13 ms·

As a father of a young child, Spotify's algo's are completely useless to me. If their ML is so smart it should be able to determine that Row row row your boat d

by midasz 4y ago

As a father of a young child, Spotify's algo's are completely useless to me. If their ML is so smart it should be able to determine that Row row row your boat doesn't mix well with Anthrax. Wish I'd be able to toggle 'don't recommend kids music' somewhere.

hakanensari 4y ago
Don't these end up in separate mixes, though? My 13 year old makes a lot of grime requests on road trips etc. and now I have a separate grime mix under my top mixes.
- midasz 4y ago
  It does it relatively OK with the daily mixes, but daily drive and top of the year don't. That's why I don't really get it, they already know fairly well what kids music is so let me just toggle it off?
- 867-5309 4y ago
  driving to grime sounds like hell, that's parental dedication right there
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Can't be much worse than "Jenny" on loop for hours on end, heh.
- roywashere 4y ago
  My brother who has young kids did the thing where you can make a combined playlist with me. He has indeed kids music littered all over in the shared playlist but moreover he also listened to a 100 track audio book on Spotify (which was not a great experience since it was published as an album and did not have bookmark support). The algorithm thought: oh he must REALLY like that album because he keeps on playing tracks from it, and so chapters from this book were also in our combined playlist
- mjmj 4y ago
  They do, but recently my weekly discover is infused with kids songs. And it’s taken a few weeks ok ignoring those tracks to get them out.
lostlogin 4y ago
I abandoned my account, partly for this reason. Too much kids music damaged it.
bb101 4y ago
I agree. There are some playlists and songs I only listen to in the gym, and similar songs constantly float to the top of Spotify's recommendations for me due to gym being 3x week. I did consider creating another "gym-only" user on our Family plan, but Spotify should really have a way to create named contexts for the one user. e.g. commute, gym, run, working from home, on a plane, etc.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Hell, Spotify should use GPS tagging on your plays and determine "oh look, these songs are only played here, and always skipped elsewhere, hmmmm." But that is too complicated!
  - tarentel 4y ago
    I actually watched someone give a presentation at spotify on exactly this when I worked there. This was probably about 5 years or so ago. I have no idea what happened to that project. Probably the biggest issue would be getting people to give you location permissions but they also talked about working around that. It's a big org though they kill off ideas all the time.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      It seems easy enough to "sell" it to people listening. Location, speed based track selection.
- unyttigfjelltol 4y ago
  Pandora does this with 'stations'.
  - NIL8 4y ago
    There's a lot I like about Pandora and a lot I don't. The "stations" you mention can be pretty good. The problem I have is with the app itself. It's buggy and learning to use it well can be frustrating. A simple example would be when using the back arrow to return to where I was in the app. If I try to go back to a previous screen, it shrinks the app and when I resize it, Pandora restarts from scratch. This seems to take forever and it happens just about every time I use it. The only reason I haven't deleted it and switched to another app, is that I can't be bothered with all that while I'm working or driving (the only time I use it). Of course, there's other, more common issues like searching for a favourite song and only finding live sessions or worse, finding out they've stopped carrying a certain artist on my playlist.
JoshTriplett 4y ago
That sounds like a great argument for easy profile switching, along with an option in your play history for "move this play history item to this other profile".
chewz 4y ago
Both Spotify and Apple Music algos have no idea about music mood vs time of the day vs activity. Like late evening before sleep being perhaps not a good moment for heavy metal. And running not a right time for slow classical music. Which is weird in case of Apple Music because Apple knows exactly if I am sleeping, running or driving a car - just from reading my watch.
- ChildOfChaos 4y ago
  Isn't that more just you thing though? Why isn't late evening before sleep good for heavy metal? I listen to the same music I listen to all day before sleep if I had music on. The music I listen too doesn't change no matter where I am or the time of the day.
- huffmsa 4y ago
  What that really means is that they either: 1) aren't doing the sensor fusion we all think they are, out of inability to access the data. 2) the models (and therefore modelers) aren't good enough to use the data they have correctly.
  - chillchilla 4y ago
    Or 3) they run loads of A/B experiments to optimize engagement or some target metric and they've reached a local minima and are unable to escape it without a lot of political will or Product Managers willing to stick their necks out.
- geoduck14 4y ago
  >Both Spotify and Apple Music algos have no idea about music mood vs time of the day vs activity. You say that, but I attended a conference with Spotify- they are specifically working on that problem now.
  - AlecSchueler 4y ago
    If they're working on it then the point still stands that they don't currently have it as part of their product. Time of day aware recommendations is something YouTube seems to have had for years. It always knows what to give me up top based on if I'm sitting down for dinner or lunch or if I'm looking for an audiobook for bed etc
probably_wrong 4y ago
I used Spotify to play music at a children's party. I am still getting recommendations for "Happy Birthday" months later. According to Spotify, it goes very well with Sheryl Crow and R.E.M.
- AlecSchueler 4y ago
  Can be helpful to turn off watch history during such sessions, or to remove the videos from your history afterwards. Agreed that there should be an automated solution, but you can avoid it today will a small amount of work.
  - probably_wrong 4y ago
    Are we talking about the same Spotify? Because the only reference I found to removing songs from my recommendations is a thread from 2020 that says it is not possible. https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/How-do-I-delete-my-recently-played-history/td-p/4888038 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/How-do-I-delete-my...
    - wartijn_ 4y ago
      You can start a private session next time you have a birthday party, to prevent even more birthday songs being recommended. https://community.spotify.com/t5/FAQs/What-is-Private-Session-and-how-does-it-affect-my/ta-p/5275679 https://community.spotify.com/t5/FAQs/What-is-Private-Sessio...
      - ihaveajob 4y ago
        It sounds like a nightmare. Much like my YouTube suggestions, which now are mostly my kids' planet videos, and my wife's workout ones.
        InitialLastName 4y ago
        I set up the browser session we use as a TV with profiles entirely to prevent any more of my spouse's yoga videos from leaking into my carefully curated feed of machine shop footage and construction videos.
WithinReason 4y ago
You can turn off monitoring what you listen to for recommendations by launching a "Private session" in the app
- VBprogrammer 4y ago
  That's a good tip though I'm not sure that there is an option for it in the car when I most often get a request for nursery rhymes, or more recently Disney songs.
adamauckland 4y ago
Can't really complain if they offer Spotify Family which gives you 6 separate premium accounts, I think it's only double the cost of a normal Spotify account.
- midasz 4y ago
  So the solution is paying double so I can log out of my own account and into an account I created for my 2 year old so we can listen to a disney song? And when I want to listen to my own songs again then I have to log out of my kids account and back into my own?
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    Always those complaining customers ... (and I am back to caring for my own mp3 collection again and use spotify only for rare and new stuff)
  - adamauckland 4y ago
    Yes, if you want multiple accounts you pay for multiple accounts. It's a solved problem you just have to pay the $9 a month. I have two children, myself. I just installed second account on an old phone which has no SIM card in it, it has all the kids playlists and I don't have to worry about them getting recommended any of my 90s thrash metal. :)
- hakanensari 4y ago
  That unfortunately doesn't solve it. There will always be moments where kids will want to ask for songs on your Spotify, like you're renting a car and have your phone hooked up.
  - adamauckland 4y ago
    Click on your account dropdown in the top header, choose Private Session. Now nothing you listen to will affect your recommendations. Come on, guys, I'd expect better from HN than complaining about features which already exist. https://community.spotify.com/t5/FAQs/What-is-Private-Session-and-how-does-it-affect-my/ta-p/5275679 https://community.spotify.com/t5/FAQs/What-is-Private-Sessio...
PurpleRamen 4y ago
Seems to be an unsolved problem to train the algorithms for recognizing different situations. One recommendation for all roles the user has. Though, thinking about, it's probably unsolvable as long as the interfaces remain simple and focused on satisfying only the one user, not the different roles, which would complicated the interfaces.
- pelario 4y ago
  Spotify is missing user profiles, in the Netflix fashion.
  - dominotw 4y ago
    spotify is usually on people's personal device like a phone not on communal device at home like a TV.
    - txtsd 4y ago
      Speak for yourself. I use Spotify on my TV at home. Multiple people use it.
      - dominotw 4y ago
        rude response. i said 'usually' .
    - dotancohen 4y ago
      It should be noted that in a Tesla, changing the Driver Profile (stores settings like seat and mirror positions) also changes the logged in Spotify account.
    - mjmj 4y ago
      I would consider Alexa a communal device. Spotify is heavily used there in households. Source: worked on Alexa.
    - fersarr 4y ago
dotancohen 4y ago
> Row row row your boat doesn't mix well with Anthrax I'm not so sure about that. Have you heard Koяn's Shoots and Ladders? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU2k-U2Ze0o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU2k-U2Ze0o
winternett 4y ago
A lot of the time it's not an algorithm in charge. Most of the time now recommendations are based on who paid to promote their song or podcast. Algorithms cannot be left running totally when sponsored ads can be purchased on the fly by content creators and musicians unless a site is lying to ad buyers about ad effectiveness.
bradstewart 4y ago
I keep hearing this, but it hasn't happened to me yet. I wonder if it's because my Spotify history without kids is ~10 years vs ~2 years with? We listen to a lot of Disney music, etc in the living room on my account, but I've never had that type of thing show up in my Discover Weekly or any of the Daily Mix playlists. I will be very displeased if/when it does happen though.... Discover Weekly is a major reason I've paid Spotify for so long.
darkr 4y ago
Using the Spotify kids app is a solution to this problem.
fersarr 4y ago
THIS! People have been asking for different listening profiles for ages. But they keep ignoring those feature requests in their community websites.
- pards 4y ago
  Spotify has supported this for many years - it's called Spotify Premium Family[0]. You get 6 separate accounts for $16/mth. It is worth the price of admission just to keep my listening history / algo feed clean. [0]: https://www.spotify.com/us/family/ https://www.spotify.com/us/family/
h2odragon 4y ago
dunno, "Indians" could probably be made to work with "row, row, row your boat" lyrics.
ghostpepper 4y ago
I'm trying to avoid this outcome by playing as many different genres other than "kids music" as possible to my baby. Probably won't know whether it worked for a few years but in the mean time I get to listen to real music.
cycomanic 4y ago
Ha, my life exactly. Ever since my kids used my Spotify account to listen to music my discover weekly list has unbearable amounts of paw patrol, baby shark and others mixed in. Now to be fair it still puts in music that fits my taste as well (and often my kids also like that music too), and considering that this is one profile I don't know what it could do better.
schnable 4y ago
The easiest thing for them to do is simply exclude Kids music from their recs. Kids music doesn't benefit much from it anyway. Apple Music does this as do most video services.
discardedrefuse 4y ago
I feel like this could be easily solved by adding an "incognito mode" to the Spotify app.

by midasz 4y ago

hakanensari 4y ago

Don't these end up in separate mixes, though? My 13 year old makes a lot of grime requests on road trips etc. and now I have a separate grime mix under my top mixes.

midasz 4y ago
It does it relatively OK with the daily mixes, but daily drive and top of the year don't. That's why I don't really get it, they already know fairly well what kids music is so let me just toggle it off?
867-5309 4y ago
driving to grime sounds like hell, that's parental dedication right there
- bombcar 4y ago
  Can't be much worse than "Jenny" on loop for hours on end, heh.
roywashere 4y ago
My brother who has young kids did the thing where you can make a combined playlist with me. He has indeed kids music littered all over in the shared playlist but moreover he also listened to a 100 track audio book on Spotify (which was not a great experience since it was published as an album and did not have bookmark support). The algorithm thought: oh he must REALLY like that album because he keeps on playing tracks from it, and so chapters from this book were also in our combined playlist
mjmj 4y ago
They do, but recently my weekly discover is infused with kids songs. And it’s taken a few weeks ok ignoring those tracks to get them out.

lostlogin 4y ago

I abandoned my account, partly for this reason. Too much kids music damaged it.

bb101 4y ago

I agree. There are some playlists and songs I only listen to in the gym, and similar songs constantly float to the top of Spotify's recommendations for me due to gym being 3x week. I did consider creating another "gym-only" user on our Family plan, but Spotify should really have a way to create named contexts for the one user. e.g. commute, gym, run, working from home, on a plane, etc.

bombcar 4y ago
Hell, Spotify should use GPS tagging on your plays and determine "oh look, these songs are only played here, and always skipped elsewhere, hmmmm." But that is too complicated!
- tarentel 4y ago
  I actually watched someone give a presentation at spotify on exactly this when I worked there. This was probably about 5 years or so ago. I have no idea what happened to that project. Probably the biggest issue would be getting people to give you location permissions but they also talked about working around that. It's a big org though they kill off ideas all the time.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    It seems easy enough to "sell" it to people listening. Location, speed based track selection.
unyttigfjelltol 4y ago
Pandora does this with 'stations'.
- NIL8 4y ago
  There's a lot I like about Pandora and a lot I don't. The "stations" you mention can be pretty good. The problem I have is with the app itself. It's buggy and learning to use it well can be frustrating. A simple example would be when using the back arrow to return to where I was in the app. If I try to go back to a previous screen, it shrinks the app and when I resize it, Pandora restarts from scratch. This seems to take forever and it happens just about every time I use it. The only reason I haven't deleted it and switched to another app, is that I can't be bothered with all that while I'm working or driving (the only time I use it). Of course, there's other, more common issues like searching for a favourite song and only finding live sessions or worse, finding out they've stopped carrying a certain artist on my playlist.

JoshTriplett 4y ago

That sounds like a great argument for easy profile switching, along with an option in your play history for "move this play history item to this other profile".

chewz 4y ago

Both Spotify and Apple Music algos have no idea about music mood vs time of the day vs activity. Like late evening before sleep being perhaps not a good moment for heavy metal. And running not a right time for slow classical music. Which is weird in case of Apple Music because Apple knows exactly if I am sleeping, running or driving a car - just from reading my watch.

ChildOfChaos 4y ago
Isn't that more just you thing though? Why isn't late evening before sleep good for heavy metal? I listen to the same music I listen to all day before sleep if I had music on. The music I listen too doesn't change no matter where I am or the time of the day.
huffmsa 4y ago
What that really means is that they either: 1) aren't doing the sensor fusion we all think they are, out of inability to access the data. 2) the models (and therefore modelers) aren't good enough to use the data they have correctly.
- chillchilla 4y ago
  Or 3) they run loads of A/B experiments to optimize engagement or some target metric and they've reached a local minima and are unable to escape it without a lot of political will or Product Managers willing to stick their necks out.
geoduck14 4y ago
>Both Spotify and Apple Music algos have no idea about music mood vs time of the day vs activity. You say that, but I attended a conference with Spotify- they are specifically working on that problem now.
- AlecSchueler 4y ago
  If they're working on it then the point still stands that they don't currently have it as part of their product. Time of day aware recommendations is something YouTube seems to have had for years. It always knows what to give me up top based on if I'm sitting down for dinner or lunch or if I'm looking for an audiobook for bed etc

probably_wrong 4y ago

I used Spotify to play music at a children's party. I am still getting recommendations for "Happy Birthday" months later. According to Spotify, it goes very well with Sheryl Crow and R.E.M.

AlecSchueler 4y ago
Can be helpful to turn off watch history during such sessions, or to remove the videos from your history afterwards. Agreed that there should be an automated solution, but you can avoid it today will a small amount of work.
- probably_wrong 4y ago
  Are we talking about the same Spotify? Because the only reference I found to removing songs from my recommendations is a thread from 2020 that says it is not possible. https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/How-do-I-delete-my-recently-played-history/td-p/4888038 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/How-do-I-delete-my...
  - wartijn_ 4y ago
    You can start a private session next time you have a birthday party, to prevent even more birthday songs being recommended. https://community.spotify.com/t5/FAQs/What-is-Private-Session-and-how-does-it-affect-my/ta-p/5275679 https://community.spotify.com/t5/FAQs/What-is-Private-Sessio...
    - ihaveajob 4y ago
      It sounds like a nightmare. Much like my YouTube suggestions, which now are mostly my kids' planet videos, and my wife's workout ones.
      - InitialLastName 4y ago
        I set up the browser session we use as a TV with profiles entirely to prevent any more of my spouse's yoga videos from leaking into my carefully curated feed of machine shop footage and construction videos.

WithinReason 4y ago

You can turn off monitoring what you listen to for recommendations by launching a "Private session" in the app

VBprogrammer 4y ago
That's a good tip though I'm not sure that there is an option for it in the car when I most often get a request for nursery rhymes, or more recently Disney songs.

adamauckland 4y ago

Can't really complain if they offer Spotify Family which gives you 6 separate premium accounts, I think it's only double the cost of a normal Spotify account.

midasz 4y ago
So the solution is paying double so I can log out of my own account and into an account I created for my 2 year old so we can listen to a disney song? And when I want to listen to my own songs again then I have to log out of my kids account and back into my own?
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  Always those complaining customers ... (and I am back to caring for my own mp3 collection again and use spotify only for rare and new stuff)
- adamauckland 4y ago
  Yes, if you want multiple accounts you pay for multiple accounts. It's a solved problem you just have to pay the $9 a month. I have two children, myself. I just installed second account on an old phone which has no SIM card in it, it has all the kids playlists and I don't have to worry about them getting recommended any of my 90s thrash metal. :)
hakanensari 4y ago
That unfortunately doesn't solve it. There will always be moments where kids will want to ask for songs on your Spotify, like you're renting a car and have your phone hooked up.
- adamauckland 4y ago
  Click on your account dropdown in the top header, choose Private Session. Now nothing you listen to will affect your recommendations. Come on, guys, I'd expect better from HN than complaining about features which already exist. https://community.spotify.com/t5/FAQs/What-is-Private-Session-and-how-does-it-affect-my/ta-p/5275679 https://community.spotify.com/t5/FAQs/What-is-Private-Sessio...

PurpleRamen 4y ago

Seems to be an unsolved problem to train the algorithms for recognizing different situations. One recommendation for all roles the user has. Though, thinking about, it's probably unsolvable as long as the interfaces remain simple and focused on satisfying only the one user, not the different roles, which would complicated the interfaces.

pelario 4y ago
Spotify is missing user profiles, in the Netflix fashion.
- dominotw 4y ago
  spotify is usually on people's personal device like a phone not on communal device at home like a TV.
  - txtsd 4y ago
    Speak for yourself. I use Spotify on my TV at home. Multiple people use it.
    - dominotw 4y ago
      rude response. i said 'usually' .
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    It should be noted that in a Tesla, changing the Driver Profile (stores settings like seat and mirror positions) also changes the logged in Spotify account.
  - mjmj 4y ago
    I would consider Alexa a communal device. Spotify is heavily used there in households. Source: worked on Alexa.
  - fersarr 4y ago

dotancohen 4y ago

> Row row row your boat doesn't mix well with Anthrax I'm not so sure about that. Have you heard Koяn's Shoots and Ladders? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU2k-U2Ze0o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU2k-U2Ze0o

winternett 4y ago

A lot of the time it's not an algorithm in charge. Most of the time now recommendations are based on who paid to promote their song or podcast. Algorithms cannot be left running totally when sponsored ads can be purchased on the fly by content creators and musicians unless a site is lying to ad buyers about ad effectiveness.

bradstewart 4y ago

I keep hearing this, but it hasn't happened to me yet. I wonder if it's because my Spotify history without kids is ~10 years vs ~2 years with? We listen to a lot of Disney music, etc in the living room on my account, but I've never had that type of thing show up in my Discover Weekly or any of the Daily Mix playlists. I will be very displeased if/when it does happen though.... Discover Weekly is a major reason I've paid Spotify for so long.

darkr 4y ago

Using the Spotify kids app is a solution to this problem.

fersarr 4y ago

THIS! People have been asking for different listening profiles for ages. But they keep ignoring those feature requests in their community websites.

pards 4y ago
Spotify has supported this for many years - it's called Spotify Premium Family[0]. You get 6 separate accounts for $16/mth. It is worth the price of admission just to keep my listening history / algo feed clean. [0]: https://www.spotify.com/us/family/ https://www.spotify.com/us/family/

h2odragon 4y ago

dunno, "Indians" could probably be made to work with "row, row, row your boat" lyrics.

ghostpepper 4y ago

I'm trying to avoid this outcome by playing as many different genres other than "kids music" as possible to my baby. Probably won't know whether it worked for a few years but in the mean time I get to listen to real music.

cycomanic 4y ago

Ha, my life exactly. Ever since my kids used my Spotify account to listen to music my discover weekly list has unbearable amounts of paw patrol, baby shark and others mixed in. Now to be fair it still puts in music that fits my taste as well (and often my kids also like that music too), and considering that this is one profile I don't know what it could do better.

schnable 4y ago

The easiest thing for them to do is simply exclude Kids music from their recs. Kids music doesn't benefit much from it anyway. Apple Music does this as do most video services.

discardedrefuse 4y ago

I feel like this could be easily solved by adding an "incognito mode" to the Spotify app.