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Even before the rise of AI music, they started "customizing" playlists based on the algorithm, so that you see different songs compared to someone else who subs

Even before the rise of AI music, they started "customizing" playlists based on the algorithm, so that you see different songs compared to someone else who subscribes to the same playlist. This was one of the reasons why I left Spotify. There are hundreds of posts about this issue on the Spotify community site, e.g. https://community.spotify.com/t5/Content-Questions/Option-to-disable-Made-for-you-feature/m-p/5433790 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Content-Questions/Option-to... https://community.spotify.com/t5/Content-Questions/Spotify-Playlist-has-different-songs-to-a-friends/td-p/5489545 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Content-Questions/Spotify-P... https://community.spotify.com/t5/Your-Library/I-Sent-a-Playlist-To-My-Friend-and-it-Has-Different-Songs/td-p/5323106 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Your-Library/I-Sent-a-Playl...

FrequentLurker 2y ago
So that is why I have been unable to discover new songs on spotify like before. Guess I will move over to yt music.
- red-iron-pine 2y ago
  nah YT music is cappy too. just crappy in a different way.
b1n 2y ago
Cory Doctrow goes into the reasons behind the rise of playlists and the control it gives the platform over their users/artists. Worth a read. https://craphound.com/category/internetcon/ https://craphound.com/category/internetcon/
macNchz 2y ago
I really don’t like this feature—I enjoyed their genre/mood oriented running playlists explicitly as a way to listen to stuff well outside of my usual listening while out on runs, but since they made them “made for you” they’re strictly worse. Relentless algorithmic sameness is everywhere and I’m sick of it. Spotify is also funny for maintaining the existence of their feature suggestion community boards while just utterly stonewalling for years while thousands of paying users beg for stuff like…being able to hide a section of the home screen, or not have long-standing playlists magically change.
- davesmylie 2y ago
  > maintaining the existence of their feature suggestion community boards while just utterly stonewalling for years while thousands of paying users beg for stuff my one I've been asking them for years for is the ability to quickly swap profiles on a family plan. (first world problem i know!) My daughter, not being able to swap to her profile on our main media machine has utterly destroyed the utility of Discover Weekly for me, and for a time that was my favorite spotify feature.
- viraptor 2y ago
  My super basic feature request is to be able to report wrong metadata. It's just impossible right now unless you're the artist as far as I can tell. For example Dreaming Bull (https://open.spotify.com/artist/7s6vcAnBioL2PJisG8YMww https://open.spotify.com/artist/7s6vcAnBioL2PJisG8YMww) with a single actual album in 2014 is either taken over by or merged with some random crap. But Spotify doesn't care enough to even let me let them know. (Yes, I filled out the contact form multiple times - it's ignored)
  - mastazi 2y ago
    I had this same problem in Tidal, where attribution errors are really common even for big artists. For example, look under singles here https://listen.tidal.com/artist/8112 https://listen.tidal.com/artist/8112 and look here both in the albums and singles sections https://listen.tidal.com/artist/34575 https://listen.tidal.com/artist/34575 At least on Tidal you can email customer support about it, but they are slow (probably under staffed) and it usually takes weeks for them to fix things and now with the constant flood of AI-made music, the crap accumulates faster than it can be cleaned up. I ended up moving on to Apple Music where the situation in relation to attribution is not as bad. I chose Apple Music because it's among the services that has better rates for artists, although lower than Tidal https://virpp.com/hello/music-streaming-payouts-comparison-a-guide-for-musicians/ https://virpp.com/hello/music-streaming-payouts-comparison-a...
- myst 2y ago
  The solution is simple: stop paying.
grugagag 2y ago
It's funny how the Spotify moderators are gaslighting people. Users complaining about some bad feature and moderators ignoring the issue and responding to seemingly another question. I've noticed this phenomenon cropping up 4-5 years ago on Microsoft forums, now it's across the spectrum. I don't blame the people who are paid to do it, I understand they have to do this for a paycheck but it's such a shitty thing to do.
827a 2y ago
One thing I've seen recently: My daylist will be named the same, but have (usually very slightly) different songs between different platforms (e.g. Mac vs iPhone). Not the end of the world, but very strange.
discostrings 2y ago
Similarly to making so many of the playlists "made for you", they've completely ruined the "radio" feature. You used to be able to select the radio option on a song, artist, or playlist and get a playlist of songs that seemed to be a good mix of musically similar and being liked by people who liked the selected starting point. Starting at some point around 2 years ago (it seems they A-B tested this for a while because it went back and forth), the radio option became so highly customized to your user account that most songs it plays will be ones you've heard a billion times, even songs that aren't remotely similar in any way other than that you like them. And the playlist radio option, which was the most powerful one for discovery, has been completely removed. I used the radio option for years to discover new music, and I really loved it. Now I feel a twinge of sadness mixed with rage when my memories of the good days get me to open Spotify and I remember what it's become.
- subpixel 2y ago
  The tests must reveal what is easily deduced: most, nearly all people do not enjoy much variety. They want to think they do, but their actions prove otherwise. This sucks for you and me but is Spotify giving the masses what they actually enjoy.
  - conception 2y ago
    A coworker was stunned that my most listened to song for the year was like 40 plays or so. Hers? Over 800.
    - aworks 2y ago
      Interesting way to analyze listening. From last year's last.fm data, I played my top track 31 times. And that seems like a lot to me.
    - P-Nuts 2y ago
      Many years ago my most listened song (on ripped CDs in iTunes) had a few thousand plays because I turned off my headphones (analogue wireless!) while I had a track on repeat, only actually planning to listen to it a second time, and went on holiday for a week.
ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 2y ago
There was plenty of "AI music" in 2022, and "Discover Weekly" has been broken for almost a decade, IMO.
amanzi 2y ago
This is why so many playlists I look at all have the same songs in them! I have had to start marking songs that I like to not be recommended. Although I just looked at Spotify to figure out how I've done this in the past, and I can see no such option. So I don't know how I did this previously!?

FrequentLurker 2y ago

So that is why I have been unable to discover new songs on spotify like before. Guess I will move over to yt music.

red-iron-pine 2y ago
nah YT music is cappy too. just crappy in a different way.

b1n 2y ago

Cory Doctrow goes into the reasons behind the rise of playlists and the control it gives the platform over their users/artists. Worth a read. https://craphound.com/category/internetcon/ https://craphound.com/category/internetcon/

macNchz 2y ago

I really don’t like this feature—I enjoyed their genre/mood oriented running playlists explicitly as a way to listen to stuff well outside of my usual listening while out on runs, but since they made them “made for you” they’re strictly worse. Relentless algorithmic sameness is everywhere and I’m sick of it. Spotify is also funny for maintaining the existence of their feature suggestion community boards while just utterly stonewalling for years while thousands of paying users beg for stuff like…being able to hide a section of the home screen, or not have long-standing playlists magically change.

davesmylie 2y ago
> maintaining the existence of their feature suggestion community boards while just utterly stonewalling for years while thousands of paying users beg for stuff my one I've been asking them for years for is the ability to quickly swap profiles on a family plan. (first world problem i know!) My daughter, not being able to swap to her profile on our main media machine has utterly destroyed the utility of Discover Weekly for me, and for a time that was my favorite spotify feature.
viraptor 2y ago
My super basic feature request is to be able to report wrong metadata. It's just impossible right now unless you're the artist as far as I can tell. For example Dreaming Bull (https://open.spotify.com/artist/7s6vcAnBioL2PJisG8YMww https://open.spotify.com/artist/7s6vcAnBioL2PJisG8YMww) with a single actual album in 2014 is either taken over by or merged with some random crap. But Spotify doesn't care enough to even let me let them know. (Yes, I filled out the contact form multiple times - it's ignored)
- mastazi 2y ago
  I had this same problem in Tidal, where attribution errors are really common even for big artists. For example, look under singles here https://listen.tidal.com/artist/8112 https://listen.tidal.com/artist/8112 and look here both in the albums and singles sections https://listen.tidal.com/artist/34575 https://listen.tidal.com/artist/34575 At least on Tidal you can email customer support about it, but they are slow (probably under staffed) and it usually takes weeks for them to fix things and now with the constant flood of AI-made music, the crap accumulates faster than it can be cleaned up. I ended up moving on to Apple Music where the situation in relation to attribution is not as bad. I chose Apple Music because it's among the services that has better rates for artists, although lower than Tidal https://virpp.com/hello/music-streaming-payouts-comparison-a-guide-for-musicians/ https://virpp.com/hello/music-streaming-payouts-comparison-a...
myst 2y ago
The solution is simple: stop paying.

grugagag 2y ago

It's funny how the Spotify moderators are gaslighting people. Users complaining about some bad feature and moderators ignoring the issue and responding to seemingly another question. I've noticed this phenomenon cropping up 4-5 years ago on Microsoft forums, now it's across the spectrum. I don't blame the people who are paid to do it, I understand they have to do this for a paycheck but it's such a shitty thing to do.

827a 2y ago

One thing I've seen recently: My daylist will be named the same, but have (usually very slightly) different songs between different platforms (e.g. Mac vs iPhone). Not the end of the world, but very strange.

discostrings 2y ago

Similarly to making so many of the playlists "made for you", they've completely ruined the "radio" feature. You used to be able to select the radio option on a song, artist, or playlist and get a playlist of songs that seemed to be a good mix of musically similar and being liked by people who liked the selected starting point. Starting at some point around 2 years ago (it seems they A-B tested this for a while because it went back and forth), the radio option became so highly customized to your user account that most songs it plays will be ones you've heard a billion times, even songs that aren't remotely similar in any way other than that you like them. And the playlist radio option, which was the most powerful one for discovery, has been completely removed. I used the radio option for years to discover new music, and I really loved it. Now I feel a twinge of sadness mixed with rage when my memories of the good days get me to open Spotify and I remember what it's become.

subpixel 2y ago
The tests must reveal what is easily deduced: most, nearly all people do not enjoy much variety. They want to think they do, but their actions prove otherwise. This sucks for you and me but is Spotify giving the masses what they actually enjoy.
- conception 2y ago
  A coworker was stunned that my most listened to song for the year was like 40 plays or so. Hers? Over 800.
  - aworks 2y ago
    Interesting way to analyze listening. From last year's last.fm data, I played my top track 31 times. And that seems like a lot to me.
  - P-Nuts 2y ago
    Many years ago my most listened song (on ripped CDs in iTunes) had a few thousand plays because I turned off my headphones (analogue wireless!) while I had a track on repeat, only actually planning to listen to it a second time, and went on holiday for a week.

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 2y ago

There was plenty of "AI music" in 2022, and "Discover Weekly" has been broken for almost a decade, IMO.

amanzi 2y ago

This is why so many playlists I look at all have the same songs in them! I have had to start marking songs that I like to not be recommended. Although I just looked at Spotify to figure out how I've done this in the past, and I can see no such option. So I don't know how I did this previously!?