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To the request to name a single brand based on personalization, music brands like Pandora and Spotify are built on personalization: Similarly, clothing brands

To the request to name a single brand based on personalization, music brands like Pandora and Spotify are built on personalization: Similarly, clothing brands like stitch-fix and trunk club are personalization specific. Regarding Disney, we just signed up for Disney+ and the first step was to decide if you wanted mature content and the second was to decide on your avatar. I think Disney+ will allow the company to cater to personal tastes more than they ever could through theaters and we will see that in the future. Finally, for the longest time marketers have looked at demographic groups to target with their products, this is a weaker form of personalization. Obviously that won’t be abandoned, so I wonder why the author thinks companies should only target mass markets?

hkt 4y ago
While it is true that Spotify does recommendations, I'm sceptical that the majority of users value this part most. I'm happy to be corrected, but I'd guess it is simply the ability to stream music on demand that remains its main selling point. Put another way, the value of Spotify is its expansive collection, not its personalisation. (Or so it seems to me)
- nelsondev 4y ago
  It’s both
- leephillips 4y ago
  I know that some people find value in this, but for me, I wish I could turn off the recommendation engines on Netflix, Amazon, Spotify, and wherever else they are in services that I use. Whatever notions of similarity that they use to generate recommendations have nothing to do with how I judge things, and for me this is just noise that makes those services slower to navigate.
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    I feel Spotify's recommendation engine works kinda OK since music is many small songs rather than long and few movies. I mean if you are into a movie there might be only three ones like it which you allready have watched and surely are not on Netflix. However, as soon as you use your Spotify account for kids or parties the engine gets messed up forever. It is a shame since it helped me find alot of artists.
- armaansarkar 4y ago
  I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that everyone has the same catalog (at least for my fairly boring taste in music) and actively choose Spotify’s personalization over Apple Music’s tighter integration with my phone, car, etc. Just a single data point though.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    No, I choose Spotify's UI over Apple Music's. I also prefer Spotify user-run playlists better, which I pick myself, searching for genres and songs explicitly. Nothing to do with preferring the personalization.
    - JadeNB 4y ago
      > No, I choose Spotify's UI over Apple Music's. "No" seems to suggest that you're disagreeing with your parent's post, but your parent is saying why they chose it, not why you did: > I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that everyone has the same catalog (at least for my fairly boring taste in music) and actively choose Spotify’s personalization over Apple Music’s tighter integration with my phone, car, etc. Just a single data point though.
      - coldtea 4y ago
        >but your parent is saying why they chose it, not why you did: And I am saying why I chose it. You don't need to read too much into the "no", nor have to find some perfect formal consistency in a quick response. It's just "no" as in, "no, that's not my case".
  - crgt 4y ago
    Anecdotally, I love the personalized station Apple Music generates for me. I have pretty eclectic, cross-genre taste and the quality of the personalized station - the mix of stuff I already love and the new stuff that I don't know yet but that I end up loving - is by far the stickiest part of the service for me. It also seems to be improving over time? I know, anecdotal, but that has been my experience..
- jasonlotito 4y ago
  > While it is true that Spotify does recommendations, I'm sceptical that the majority of users value this part most Any time Spotify is brought up (which is really any time music is brought up) it's a good bet the quality of discovery of recommendations are mentioned. The Discovery Weekly and Daily Mixes are loved. My anecdotal evidence is the dozens of people I've talked to about this over the years. This HN thread is the first time I've seen anyone suggest otherwise. I know for myself, if it wasn't for the discovery that Spotify offers, I wouldn't use it.
jefftk 4y ago
TikTok is also famously good at personalization
- rhino369 4y ago
  Shockingly, terrifyingly, good at personalization. I swear they have mics in my house.
  - zoom6628 4y ago
    There AI is amazing. So I make sure to tell my Douyin (Chinese TikTok)watching other to always also spend time watching totally random things on the platform.
  - shapefrog 4y ago
    > I swear they have mics in my house. Just remember that when you think this, the reality is that you are just that predictable based on half a dozen meaningless datapoints.
fphhotchips 4y ago
Yeah anyone who doesn't believe that Disney is doing personalisation should get in contact with me. I have a bridge to sell them in the Nullarbor. In fact, they're actively building it and selling it to advertisers. Disney+ and similar platforms are the tools that media companies have every intention of using to drive the accuracy numbers much higher. E: I should note that I work for Snowflake, we're marketing this capability pretty hard. I'm not directly involved though.
coldtea 4y ago
>To the request to name a single brand based on personalization, music brands like Pandora and Spotify are built on personalization: You mean the recommendation engine? Hardly ever it worked for me. What Spotify is built on is "play albums/songs you select or follow playlists on genres you like". The recommendations are tacked on, and bad.
- jasonlotito 4y ago
  You would be the first person I've heard say that. Everyone I ever spoken to about this loves Spotify's recommendations. And I'm talking about non-technical people. They are excellent recommendations. No, they are NOT successful for the reasons you state. Apple Music does that. Now, that's a recommendation that is indeed bad.
  - t-3 4y ago
    You can add a second to your list. Spotify doesn't have a lot of my favorite music, and the recommendations have always been bland and boring or downright bad to me.
    - zoom6628 4y ago
      Add a 3rd. Stopped using Spotify because the recs downright annoying. I prefer to use YT Music s it seems thoroughly confused by having each person in family use from my service account to the point the suggestions are general in nature. They still do not get played though. I refuse to click on suggestions in any product as that reinforces their data on me/us. I’m quite ok if any music engine thinks I’m a polyglot toddler with penchant for death metal, Thai ballads, and ancient Chinese orchestral Music. Such a profile makes me soooo much less likely to get other music or junk marketed to me ;-)
      - stavros 4y ago
        Fourth, I've never found a recommendation engine I like. Maybe I have weird taste in music, but Spotify only ever recommended one song that I ended up loving (oddly, the very first one it ever did).
taeric 4y ago
My gut is that I'm looking at two sides arguing past each other. Most major value creation happens well before Disney+ or Pandora. They just have somewhat broadly defined parameters that will get you more of the same, from what has been created. As easy examples, there are a lot of good kids shows that adults could enjoy, but my guess is that they are not recommended to most adults. Just as really good folk music is likely to get suggested to someone that hasn't listened to folk music. Or music/movies from another nation. Which is all too say that the personalization is ultimately a customer fitting themselves to what they want, from what they know. Dropping someone in fresh with no prefit is probably a lost cause. Even though that is how most personalisation talks brand themselves.
______-_-______ 4y ago
The post is about marketing and ad targeting. For Spotify to satisfy their question of a "brand built through personalization", Spotify would have had to do something like sign up for google/facebook ads, target the demographic of "music listeners" and convert enough users to end up with a successful business. That's not how spotify built their business. You're talking about their recommendation engine for users they already have, which is completely different.
- libertine 4y ago
  Exactly this. We also have to take into account that there's a lot of "misses" in those recommendation engines - which is normal. But when they nail it, people have positive emotions towards it, so it's a good feedback loop. Personalization would be to have Spotify recommend you only songs about expensive watches after you've searched for a Rolex on Google, with ads in the middle about Rolex ahaha.
  - blueblob 4y ago
    Personalization would be to have Spotify give you ads for a Rolex right after you purchased a Rolex. At least the way that kind of thing usually works for me is that I always get the recommendations after the purchase (definitely not a Rolex for me).
- splatcollision 4y ago
  Spotify is exactly adtech, they have extremely targeted advertising for their free tier that even takes into account playlist names.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
evandale 4y ago
I agree Spotify is definitely built on personalization. The only time I subscribe to premium is when they offer me 3 months for $9.99, and they know enough to offer it to me in May when I start using premium for running or cycling. Then I cancel it in August, and they offer it to me again soon after where I subscribe again from October - December. Then it goes dark again until May hits and I'm offered 3 months for $9.99 again.
Sophistifunk 4y ago
The problem is, everybody hates all the ways in which spotify doesn't act sensibly and predictably. Just google for "spotify random broken" to spiral down a depressing rabbithole of a decade of forum posts about a feature so simple and still not implemented, that it's clearly being done on purpose; either to drive engagement or save on money paid out to labels and artists, your guess is as good as mine.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
"To the request to name a single brand based on personalisation, music brands like Pandora and Spotify are built on personalisation." As I read this article, this meaning of "personalisation" is not the one used by the authors. Tech companies like Spotify and Pandora are just intermediaries. They may help to "deliver" commercial product, or advertising, however they do not create the product referred to in this article. The article uses the term "personalised creative" to refer to product. Tech companies operate as middlemen and produce no content. They are dependent on others to produce it. This is the bait for computer users. Tech companies sell advertising services to companies that produce content. Tech companies gather data about individual computer users, e.g., web browsing histories. This is "personal" data. Tech companies allege this makes it especially effective and therefore valuable. The studies cited in the article suggest this is claim is false. Disney produces content. There is no shortage of personal data being collected and sold by tech companies which is available to Disney. The article highlights that, despite the availability of personal data collected by tech companies, Disney generally does not produce "personalised creative". In sum, the article is not about what "tech" companies do, it is about what content producers do. More specifically, it is about whether, based on available research, producers of creative should or should not attempt to use personal data about computer users collected by third parties in order to produce "personalised creative".
- eikenberry 4y ago
  > Tech companies like Spotify and Pandora are just intermediaries. They may help to "deliver" commercial product, or advertising, however they do not create the product. They do create a "product", the delivery system. This is a creative product as much as any of the music. A lot of software was written to allow this and all of that is the "product".

hkt 4y ago

While it is true that Spotify does recommendations, I'm sceptical that the majority of users value this part most. I'm happy to be corrected, but I'd guess it is simply the ability to stream music on demand that remains its main selling point. Put another way, the value of Spotify is its expansive collection, not its personalisation. (Or so it seems to me)

nelsondev 4y ago
It’s both
leephillips 4y ago
I know that some people find value in this, but for me, I wish I could turn off the recommendation engines on Netflix, Amazon, Spotify, and wherever else they are in services that I use. Whatever notions of similarity that they use to generate recommendations have nothing to do with how I judge things, and for me this is just noise that makes those services slower to navigate.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  I feel Spotify's recommendation engine works kinda OK since music is many small songs rather than long and few movies. I mean if you are into a movie there might be only three ones like it which you allready have watched and surely are not on Netflix. However, as soon as you use your Spotify account for kids or parties the engine gets messed up forever. It is a shame since it helped me find alot of artists.
armaansarkar 4y ago
I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that everyone has the same catalog (at least for my fairly boring taste in music) and actively choose Spotify’s personalization over Apple Music’s tighter integration with my phone, car, etc. Just a single data point though.
- coldtea 4y ago
  No, I choose Spotify's UI over Apple Music's. I also prefer Spotify user-run playlists better, which I pick myself, searching for genres and songs explicitly. Nothing to do with preferring the personalization.
  - JadeNB 4y ago
    > No, I choose Spotify's UI over Apple Music's. "No" seems to suggest that you're disagreeing with your parent's post, but your parent is saying why they chose it, not why you did: > I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that everyone has the same catalog (at least for my fairly boring taste in music) and actively choose Spotify’s personalization over Apple Music’s tighter integration with my phone, car, etc. Just a single data point though.
    - coldtea 4y ago
      >but your parent is saying why they chose it, not why you did: And I am saying why I chose it. You don't need to read too much into the "no", nor have to find some perfect formal consistency in a quick response. It's just "no" as in, "no, that's not my case".
- crgt 4y ago
  Anecdotally, I love the personalized station Apple Music generates for me. I have pretty eclectic, cross-genre taste and the quality of the personalized station - the mix of stuff I already love and the new stuff that I don't know yet but that I end up loving - is by far the stickiest part of the service for me. It also seems to be improving over time? I know, anecdotal, but that has been my experience..
jasonlotito 4y ago
> While it is true that Spotify does recommendations, I'm sceptical that the majority of users value this part most Any time Spotify is brought up (which is really any time music is brought up) it's a good bet the quality of discovery of recommendations are mentioned. The Discovery Weekly and Daily Mixes are loved. My anecdotal evidence is the dozens of people I've talked to about this over the years. This HN thread is the first time I've seen anyone suggest otherwise. I know for myself, if it wasn't for the discovery that Spotify offers, I wouldn't use it.

jefftk 4y ago

TikTok is also famously good at personalization

rhino369 4y ago
Shockingly, terrifyingly, good at personalization. I swear they have mics in my house.
- zoom6628 4y ago
  There AI is amazing. So I make sure to tell my Douyin (Chinese TikTok)watching other to always also spend time watching totally random things on the platform.
- shapefrog 4y ago
  > I swear they have mics in my house. Just remember that when you think this, the reality is that you are just that predictable based on half a dozen meaningless datapoints.

fphhotchips 4y ago

Yeah anyone who doesn't believe that Disney is doing personalisation should get in contact with me. I have a bridge to sell them in the Nullarbor. In fact, they're actively building it and selling it to advertisers. Disney+ and similar platforms are the tools that media companies have every intention of using to drive the accuracy numbers much higher. E: I should note that I work for Snowflake, we're marketing this capability pretty hard. I'm not directly involved though.

coldtea 4y ago

>To the request to name a single brand based on personalization, music brands like Pandora and Spotify are built on personalization: You mean the recommendation engine? Hardly ever it worked for me. What Spotify is built on is "play albums/songs you select or follow playlists on genres you like". The recommendations are tacked on, and bad.

jasonlotito 4y ago
You would be the first person I've heard say that. Everyone I ever spoken to about this loves Spotify's recommendations. And I'm talking about non-technical people. They are excellent recommendations. No, they are NOT successful for the reasons you state. Apple Music does that. Now, that's a recommendation that is indeed bad.
- t-3 4y ago
  You can add a second to your list. Spotify doesn't have a lot of my favorite music, and the recommendations have always been bland and boring or downright bad to me.
  - zoom6628 4y ago
    Add a 3rd. Stopped using Spotify because the recs downright annoying. I prefer to use YT Music s it seems thoroughly confused by having each person in family use from my service account to the point the suggestions are general in nature. They still do not get played though. I refuse to click on suggestions in any product as that reinforces their data on me/us. I’m quite ok if any music engine thinks I’m a polyglot toddler with penchant for death metal, Thai ballads, and ancient Chinese orchestral Music. Such a profile makes me soooo much less likely to get other music or junk marketed to me ;-)
    - stavros 4y ago
      Fourth, I've never found a recommendation engine I like. Maybe I have weird taste in music, but Spotify only ever recommended one song that I ended up loving (oddly, the very first one it ever did).

taeric 4y ago

My gut is that I'm looking at two sides arguing past each other. Most major value creation happens well before Disney+ or Pandora. They just have somewhat broadly defined parameters that will get you more of the same, from what has been created. As easy examples, there are a lot of good kids shows that adults could enjoy, but my guess is that they are not recommended to most adults. Just as really good folk music is likely to get suggested to someone that hasn't listened to folk music. Or music/movies from another nation. Which is all too say that the personalization is ultimately a customer fitting themselves to what they want, from what they know. Dropping someone in fresh with no prefit is probably a lost cause. Even though that is how most personalisation talks brand themselves.

______-_-______ 4y ago

The post is about marketing and ad targeting. For Spotify to satisfy their question of a "brand built through personalization", Spotify would have had to do something like sign up for google/facebook ads, target the demographic of "music listeners" and convert enough users to end up with a successful business. That's not how spotify built their business. You're talking about their recommendation engine for users they already have, which is completely different.

libertine 4y ago
Exactly this. We also have to take into account that there's a lot of "misses" in those recommendation engines - which is normal. But when they nail it, people have positive emotions towards it, so it's a good feedback loop. Personalization would be to have Spotify recommend you only songs about expensive watches after you've searched for a Rolex on Google, with ads in the middle about Rolex ahaha.
- blueblob 4y ago
  Personalization would be to have Spotify give you ads for a Rolex right after you purchased a Rolex. At least the way that kind of thing usually works for me is that I always get the recommendations after the purchase (definitely not a Rolex for me).
splatcollision 4y ago
Spotify is exactly adtech, they have extremely targeted advertising for their free tier that even takes into account playlist names.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

evandale 4y ago

I agree Spotify is definitely built on personalization. The only time I subscribe to premium is when they offer me 3 months for $9.99, and they know enough to offer it to me in May when I start using premium for running or cycling. Then I cancel it in August, and they offer it to me again soon after where I subscribe again from October - December. Then it goes dark again until May hits and I'm offered 3 months for $9.99 again.

Sophistifunk 4y ago

The problem is, everybody hates all the ways in which spotify doesn't act sensibly and predictably. Just google for "spotify random broken" to spiral down a depressing rabbithole of a decade of forum posts about a feature so simple and still not implemented, that it's clearly being done on purpose; either to drive engagement or save on money paid out to labels and artists, your guess is as good as mine.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

"To the request to name a single brand based on personalisation, music brands like Pandora and Spotify are built on personalisation." As I read this article, this meaning of "personalisation" is not the one used by the authors. Tech companies like Spotify and Pandora are just intermediaries. They may help to "deliver" commercial product, or advertising, however they do not create the product referred to in this article. The article uses the term "personalised creative" to refer to product. Tech companies operate as middlemen and produce no content. They are dependent on others to produce it. This is the bait for computer users. Tech companies sell advertising services to companies that produce content. Tech companies gather data about individual computer users, e.g., web browsing histories. This is "personal" data. Tech companies allege this makes it especially effective and therefore valuable. The studies cited in the article suggest this is claim is false. Disney produces content. There is no shortage of personal data being collected and sold by tech companies which is available to Disney. The article highlights that, despite the availability of personal data collected by tech companies, Disney generally does not produce "personalised creative". In sum, the article is not about what "tech" companies do, it is about what content producers do. More specifically, it is about whether, based on available research, producers of creative should or should not attempt to use personal data about computer users collected by third parties in order to produce "personalised creative".

eikenberry 4y ago
> Tech companies like Spotify and Pandora are just intermediaries. They may help to "deliver" commercial product, or advertising, however they do not create the product. They do create a "product", the delivery system. This is a creative product as much as any of the music. A lot of software was written to allow this and all of that is the "product".