4 ms·
I discover music through Spotify. You could say "Spotify's algorithm", but you need to help it. It is more their links between artists that I use, and the gene
by sshine 4y ago
I discover music through Spotify.
You could say "Spotify's algorithm", but you need to help it. It is more their links between artists that I use, and the general availability of a lot of artists. (Not as many as on YouTube.)
If I have found a lot of great, new music this week, next week's "Discover Weekly" and the albums recommended in "Home" are better.
Most of the music I find is by looking at the tracks I'm already playing: Maybe I only heard one song from an artist, maybe I only ever listened to their old stuff, or maybe I only ever listened to their new stuff. Maybe it's a remix, and the featured artist is the one I like, so I listen to their top songs.
I've learned that whatever one-hit wonder people have -- the song that everyone plays 10 times more often than their second-most popular song -- is often a good choice if you're assessing a musician. But if you like them, it's also likely that your favorite song isn't everyone else's.
I mostly listen to electronic music without vocals, so I can play a lot of random music while I work, and occasionally something sticks out in a good or a bad way.
Last year I spent 65000 minutes listening to music on Spotify.
- technonerd 4y agoI never really liked exploring music on Spotify the back catalog was non existent for DJs putting out amazing stuff in the 90s and 00s. You get like 2010 all the way to current year. Worthless.
- Larrikin 4y agoDo you need algorithmically curated music if you're only interested in music that is decades old, especially DJ remixes? Looking through historic DJ set list or even just listening to new sets from old DJs seems like it would be much faster. Spotify is great for recommendations of licensed content that is new. I rarely feel there is some small or big hit I'm missing in the genres I like, but it is heavily supplanted with the use of SoundCloud for sets and music that will never legally be licensed and on the platform.
- wdutch 4y agoI make extensive use of the Spotify algorithm to discover the music I want to listen to based on my own idea of what it should sound like. For example if I want some music with a house beat but folky feel to it, then I'll create a playlist and 'seed' it with some house music and some folk music; about 10 tracks total. Then I'll scroll to the very bottom of the playlist and go through the Recommended Songs. Spotify is often pretty good at finding an 'average' of the different songs added to the playlist. I add the songs that fit my expectations to the playlist which further refines the recommendations. After I've added about 10 songs I'll remove the songs I used to seed the recommendations. Sometimes this method doesn't work because maybe the 'average' you're looking for doesn't exist or Spotify hasn't connected the dots. Sometimes a track in the 'seed' can dominate the recommendations so try removing tracks that seem to skew the results or adding more from the opposite genre.
- wartijn_ 4y agoThat sounds like a fun way to discover new music. I'm definitely going to try that.
- sshine 4y agoI also make use of “song radio”, i.e. auto-generate a playlist based on a single song. I might call your method “playlist radio”, and I don’t use it as often. However, judging by how many songs on these recommender radios that I’ve already liked, I think that recommendations are somehow always based on a vector.