what I'm looking for and often makes suggestions that appear to demonstrate a shallow understanding the cultural meaning of the music I'm listening to.

rabuse 5y ago

"The algorithmic recommendation is broken, because it makes wrong assumptions. Every recommendation engine I've encountered appear to be based on the idea that I care about artists or genres, rather than the sound profile of individual tracks." Agreed 100% on this. I find I like a certain BPM and "type" of sound to songs I often have on repeat.

nitrogen 5y ago
Also agreed. I've had days where I was in a really productive mood and wanted some really high tempo music to go with it, and end up searching for 30 minutes and only finding things that slow me down. And other moods and modes have their own vibe, that has nothing to do with genre and a lot to do with tempo and timbre.
- rabuse 5y ago
  It's why DJ's are paid well for what they do. I wish there was an actually good A.I. DJ that can blend songs together well.

nerdponx 5y ago

Wasn't this the whole point of Pandora?

peab 5y ago
I think so. Pandora actually hired people to manually annotate their corpus with various sorts of traits. See https://www.pandora.com/corporate/mgp.shtml https://www.pandora.com/corporate/mgp.shtml
NateEag 5y ago
Yeah, and as a result it's the one music service I pay for. It doesn't give me any control of which attributes I care about, which frustrates me to no end, but it does fairly well at turning up things I haven't heard before and like if I can give it a decent set of seed tracks.
- aceazzameen 5y ago
  Agreed. Pandora is the only music service I've stayed with because of its discovery system. It's not perfect, but I've found countless artists and songs over the years at Pandora that I might not have known without. I also occasionally go back to Slacker/LiveXLive for it's fine tune controls, DJs and news. But it's discovery system isn't as good and it's had plenty of bugs (like playing wrong songs/titles). So I stick with Pandora for that radio experience tailored to me.

tshaddox 5y ago

> Every recommendation engine I've encountered appear to be based on the idea that I care about artists or genres, rather than the sound profile of individual tracks. And sometimes I don't even know why I like a particular song. This is especially true when it comes to the concept of catchiness. There is certainly some music theory around hooks, chord loops, etc. but I honestly haven't found any of it anywhere near as explanatory or predictive as more well-established classical western music theory concepts like harmonic function or voice leading. So often it really just feels like "that song is super catchy just because it is."

layer8 5y ago

I believe we are very far from the technology necessary to really grok a person’s musical tastes. What currently probably works the best is the "people who liked x also liked y" scheme (generalized to vectors in song space or something). However, that method has the property that the algorithm can’t judge any new music, it always requires existing ratings from members of the platform before it can recommend a song to other people. Then there’s the additional issue that a person’s musical taste changes over time.

politician 5y ago

Do you want something that'll let you define a timespan (e.g. 2:45..3:12) and find tracks like that? I imagine that would be pretty fun from a discovery sense -- for EDM especially.

nitrogen 5y ago

Every recommendation engine I've encountered appear to be based on the idea that I care about artists or genres, rather than the sound profile of individual tracks. Spotify has the tech to do this, they've demonstrated it with a genre explorer tool, but they clearly don't use it in their radio stations and recommendations. As several other comments have mentioned, music companies inevitably end up being redesigned to match the desires of rightsholders, and not users. The only way around this would probably be some kind of legally mandated compulsory licensing, so that any streaming service or end user can play any content if they pay the predetermined price, removing contract negotiations from the picture.

bertr4nd 5y ago

It feels like there’s a bunch of ML technology that exists that could plausibly be pieces of this solution: there are algorithms for computing embeddings, various audio processing models, recommender system networks, etc. I wonder what’s been tried in this space and how/why it’s been lacking…

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

names_are_hard 5y ago

> What I want, is button, when I press that, "The Almighty Algorithm" will analyse the sound, the beats per second, the vocals, the instruments, the lyrics, anything that affect the sound and locate other songs with similar profiles. Bonus points for letting me input stuff like: higher tempo, less bagpipes, the singer has a high pitch voice which hurt my ears. This might be possible in theory but part of the issue is that the algorithms input parameters are not the same from person to person. The parameters you described are mostly technical attributes of the sound, but what about cultural/political affiliation? Do you care if the lyrics are in a different language (some people do, some people don't). Do you care if there is a political or religious message (and are you particular about which religion or political tribe)? Can Spotify take that into account somehow? Maybe, but it seems very difficult to tailor that to the user. Speaking personally, music is more than just an aural experience for me. At times it's about connecting with my social group, or cultural traditions, or a spiritual experience. At other times it's just the music. When I listen to mainstream stuff, Spotify is ok. When I get deeper into edge-case territory, Spotify doesn't really know what I'm looking for and often makes suggestions that appear to demonstrate a shallow understanding the cultural meaning of the music I'm listening to.