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This might possibly be true for the types of music you named. Try it with world music in general (e.g,. south asian or middle eastern music) and you'll come acr

This might possibly be true for the types of music you named. Try it with world music in general (e.g,. south asian or middle eastern music) and you'll come across severe limitations and suggestions that simply do not work. Spotify doesn't even still carry even half the catalog of music from some of these regions. It's suggestions in (western) classical also have left a lot to be desired.

hackernewds 4y ago
which platform does this right though? YouTube is alright for Bollywood at least
- Parzival99 4y ago
  The premise (i.e., a singular 'music streaming' platform is what one should 'judge' Spotify against) is itself what I would reject in this case. e.g, for Indian classical, you're much better off with a whole constellation of blogs out there (and separately, certain music festival sites that host their recordings). Even national radio works a lot, lot better.
buro9 4y ago
The reason I run my Plex is all the world music, classical, and frankly obscure music. If Spotify could increase and sustain the catalogue then I'm pretty sure this would work. But it feels like the catalogue is smaller, churns more, and isn't as enriched in meta-data or listener behaviour to make it work yet. A network problem more than a technical one.
- Parzival99 4y ago
  Yes, agreed, it's definitely a much bigger network & economic problem than a technical one. Blogs, discogs and national radio actually work a lot better for me for discovery, simply because, as you say, Spotify may not even have the input data in order to then help me discover better music. Thing is, I'm not sure there is a desire (perhaps economically driven) to improve that catalogue as they would need to.
dmitriid 4y ago
When I was at Spotify 3-4 years ago, one of the problems was poor metadata for most music. There's a semi-internal project to be better at classification (https://everynoise.com/ https://everynoise.com/) but it has its own problems. And you can't rely on automatic classifications either. But then music providers don't give you proper info for the music they provide. It's a circular problem. And then it's a social problem, too. You may want to listen to music that other people that listen to your music do... But then you might not want to do that. It's a mess.

hackernewds 4y ago

which platform does this right though? YouTube is alright for Bollywood at least

Parzival99 4y ago
The premise (i.e., a singular 'music streaming' platform is what one should 'judge' Spotify against) is itself what I would reject in this case. e.g, for Indian classical, you're much better off with a whole constellation of blogs out there (and separately, certain music festival sites that host their recordings). Even national radio works a lot, lot better.

buro9 4y ago

The reason I run my Plex is all the world music, classical, and frankly obscure music. If Spotify could increase and sustain the catalogue then I'm pretty sure this would work. But it feels like the catalogue is smaller, churns more, and isn't as enriched in meta-data or listener behaviour to make it work yet. A network problem more than a technical one.

Parzival99 4y ago
Yes, agreed, it's definitely a much bigger network & economic problem than a technical one. Blogs, discogs and national radio actually work a lot better for me for discovery, simply because, as you say, Spotify may not even have the input data in order to then help me discover better music. Thing is, I'm not sure there is a desire (perhaps economically driven) to improve that catalogue as they would need to.

dmitriid 4y ago

When I was at Spotify 3-4 years ago, one of the problems was poor metadata for most music. There's a semi-internal project to be better at classification (https://everynoise.com/ https://everynoise.com/) but it has its own problems. And you can't rely on automatic classifications either. But then music providers don't give you proper info for the music they provide. It's a circular problem. And then it's a social problem, too. You may want to listen to music that other people that listen to your music do... But then you might not want to do that. It's a mess.