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I recently just started using psst which is a Spotify GUI that's much lighter. When you right click a song and go to show similar tracks u get an array of slide

by h4ch1 2y ago

I recently just started using psst which is a Spotify GUI that's much lighter. When you right click a song and go to show similar tracks u get an array of sliders corresponding to the audio analysis/features like valence, danceability, energy, etc to tweak the recommendations. It made a light and day difference for music discoverability for me, while the default spotify radio keeps giving me songs i skip instantly multiple times along with songs I've listened to a hundred times, doing this through the API, is 100x better. I've discovered 30 new songs that I love this past week while that number has been steadily dwindling for the past 6 months using Spotify.

fallinditch 2y ago
I've always wanted a slider that gives increasingly eclectic and random selections for the radio playlists. Psst sounds good, I'll try it, hopefully the API changes have not affected it.
- mr_monkey 2y ago
  We're also working on that very same idea on our open-source music discovery platform ListenBrainz: https://listenbrainz.org/explore/lb-radio/ https://listenbrainz.org/explore/lb-radio/ Basically because we had the same gripes about Spotify's "one size fits all" approach ourselves and wanted to develop something better.
  - fallinditch 2y ago
    Spotify has enabled fabulous and powerful music discovery experiences for me. For sure it's not perfect and there are many ways to discover music - I'm really glad that you and others are working on new ideas in this space. But I reckon it will be hard to compete with Spotify's algorithmic playlisting expertise and resources. It would be nice if Spotify added some deeper playlisting functionality tools to give users a bit more control. However, for me, algorithms are just tools and the best 'radio' will always come from DJs and other humans making mixes and music programs.
adriand 2y ago
Thanks for this suggestion, I’ll try it. I have also been frustrated with Spotify for replaying the same stuff over and over. I tried their new AI playlist feature and prompted it for “tracks with fewer than 10,000 plays”; it correctly named the playlist something with “underground” in the title but failed at delivering on the premise. That’s really what I want - stuff that is similar to what I’m into in terms of genre, but obscure and fresh. There have to be thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of tracks it could try out on me, but it seems to recycle the same 100 or so tracks over and over again.
- wvenable 2y ago
  I've started to wonder how much Spotify is gaming the system. For example, by playing tracks lower royalties over tracks with higher ones. There could be some backdoor payola and we would never know.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    It is amazing to me that the markets are rewarding an audio streaming business that has yet to publish an annual profit after 20 years: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-technology/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-techn... https://companiesmarketcap.com/spotify/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/spotify/marketcap/ One would think Spotify’s potential is capped by their expenses (in the hands of the music owners - Universal/Warner/Sony), and the pricing of their competitors, with the deepest pockets in the world (Apple/Alphabet/Amazon).
    - Retric 2y ago
      That chart shows a profit in 2024, and new investors don’t necessarily care about long term history. Tech monopolies have history been so valuable it’s not an unreasonable bet. A biased algorithm gives them increasing power over time.
      - lotsofpulp 2y ago
HelloUsername 2y ago
https://github.com/jpochyla/psst/issues/561 https://github.com/jpochyla/psst/issues/561
- karel-3d 2y ago
  Yeah it uses exactly those endpoints that are being deprecated for the feature that the parent comment is referencing. https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/reference/get-recommendations https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/referenc... https://github.com/jpochyla/psst/blob/69314f9fe8e86d57a678ab333b08ab3ffcf2a3bb/psst-gui/src/webapi/client.rs#L1389 https://github.com/jpochyla/psst/blob/69314f9fe8e86d57a678ab...
oezi 2y ago
Thanks for the suggestion of trying psst. It is nice to see some innovation! Can you explain how you use the recommendation feature? What does it mean to enable one of the checkboxes based on a certain song I like? Will it override the 'liveness' or 'danceability' of original song or emphasize that this aspect is particular important to match to the original song? Two important things that psst needs to improve is reducing clicks when switching songs and showing album/song icons for each song.
- h4ch1 2y ago
  Without having looked at the implementation, I am pretty sure the baseline song recommendations remain ie: if I change those sliders while on the recommended tracks page, it'll apply a filter over all the recommended tracks of the song depending on my input. The results I get are similar in genres/feeling mostly to the root dong, just feeling more in line with my settings. Again, this is just anecdotal, will have to look at how psst does it to be a 100% sure.
literallyroy 2y ago
Psst is excellent, I generally use it because it uses about 1/6 the memory (50MB vs 300MB). Perhaps someone knowledgeable in Rust can help figure out this bug: https://github.com/jpochyla/psst/issues/348 https://github.com/jpochyla/psst/issues/348 Solid code base for early Rust contributions IMO.

by h4ch1 2y ago

fallinditch 2y ago

I've always wanted a slider that gives increasingly eclectic and random selections for the radio playlists. Psst sounds good, I'll try it, hopefully the API changes have not affected it.

mr_monkey 2y ago
We're also working on that very same idea on our open-source music discovery platform ListenBrainz: https://listenbrainz.org/explore/lb-radio/ https://listenbrainz.org/explore/lb-radio/ Basically because we had the same gripes about Spotify's "one size fits all" approach ourselves and wanted to develop something better.
- fallinditch 2y ago
  Spotify has enabled fabulous and powerful music discovery experiences for me. For sure it's not perfect and there are many ways to discover music - I'm really glad that you and others are working on new ideas in this space. But I reckon it will be hard to compete with Spotify's algorithmic playlisting expertise and resources. It would be nice if Spotify added some deeper playlisting functionality tools to give users a bit more control. However, for me, algorithms are just tools and the best 'radio' will always come from DJs and other humans making mixes and music programs.

adriand 2y ago

Thanks for this suggestion, I’ll try it. I have also been frustrated with Spotify for replaying the same stuff over and over. I tried their new AI playlist feature and prompted it for “tracks with fewer than 10,000 plays”; it correctly named the playlist something with “underground” in the title but failed at delivering on the premise. That’s really what I want - stuff that is similar to what I’m into in terms of genre, but obscure and fresh. There have to be thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of tracks it could try out on me, but it seems to recycle the same 100 or so tracks over and over again.

wvenable 2y ago
I've started to wonder how much Spotify is gaming the system. For example, by playing tracks lower royalties over tracks with higher ones. There could be some backdoor payola and we would never know.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  It is amazing to me that the markets are rewarding an audio streaming business that has yet to publish an annual profit after 20 years: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-technology/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-techn... https://companiesmarketcap.com/spotify/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/spotify/marketcap/ One would think Spotify’s potential is capped by their expenses (in the hands of the music owners - Universal/Warner/Sony), and the pricing of their competitors, with the deepest pockets in the world (Apple/Alphabet/Amazon).
  - Retric 2y ago
    That chart shows a profit in 2024, and new investors don’t necessarily care about long term history. Tech monopolies have history been so valuable it’s not an unreasonable bet. A biased algorithm gives them increasing power over time.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago

HelloUsername 2y ago

https://github.com/jpochyla/psst/issues/561 https://github.com/jpochyla/psst/issues/561

karel-3d 2y ago
Yeah it uses exactly those endpoints that are being deprecated for the feature that the parent comment is referencing. https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/reference/get-recommendations https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/referenc... https://github.com/jpochyla/psst/blob/69314f9fe8e86d57a678ab333b08ab3ffcf2a3bb/psst-gui/src/webapi/client.rs#L1389 https://github.com/jpochyla/psst/blob/69314f9fe8e86d57a678ab...

oezi 2y ago

Thanks for the suggestion of trying psst. It is nice to see some innovation! Can you explain how you use the recommendation feature? What does it mean to enable one of the checkboxes based on a certain song I like? Will it override the 'liveness' or 'danceability' of original song or emphasize that this aspect is particular important to match to the original song? Two important things that psst needs to improve is reducing clicks when switching songs and showing album/song icons for each song.

h4ch1 2y ago
Without having looked at the implementation, I am pretty sure the baseline song recommendations remain ie: if I change those sliders while on the recommended tracks page, it'll apply a filter over all the recommended tracks of the song depending on my input. The results I get are similar in genres/feeling mostly to the root dong, just feeling more in line with my settings. Again, this is just anecdotal, will have to look at how psst does it to be a 100% sure.

literallyroy 2y ago

Psst is excellent, I generally use it because it uses about 1/6 the memory (50MB vs 300MB). Perhaps someone knowledgeable in Rust can help figure out this bug: https://github.com/jpochyla/psst/issues/348 https://github.com/jpochyla/psst/issues/348 Solid code base for early Rust contributions IMO.