Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify • Hacker News Board

Re: Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

#121

Post by kamilszybalski » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 4:20 PM UTC

volkk wrote: post #34

Spotify's discovery playlist is a double edged sword. My account is permanently screwed because I decided to listen to a lot of rain sounds when going to sleep for a few months while I had a puppy. Now ALL I get for recommendations are calm sounds. I don't actually listen to these during the day, I want my old stuff. I hate it and want to reset the discovery playlist, but seems I have no way of doing so aside from ge…

You might try selecting a song that you enjoy and listening to the playlist radio for that specific song, it's an alternate take on the discover weekly.

Re: Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

#122

Post by andygcook » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 4:20 PM UTC

dataqat wrote: post #92

andygcook wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. After an initial listening, it's clear Steve's really talented. Which admittedly probably helps with the earning money part of the article. It's kind of like that PG quote: "What Customers Want - It's not just startups that have to worry about this. I think most businesses that fail do it because they don't give customers what they want. Look at restaurants. A large percentage fail, about a quarter in the fir…

I can think of many restaurants with really good food that went out of business... that's a terrible analogy. Certainly a very helpful ingredient, though maybe not even the main one.

I agree that it's definitely not a foolproof analogy. But good food (like good music) is usually a table-stakes ingredient for a successful restaurant. Again of course again, there are exceptions there too.

Re: Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

#123

Post by cheeew » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

kleer001 wrote: post #81

volkk wrote: post #34

Spotify's discovery playlist is a double edged sword. My account is permanently screwed because I decided to listen to a lot of rain sounds when going to sleep for a few months while I had a puppy. Now ALL I get for recommendations are calm sounds. I don't actually listen to these during the day, I want my old stuff. I hate it and want to reset the discovery playlist, but seems I have no way of doing so aside from ge…

Youtube suffers from the same bias in their algorithm. I bet it's just a bias setting or a single falloff that would help things. It reminds me of Cronenberg's "The Fly" where Brundle had to teach his teleporting pod to reproduce living tissue rather than interpret it.

@kleer001, click on the options button (the three dots) for any video you’re uninterested in on YouTube and select “not interested.” This should help your generated feed.

Re: Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

#124

Post by steve_adams_86 » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

volkk wrote: post #34

Spotify's discovery playlist is a double edged sword. My account is permanently screwed because I decided to listen to a lot of rain sounds when going to sleep for a few months while I had a puppy. Now ALL I get for recommendations are calm sounds. I don't actually listen to these during the day, I want my old stuff. I hate it and want to reset the discovery playlist, but seems I have no way of doing so aside from ge…

My spotify wrap for 2019 was a giant list of assorted noise tracks. "You're in Pink Noise's top 5% of listeners!"

Great

Re: Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

#125

Post by conradfr » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

BeniBoy wrote: post #58

hanniabu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One more reason why I prefer Google Play. The recommendations are based off a single station. If you start a new station it starts from scratch.

Am I the only one that received an email from Google telling me that Google Play music was going to close soon and that I should transfer my playlists?

Yes it's killed at (supposedly?) the end of the year.

I'm bummed because I really don't like Youtube Music.

Re: Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

#126

Post by larodi » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

You can imagine my astonishment when someone I know, a deejay and producer, came to me several months ago, at a club, with the very unexpected answer of 'how to run more Ubuntus on one box' ?!

Because... he wanted to have them subscribe and then click and play a list of alter-ego-monikers of himself, who release to unknown probably ghost-audience in Spotify

Making money in the way - without releases, without gigs.

And it is exactly 600-800$ per month he cited as the amount he made from one alter ego with several albums.

Somehow I'm sure there are others out there doing the same.

I'm leaving for folks here to imagine and comment how relevant would soon Spotify be for indie artists that will be competing with such Spotify click-botnets...

Re: Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

#127

Post by influnza » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

faramarz wrote: post #68

volkk wrote: post #34

Spotify's discovery playlist is a double edged sword. My account is permanently screwed because I decided to listen to a lot of rain sounds when going to sleep for a few months while I had a puppy. Now ALL I get for recommendations are calm sounds. I don't actually listen to these during the day, I want my old stuff. I hate it and want to reset the discovery playlist, but seems I have no way of doing so aside from ge…

LOL! Same shoe; I cannot escape the piano and other instrumentals I played during my wife's pregnancy months. I'm almost at a point of surrender that maybe my time with Deep House and Electronic music has reached an end. The Discovery Weekly was my only way of finding hot indie talent in the electronics world.

Have you tried Bandcamp?

Re: Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

#128

Post by fivre » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

volkk wrote: post #34

Spotify's discovery playlist is a double edged sword. My account is permanently screwed because I decided to listen to a lot of rain sounds when going to sleep for a few months while I had a puppy. Now ALL I get for recommendations are calm sounds. I don't actually listen to these during the day, I want my old stuff. I hate it and want to reset the discovery playlist, but seems I have no way of doing so aside from ge…

I listen to a lot of ambient music normally and that ends up being seemingly 80% of my recommendations, despite also listening to a bunch of loud angry punk.

Spotify's discovery tends to be pretty iffy for anything at least for me anyway, so I mostly follow labels I like on Bandcamp for discovery instead.

Re: Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

#129

Post by conradfr » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

ylere wrote: post #114

BeniBoy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one that received an email from Google telling me that Google Play music was going to close soon and that I should transfer my playlists?

Same here. Youtube Music is the replacement and it seems to have the same content and the same bugs, just a different design (which I personally find a bit less intuitive but I might be biased) and a new name. You can even upload your own music to YouTube Music now the same way it was possible with Google Music before. It's just Google making a new product to replace a previous one again instead of fixing/improving w…

It's not exactly the same as your uploaded music doesn't blend with the rest, it's on a separate tab, low quality videos are mixed with the "normal" music and all you're Youtube likes related to music are mixed with your previous GPM likes (for god know what reasons). And more.

Re: Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

#130

Post by VBprogrammer » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

volkk wrote: post #106

njovin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unfortunately a common problem and the only way to beat the algorithm is to turn it against itself. Create few playlists and add songs you like to them and also be diligent about liking and unliking songs. These will heavily influence your recommendations and you should be able to get back on track.

See I was doing that, and I guess I didn't do it long enough because it didn't do anything for me. I think that algo is so heavily trained at this point. I think Spotify should really release something that is obvious and UI friendly that isn't some weird hack/workaround to fix this issue.

Maybe being able to mark something as a guilty pleasure which would exclude it from algorithmic use - and ideally from showing it to your friends on facebook if they still do that!