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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 peo

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).
    - LigmaYC 4y ago
      Fifth, Spotify recommendations have only ever given me 1 song that I liked over the 3 years I used spotify.
      - lokedhs 4y ago
        At this point adding numbers to the people agreeing seems pointless, but I'm also in this cat3egory. Sure, I've had some good recommendations, but I'd expect any recommendation engine to do that just by chance. What I can say is that Spotify has never proposed something truly new and interesting to me. If I listen to a lot of metal, it'll recommend me the most bland stuff in the same genre. What's even worse is that it keeps playing the same songs over and over again. It's like the recommendation engine just gives up and starts repeating its suggestions again.
        _carbyau_ 4y ago
        Your last paragraph is why I got rid of Spotify. I like music to move me. It was amazing how I could start a run of upbeat, pumping, specifically chosen songs and then have the recommendation engine suggest 30 minutes of cruisy blandness.. I simply gave up on it. Why have access to everything when I only got the crap. Going back to my personal collection increased my good/bad song ratio considerably.
- jasonlotito 4y ago
  That's fine. It doesn't change my opinion, nor my sentiment. If Spotify's recommendation engine wasn't as good as it was, it would not have the users it has, and would probably have been eaten up by now. Nothing anyone has said has shaken that belief, nor offered up anything worthwhile.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    >It doesn't change my opinion, nor my sentiment "It" being reality? >If Spotify's recommendation engine wasn't as good as it was, it would not have the users it has Now that's just confirmation bias + circular logic. A streaming service can have users regardless of how good its recommendation engine is. YouTube has crappy recommendation (and has had worse for most of the time it existed) but tons of users. For Pandora and Spotify, merely offering a convenient way to stream music, a free tier, and a big catalog, was enough. You seem convinced of some bizarro idea that a media/streaming service can only succeed based on its recommendation engine. Where did you get that from?
prawn 4y ago
I've found Spotify's recommendations to be brilliant. Easily the best music-related thing I've been introduced to in 10-20 years. I'll often open Discover Weekly and end up favouriting more than half of the suggestions and only not favouriting the rest because I'm feeling pickier given the success rate. It's helped me discover loads of new artists and tracks. Maybe it varies dramatically by genre?
- mbreese 4y ago
  Apple Music (well, iTunes at the time) was pretty good. But that was in the era where you bought music, so they had a full profile of what you liked. More importantly, with your iPod, they knew what you actually played, no matter how obscure. Now, with streaming, this is much harder problem because the only signals you get are likes and play time, but this signal is a lot more noisy than music you would spend real money on.
- byb 4y ago
  It may vary well work best by genre, or not cater to people who have gone through spaghettification (insist on subdividing genres infinitely) with their music. For example, take the "Phonk" genre, which I only was introduced to due to the Ukrainian war. To mean these recommendations give me a lot of new music to listen to. But then you have people lamenting that "Phonk" has really been overtaken by "Drift Phonk". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAV7hnCB_ZE&ab_channel=yokai https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAV7hnCB_ZE&ab_channel=yokai On the other hand, I personally enjoy albums and songs major artist after they achieve critical success, when they establish their signature sound, like David Bowie(1970-1983), Stevie Wonder (1972-1976), or Peter Gabriel(1986-1992), but if I "like" any of these songs on Spotify, it means I get their entire catalog mixed in my daily mixes, and if they ever release a live album, those tracks show up. This is not what I want.
  - lovingCranberry 4y ago
    I find the video you linked awful. Music genres change, that's nothing new at all. Just look at the type of trance from the early 2000s and compare it to today's trance. It's a completely different sound. Would the author also complain about "progressive trance" taking over "trance"? It's natural that some sub genres might become more popular, while others lose listeners relative to the newcomers. Same happened in techno, rap etc. While Spotify might accelerate this process through a positive feedback loop, this video is just another form of gatekeeping and saying "I knew XYZ before it was cool".
iratewizard 4y ago
You're hearing it from me now too. The music they recommend me is awful and only tangentially related to what I like.
coldtea 4y ago
>No, they are NOT successful for the reasons you state. Apple Music does that. Which is neither here nor there. Apple music came later, and Spotify already had a headstart, a good UI, a good selection, and a good free plan. Spotify, Pandora caught on because they were the first good streaming solutions, at the time bandwidth, mobile phones, etc, were in place and ripe for streaming. Not because of their recommendations...
TylerE 4y ago
Nth. Spotify recommendations suck if you have non-mainstream tastes.
rendall 4y ago
> You would be the first person I've heard say that. Everyone I ever spoken to about this loves Spotify's recommendations. That's not an argument
heavyset_go 4y ago
Last.fm's recommendations were better even 15 years ago. I was spoiled by them, and that's the reason I don't pay for or use Spotify despite wanting to like it. The recommendations are bad compared to other options.
vsef 4y ago
I use Spotify everyday and think it's great but I ignore the garbage recommendation features. Useless.
hobs 4y ago
Spotify would not stop recommending me the same NFT avatar trash even though I did ever negative signal I could do it, reported the artist, whatever, no matter what I had no choice in a third of my playlists containing this ninny. Canceled and would not consider a recommendation based service that does not let me explicitly remove something from being recommended.

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).
  - LigmaYC 4y ago
    Fifth, Spotify recommendations have only ever given me 1 song that I liked over the 3 years I used spotify.
    - lokedhs 4y ago
      At this point adding numbers to the people agreeing seems pointless, but I'm also in this cat3egory. Sure, I've had some good recommendations, but I'd expect any recommendation engine to do that just by chance. What I can say is that Spotify has never proposed something truly new and interesting to me. If I listen to a lot of metal, it'll recommend me the most bland stuff in the same genre. What's even worse is that it keeps playing the same songs over and over again. It's like the recommendation engine just gives up and starts repeating its suggestions again.
      - _carbyau_ 4y ago
        Your last paragraph is why I got rid of Spotify. I like music to move me. It was amazing how I could start a run of upbeat, pumping, specifically chosen songs and then have the recommendation engine suggest 30 minutes of cruisy blandness.. I simply gave up on it. Why have access to everything when I only got the crap. Going back to my personal collection increased my good/bad song ratio considerably.
jasonlotito 4y ago
That's fine. It doesn't change my opinion, nor my sentiment. If Spotify's recommendation engine wasn't as good as it was, it would not have the users it has, and would probably have been eaten up by now. Nothing anyone has said has shaken that belief, nor offered up anything worthwhile.
- coldtea 4y ago
  >It doesn't change my opinion, nor my sentiment "It" being reality? >If Spotify's recommendation engine wasn't as good as it was, it would not have the users it has Now that's just confirmation bias + circular logic. A streaming service can have users regardless of how good its recommendation engine is. YouTube has crappy recommendation (and has had worse for most of the time it existed) but tons of users. For Pandora and Spotify, merely offering a convenient way to stream music, a free tier, and a big catalog, was enough. You seem convinced of some bizarro idea that a media/streaming service can only succeed based on its recommendation engine. Where did you get that from?

prawn 4y ago

I've found Spotify's recommendations to be brilliant. Easily the best music-related thing I've been introduced to in 10-20 years. I'll often open Discover Weekly and end up favouriting more than half of the suggestions and only not favouriting the rest because I'm feeling pickier given the success rate. It's helped me discover loads of new artists and tracks. Maybe it varies dramatically by genre?

mbreese 4y ago
Apple Music (well, iTunes at the time) was pretty good. But that was in the era where you bought music, so they had a full profile of what you liked. More importantly, with your iPod, they knew what you actually played, no matter how obscure. Now, with streaming, this is much harder problem because the only signals you get are likes and play time, but this signal is a lot more noisy than music you would spend real money on.
byb 4y ago
It may vary well work best by genre, or not cater to people who have gone through spaghettification (insist on subdividing genres infinitely) with their music. For example, take the "Phonk" genre, which I only was introduced to due to the Ukrainian war. To mean these recommendations give me a lot of new music to listen to. But then you have people lamenting that "Phonk" has really been overtaken by "Drift Phonk". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAV7hnCB_ZE&ab_channel=yokai https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAV7hnCB_ZE&ab_channel=yokai On the other hand, I personally enjoy albums and songs major artist after they achieve critical success, when they establish their signature sound, like David Bowie(1970-1983), Stevie Wonder (1972-1976), or Peter Gabriel(1986-1992), but if I "like" any of these songs on Spotify, it means I get their entire catalog mixed in my daily mixes, and if they ever release a live album, those tracks show up. This is not what I want.
- lovingCranberry 4y ago
  I find the video you linked awful. Music genres change, that's nothing new at all. Just look at the type of trance from the early 2000s and compare it to today's trance. It's a completely different sound. Would the author also complain about "progressive trance" taking over "trance"? It's natural that some sub genres might become more popular, while others lose listeners relative to the newcomers. Same happened in techno, rap etc. While Spotify might accelerate this process through a positive feedback loop, this video is just another form of gatekeeping and saying "I knew XYZ before it was cool".

iratewizard 4y ago

You're hearing it from me now too. The music they recommend me is awful and only tangentially related to what I like.

coldtea 4y ago

>No, they are NOT successful for the reasons you state. Apple Music does that. Which is neither here nor there. Apple music came later, and Spotify already had a headstart, a good UI, a good selection, and a good free plan. Spotify, Pandora caught on because they were the first good streaming solutions, at the time bandwidth, mobile phones, etc, were in place and ripe for streaming. Not because of their recommendations...

TylerE 4y ago

Nth. Spotify recommendations suck if you have non-mainstream tastes.

rendall 4y ago

> You would be the first person I've heard say that. Everyone I ever spoken to about this loves Spotify's recommendations. That's not an argument

heavyset_go 4y ago

Last.fm's recommendations were better even 15 years ago. I was spoiled by them, and that's the reason I don't pay for or use Spotify despite wanting to like it. The recommendations are bad compared to other options.

vsef 4y ago

I use Spotify everyday and think it's great but I ignore the garbage recommendation features. Useless.

hobs 4y ago

Spotify would not stop recommending me the same NFT avatar trash even though I did ever negative signal I could do it, reported the artist, whatever, no matter what I had no choice in a third of my playlists containing this ninny. Canceled and would not consider a recommendation based service that does not let me explicitly remove something from being recommended.