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I really wish Spotify would understand the difference between white noise and actual music, using Spotify on my smart speaker when I go to bed playing a continu

I really wish Spotify would understand the difference between white noise and actual music, using Spotify on my smart speaker when I go to bed playing a continual brown noise loop completely screws up the recommendation algorithm. YouTube has a similar issue. Viewers who watched "60 minutes of white noise" also enjoyed "8 hr tv noise loop". Yeah... thanks for the rec.

zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
My girlfriend's end of year thing was pretty funny. Showed whale songs, white noise, and other sleepy stuff as her top songs and artists.
tiffanyg 3y ago
Hey! 8 hours of TV static per night is the only way I can get some decent shut-eye! But then, I'm from 1950. Also, the soothing crackle makes transmissions from my home planet more distinctive, so I never miss any of the crucial orders relating to my mission: https://youtu.be/jjeUuakHsLw?t=29s https://youtu.be/jjeUuakHsLw?t=29s
mattigames 3y ago
Look spotify, I did it for you `if (!song.white_noise) { add_for_recommend_history_(song); }` In a more serious note YouTube has a similar problem, "Oh I looked recommendations for a drawing tablet to buy my friend", now till to the ends of time I get recommendations for drawing tablets, and if I had used the "Incognito mode" they show me ads despite me being a premium user, I want it incognito but not THAT much of incognito you geniuses at Google.
- trts 3y ago
  it would surprise me if they didn’t try to handle this. It is similar to the Christmas music in January problem. With white noise it is so easy to generate for free that likely 1000s of people are generating hordes of static content and uploading it to try to get a payout. And it’s probably not that easy to identify every track that is intended to be listened to as ambient noise. Ambient noise itself is a music genre.
dudus 3y ago
Turn on incognito mode on YouTube to watch these videos
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  Heck I just use YouTube-DL to rip tracks like that to MP3 and copy them to my phone to play directly. That said maybe OP just wanted to vent about Spotify rather than find solutions.
  - lacrimacida 3y ago
    Yeah, I youtube-dl audio tracks to stuff I frequently listen to and they end up in the downloads folder. So far it’s the simplest least invasive method I found on Ios
    - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
      Yeah there are a lot of 8 hour "music for studying" tracks I listen to (I like the ones which are mixes of music from the halo video games, with a fav being a mix of the ODST soundtrack with additional rain noises), and those are a prime candidate for ripping versus streaming every time, killing the phone's battery and ending up with ads when you are wandering away from your device. I use the VLC app on ios and transfer music using its wifi web interface, since my computers all run linux and can't easily transfer MP3s to the phone any other way.
      - ayewo 3y ago
        I use VLC on iOS as well, but primarily for videos. There’s the Decoupled app which is pretty neat for playing audio on iOS. You can transfer audio files using Wi-Fi.
        TaylorAlexander 3y ago
        oh cool thanks for the tip!
swozey 3y ago
Dude youtube drives me absolutely crazy. I fall asleep to it almost every night watching some documentary or something on say the medieval times or whatever. Specifically a channel I want to keep watching videos from. Then when I pop up awake at 3am cause of noises youtube's sent me to WW2/Hitler/Nazi videos. It never, ever fails. Sometimes I get sent to this one physics teachers video who I've never once clicked on, watched, or selected myself, but he has an INSANE amount of views like tens of millions. Like, youtube purposely sends videos to him. I forget who it is but it's a dude with long grey/white hair and a beard talking about physics I think from MIT but I dont remember it's been awhile. Why can't you keep me watching stuff related to what I'm watching?? How do I get from the Teutonic Knights to Hitler?? It's ALWAYS Hitler. Now i have to make sure I watch a channels playlists because I wind up in Hitler territory every other video if I don't.
- rapind 3y ago
  > Now i have to make sure I watch a channels playlists because I wind up in Hitler territory every other video if I don't. Godwin's law
  - mbreese 3y ago
    I mean, we are talking about the same genre: history documentaries. And there are plenty of WW2 documentaries on YouTube… so it’s not quite Godwin proper (no one is getting called a Nazi who wasn’t an actual 1930s-1940s Nazi). This is more Godwin adjacent… if you watch enough videos on a loop, you’ll eventually see a documentary about Nazis. To be fair, this is true of traditional cable TV too. There are a LOT of WW2 documentaries, so I don’t completely fault the algorithm here.
- kupopuffs 3y ago
  turn off autoplay
  - swozey 3y ago
    ??? Then I don't get a loop of videos to fall asleep to. Thats the entire point.
Dalewyn 3y ago
At the risk of sounding like a condescending asshole, maybe the problem is your offloading the responsibility of managing your playlist to a third party? I'm an ancient relic from the nether times who still manages his own locally stored audio files and playlists, so I simply can't relate to this beyond that if you play lazy games you will win lazy prizes. Nothing wrong with being lazy, of course. But if you want the power to have a satisfactory playlist you kind of need to own up to the responsibility for one.
- smt88 3y ago
  You don't sound like an asshole, but you do sound oblivious. There are tens of millions of songs released every week. It's literally impossible to find new music you like without recommendations. In the past, people would get recommendations from people they know. Now we have the help of algorithms. They're not perfect, but most people will find hundreds of songs from random artists they never would have listened to and their friends/family probably have never heard of. There's no manual way to do that without spending an enormous amount of time on it (which I say as someone who did that in the 90s/00s).
  - zaps 3y ago
    This. Old fogey over here too, and I would have stopped listening to any new music 15 years ago had it not been for streaming and recommendation algorithms.
    - ocdtrekkie 3y ago
      I find new music on FM radio. It's free, it's curated, and I can then buy songs to add to my playlists. The fact people pay money for something already being beamed to their house for free sometimes astounds me.
      - epiccoleman 3y ago
        Most of the music I like doesn't get played on any local FM station - not to mention the constant advertising on radio.
irjustin 3y ago
For what it's worth, you can pretty easily create your own white/brown/pink noise 24h (or any amount of time) in Audacity[0] it's a generator in the menu. [0] https://www.audacityteam.org/ https://www.audacityteam.org/
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mindcrime 3y ago
YouTube has a similar issue. Viewers who watched "60 minutes of white noise" also enjoyed "8 hr tv noise loop". Yeah... thanks for the rec. I feel ya. I usually fall asleep at night to some kind of "10 hour loop of blizzard and crackling fire noises" playing on Youtube... and now my YT recommendations are full of "10 hours of crackling fire", "10 hours of thunderstorm noises", etc. suggestions. Sadly YT is incapable of understanding that I only listen to that stuff when I'm trying to fall asleep and I have zero need of those videos any other time. groan I mean, sure, I can go in and hand edit my watch history to remove that stuff (and I do occasionally) but doing that constantly is a huge PITA. I wish they could figure out a way to fix this.
- wolpoli 3y ago
  I have gotten to a point of opening a video in private browsing mode when it's outside my typical interest.
  - extragood 3y ago
    I find myself doing the same, especially when searching for something that I am considering purchasing. I don't need Google, Youtube, Amazon, etc trying to sell me alternatives to whatever I've already made an informed decision on
- pault 3y ago
  There’s a website called mynoise that has a bunch of noise generators. No algorithms required.
  - mindcrime 3y ago
    Nice. I may switch to this for my night-time ambient noise. Thanks for the heads-up.
soziawa 3y ago
You can exclude certain playlists from the list of stuff that is considered when creating the recommendations. Tap the three dots on a playlist and tap "Exclude from taste profile".
rmuratov 3y ago
The same with Christmas music.

zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago

My girlfriend's end of year thing was pretty funny. Showed whale songs, white noise, and other sleepy stuff as her top songs and artists.

tiffanyg 3y ago

Hey! 8 hours of TV static per night is the only way I can get some decent shut-eye! But then, I'm from 1950. Also, the soothing crackle makes transmissions from my home planet more distinctive, so I never miss any of the crucial orders relating to my mission: https://youtu.be/jjeUuakHsLw?t=29s https://youtu.be/jjeUuakHsLw?t=29s

mattigames 3y ago

Look spotify, I did it for you `if (!song.white_noise) { add_for_recommend_history_(song); }` In a more serious note YouTube has a similar problem, "Oh I looked recommendations for a drawing tablet to buy my friend", now till to the ends of time I get recommendations for drawing tablets, and if I had used the "Incognito mode" they show me ads despite me being a premium user, I want it incognito but not THAT much of incognito you geniuses at Google.

trts 3y ago
it would surprise me if they didn’t try to handle this. It is similar to the Christmas music in January problem. With white noise it is so easy to generate for free that likely 1000s of people are generating hordes of static content and uploading it to try to get a payout. And it’s probably not that easy to identify every track that is intended to be listened to as ambient noise. Ambient noise itself is a music genre.

dudus 3y ago

Turn on incognito mode on YouTube to watch these videos

TaylorAlexander 3y ago
Heck I just use YouTube-DL to rip tracks like that to MP3 and copy them to my phone to play directly. That said maybe OP just wanted to vent about Spotify rather than find solutions.
- lacrimacida 3y ago
  Yeah, I youtube-dl audio tracks to stuff I frequently listen to and they end up in the downloads folder. So far it’s the simplest least invasive method I found on Ios
  - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
    Yeah there are a lot of 8 hour "music for studying" tracks I listen to (I like the ones which are mixes of music from the halo video games, with a fav being a mix of the ODST soundtrack with additional rain noises), and those are a prime candidate for ripping versus streaming every time, killing the phone's battery and ending up with ads when you are wandering away from your device. I use the VLC app on ios and transfer music using its wifi web interface, since my computers all run linux and can't easily transfer MP3s to the phone any other way.
    - ayewo 3y ago
      I use VLC on iOS as well, but primarily for videos. There’s the Decoupled app which is pretty neat for playing audio on iOS. You can transfer audio files using Wi-Fi.
      - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
        oh cool thanks for the tip!

swozey 3y ago

Dude youtube drives me absolutely crazy. I fall asleep to it almost every night watching some documentary or something on say the medieval times or whatever. Specifically a channel I want to keep watching videos from. Then when I pop up awake at 3am cause of noises youtube's sent me to WW2/Hitler/Nazi videos. It never, ever fails. Sometimes I get sent to this one physics teachers video who I've never once clicked on, watched, or selected myself, but he has an INSANE amount of views like tens of millions. Like, youtube purposely sends videos to him. I forget who it is but it's a dude with long grey/white hair and a beard talking about physics I think from MIT but I dont remember it's been awhile. Why can't you keep me watching stuff related to what I'm watching?? How do I get from the Teutonic Knights to Hitler?? It's ALWAYS Hitler. Now i have to make sure I watch a channels playlists because I wind up in Hitler territory every other video if I don't.

rapind 3y ago
> Now i have to make sure I watch a channels playlists because I wind up in Hitler territory every other video if I don't. Godwin's law
- mbreese 3y ago
  I mean, we are talking about the same genre: history documentaries. And there are plenty of WW2 documentaries on YouTube… so it’s not quite Godwin proper (no one is getting called a Nazi who wasn’t an actual 1930s-1940s Nazi). This is more Godwin adjacent… if you watch enough videos on a loop, you’ll eventually see a documentary about Nazis. To be fair, this is true of traditional cable TV too. There are a LOT of WW2 documentaries, so I don’t completely fault the algorithm here.
kupopuffs 3y ago
turn off autoplay
- swozey 3y ago
  ??? Then I don't get a loop of videos to fall asleep to. Thats the entire point.

Dalewyn 3y ago

At the risk of sounding like a condescending asshole, maybe the problem is your offloading the responsibility of managing your playlist to a third party? I'm an ancient relic from the nether times who still manages his own locally stored audio files and playlists, so I simply can't relate to this beyond that if you play lazy games you will win lazy prizes. Nothing wrong with being lazy, of course. But if you want the power to have a satisfactory playlist you kind of need to own up to the responsibility for one.

smt88 3y ago
You don't sound like an asshole, but you do sound oblivious. There are tens of millions of songs released every week. It's literally impossible to find new music you like without recommendations. In the past, people would get recommendations from people they know. Now we have the help of algorithms. They're not perfect, but most people will find hundreds of songs from random artists they never would have listened to and their friends/family probably have never heard of. There's no manual way to do that without spending an enormous amount of time on it (which I say as someone who did that in the 90s/00s).
- zaps 3y ago
  This. Old fogey over here too, and I would have stopped listening to any new music 15 years ago had it not been for streaming and recommendation algorithms.
  - ocdtrekkie 3y ago
    I find new music on FM radio. It's free, it's curated, and I can then buy songs to add to my playlists. The fact people pay money for something already being beamed to their house for free sometimes astounds me.
    - epiccoleman 3y ago
      Most of the music I like doesn't get played on any local FM station - not to mention the constant advertising on radio.

irjustin 3y ago

For what it's worth, you can pretty easily create your own white/brown/pink noise 24h (or any amount of time) in Audacity[0] it's a generator in the menu. [0] https://www.audacityteam.org/ https://www.audacityteam.org/

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mindcrime 3y ago

YouTube has a similar issue. Viewers who watched "60 minutes of white noise" also enjoyed "8 hr tv noise loop". Yeah... thanks for the rec. I feel ya. I usually fall asleep at night to some kind of "10 hour loop of blizzard and crackling fire noises" playing on Youtube... and now my YT recommendations are full of "10 hours of crackling fire", "10 hours of thunderstorm noises", etc. suggestions. Sadly YT is incapable of understanding that I only listen to that stuff when I'm trying to fall asleep and I have zero need of those videos any other time. groan I mean, sure, I can go in and hand edit my watch history to remove that stuff (and I do occasionally) but doing that constantly is a huge PITA. I wish they could figure out a way to fix this.

wolpoli 3y ago
I have gotten to a point of opening a video in private browsing mode when it's outside my typical interest.
- extragood 3y ago
  I find myself doing the same, especially when searching for something that I am considering purchasing. I don't need Google, Youtube, Amazon, etc trying to sell me alternatives to whatever I've already made an informed decision on
pault 3y ago
There’s a website called mynoise that has a bunch of noise generators. No algorithms required.
- mindcrime 3y ago
  Nice. I may switch to this for my night-time ambient noise. Thanks for the heads-up.

soziawa 3y ago

You can exclude certain playlists from the list of stuff that is considered when creating the recommendations. Tap the three dots on a playlist and tap "Exclude from taste profile".

rmuratov 3y ago

The same with Christmas music.