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I’ve thought this exact thing many times. However, I wonder if they do this because they’re not actually optimizing for user satisfaction, but for complete play
by bckr 3y ago
I’ve thought this exact thing many times. However, I wonder if they do this because they’re not actually optimizing for user satisfaction, but for complete plays, for financial reasons.
- lukasb 3y agoWhat financial reasons?
- bckr 3y agoOthers have speculated on this in the thread, and I concur with them.
- bowmessage 3y agoInteresting thought, but doesn't Spotify get my same monthly membership fee, whether I play 1 track or 1,000? Although, I suppose this line of thinking makes sense for ad-supported streaming, which is likely used by the majority of users.
- delusional 3y agoFinancially, I think they count a stream after 30 seconds, and they pay per stream, therefore they'd either want you to skip before 30 seconds (making it free for them) or otherwise spend the maximum time with the song (such that they only pay for 1 stream). The most expensive way for you to listen to spotify is to skip the song every 31 seconds.
- nerdponx 3y agoI wonder how this works with "grindcore" bands like Agoraphobic Nosebleed.
- numbp4d 3y agoThis is not how they pay out subscription $. They do not pay per stream. While the payout algorithm is highly complicated, essentially it is a % of subscription dollars distributed pro-rata by stream count to copyright holders (where a 1 stream is at least 30s of listening).
- delusional 3y agoAh, so consumption is entirely decoupled downstream payment? That's interesting. Thanks for telling me.
- numbp4d 3y agoConsumption is directly linked to ultimate payments by Spotify to copyright holders. However it is not done on a per stream basis. It is paid out of a pool of earnings on a pro-rata basis. Each copyright holder negotiates its own formulas with Spotify / others for payouts, however they all have some version of the pro-rata payout system. So in the sense of direct financial incentive, it would be best to drive customers toward music where the payout formulas are the lowest (e.g. their owned content), assuming it wouldn’t increase churn or reduce premium sign ups.
- davidktr 3y agoNo, complete plays is simply their measure of user satisfaction. If I like a song, I usually listen to it until the end. If I do not like a song, I usually skip it after a few seconds. How would you measure user satisfaction?
- mynameisvlad 3y agoSaid upthread, a much better metric would be use of the song outside of the generated playlist. Added to other playlists, added to library, listened to again hours or days later of your own accord, etc. Basically, in some way tied to a user action rather than the absence of one. I’m fairly open to music, I’ll likely listen to a song once if it’s on a playlist. But that doesn’t mean I liked the song, only that I gave it a shot. It certainly means I liked it more than the song I just skipped, sure, but it also doesn’t mean I necessarily want to hear it again.
- d0gbread 3y agoOn these AI generated playlists I'll actually skip songs even if I like them because I'm just cruising through the list, then might go and save a full album from the band to check out later, in full. So the selected behavior is really not representative in my case.
- p1esk 3y agoI'll actually skip songs even if I like them So you don’t add them to your library?
- neura 3y agoNot when it's recommending something it _should_ already know I like (and probably why it added it to the list). Also, sometimes, I may like something, but not add it to my personal list. Since there's no way to rate a song, I use likes only for songs I really like. I think the real point to be made here is that this is part of the inner workings of the system, that most users of the system are unaware of. Hell, this article and the ensuing discussions do not leave it completely clear how much of the system works. Like, I despise that when I create a new playlist with a name, it recommends a bunch of tracks based on the name of the playlist. Sometimes that'll be tracks with words in the name of the playlist in their name or some other odd metric, like it'll add songs from an artist that has a song that happens to be the name of the playlist. If you don't puzzle this out for yourself, you're possibly creating a very UN-optimized playlist for yourself.