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Mystery tracks being 'forced' on your Spotify

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Mystery tracks being 'forced' on your Spotify

#31

Post by SyneRyder »

sandrobfc wrote: post #19

This is why I refuse to play the Discover Weekly playlist. I strongly believe that Spotify is getting money out of made up artists, with songs put up by algorithms in some way, and that's the best way to get them to you. Regarding the 'hacking', it never happened to me, but it's easy to see how troublesome that may be. But that's what we get for trusting an application that promises to get us free music forever. It h…

I wouldn't be afraid of the Discover Weekly playlist. I think it's Spotify's best feature. For me, it surfaces great songs & artists I hadn't heard before, and sometimes it's almost spookily accurate.

For Discover Weekly to work though, it helps to feed it good data. It's based on a PageRank-like system, but instead of webpages it's based on user playlists [1]. If you create some of your own playlists, it will go and find other songs that appear regularly on similar playlists. Personally, I've made a large 800-track playlist of music I listen to while coding ([2] if anyone else is interested), and another with every song ever played at a goth/industrial nightclub I used to go to.

I rarely see "made up" artists, but I often like the ones I have been recommended - I really like "Time" on Nowi's EP called Reunion. It's actually made by Firefly Entertainment [3], a Swedish music production company that usually makes film & TV show soundtracks.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2015/9/30/9416579/spotify-discover-...

[2] https://open.spotify.com/user/syneryder/playlist/5YpeoHyEHG7...

[3] http://hellofirefly.com/

Re: Mystery tracks being 'forced' on your Spotify

#32

Post by nkozyra »

Illniyar wrote: post #21
bostik wrote: post #8

Funny, to me this sounds like a hash collision. (For a map key, not the cryptographic kind.) Knowing only that Spotify is a large distributed system, and seeing that the mystery tracks are short in title and length, as well as plentiful, it feels like a these tracks are ending up as collisions in a distributed hash table. From there it'd be a matter of bubbling up top due to sorting order properties.

Are you suggesting that spotify is somewherre using a hash-table without a collision resolution method (like a linked list). Is that something that is done in some industries? Hash collisions to me has always been a performance problem not a correctness one.

I could be wrong but the suggestion seems to be that plays are hashed before storage and the tracks exploit the hash algorithm in use.

That, to me, seems far less likely than simple account compromise.

Hash collisions have always been a security threat vector.

Re: Mystery tracks being 'forced' on your Spotify

#33

Post by fredoliveira »

qzy wrote: post #30
maslam wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This literally happened to me. Unfortunately with both FB and Alexa. It's concerning to say the least

Well, concerning... I mean, it's Spotify, not your email account.

It is still their data.

Re: Mystery tracks being 'forced' on your Spotify

#34

Post by breakingcups »

sandrobfc wrote: post #19

This is why I refuse to play the Discover Weekly playlist. I strongly believe that Spotify is getting money out of made up artists, with songs put up by algorithms in some way, and that's the best way to get them to you. Regarding the 'hacking', it never happened to me, but it's easy to see how troublesome that may be. But that's what we get for trusting an application that promises to get us free music forever. It h…

Do you have any proof whatsoever to support your bold statements? My Discover Weekly is usually great every week and I've discovered many (real!) cool artists that I like through it.

It's possible there's a lot of low quality filler music on Spotify and that your account got algorithmically lumped in the bucket to get there recommended, but to say Spotify is "in on it" seems like a very big leap.

Re: Mystery tracks being 'forced' on your Spotify

#36

Post by usrusr »

HelenePhisher wrote: post #11

It's quite clear to me that this s a fraud to make money. Those tracks are produced by algorithms and played via access tokens gathered from sites like the playlist converters floating around. Be wary of your account data and check the access of 3rd party apps regularly. https://support.spotify.com/uk/account_payment_help/privacy/... for information how to do that for Spotify.

I wonder if those tracks have actually been played or if someone just found a way to game the play counters. Lesson for anyone who ponders the idea of open monetization models (the every-popular vision of giving X per month and having it automatically split up and distributed to creators proportionally to actual consumption): there will be bad actors trying to cheat.

PS: why is your username so perfectly on topic?

Re: Mystery tracks being 'forced' on your Spotify

#37

Post by BostonEnginerd »

jatsign wrote: post #35

Off topic but somewhat related - my corporate overlords don't let us install anything on our workstations and the browsers we use are old and not supported by play.spotify.com. Any bright ideas about how I can use spotify here?

Listen on your mobile device.

Re: Mystery tracks being 'forced' on your Spotify

#38

Post by hexteria »

jatsign wrote: post #35

Off topic but somewhat related - my corporate overlords don't let us install anything on our workstations and the browsers we use are old and not supported by play.spotify.com. Any bright ideas about how I can use spotify here?

The obvious thing to me seems to be BYOD e.g. smartphone or tablet you can stash in a drawer or keep in your pocket while using it for Spotify. I guess you've already thought about that and it's ruled out for some reason.

Re: Mystery tracks being 'forced' on your Spotify

#39

Post by 1ceaham »

jatsign wrote: post #35

Off topic but somewhat related - my corporate overlords don't let us install anything on our workstations and the browsers we use are old and not supported by play.spotify.com. Any bright ideas about how I can use spotify here?

Haven't used it, but perhaps Tizonia?

Re: Mystery tracks being 'forced' on your Spotify

#40

Post by swift532 »

jatsign wrote: post #35

Off topic but somewhat related - my corporate overlords don't let us install anything on our workstations and the browsers we use are old and not supported by play.spotify.com. Any bright ideas about how I can use spotify here?

I think there are some web services which open up a web page in a specific browser version and stream that back to you. Perhaps you can try and have them run it in a newer browser.

I can't name a site off the top of my head, but googling will probably work.

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