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How bad is your Spotify?

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Re: How bad is your Spotify?

#471

Post by Alupis »

smcnally wrote: post #469
Alupis wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm dumbfounded people still put up with this mess on Spotify. Pandora's discovery, recommendations, and shuffle algorithms are objectively superior to Spotify - yet, everyone still seems to use Spotify none-the-less. Discovery, recommendations and shuffle are at the heart of what made Pandora a thing... it's literally what Pandora was built on back when it was purely a seeded radio of sorts. Whereas Spotify more-or-…

> Pandora's discovery, recommendations, and shuffle algorithms are objectively superior IIRC, these algos were part of a project called ~Muse which later forked, and there was a schism between the algos and clickstream data or the personal data and anonymized cohort data. Will have to review / re-search. The trove of our searches, listens, and skips Pandora has / had did a good job informing recommendations and was a…

A big part of the algos was the "Music Genome Project"[1] as well. This allowed their recommendations to be about the music itself instead of just what other people also listened to, leading to some amazing music recommendations/discoveries.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Genome_Project

Re: How bad is your Spotify?

#473

Post by mike_d »

Alupis wrote: post #437
t0mbstone wrote: post #252

As someone who listens to spotify all day while programming, here's my secret to success: I create a playlist to fit a mood (for example, ambient electronic music with a good beat and no words), and I seed it with at least 10 songs. Then, I go down to the "Recommended Songs" section and I just play whatever it recommends. If I don't like a song, I hit the skip button on my keyboard. The vast majority of what it recom…

I'm dumbfounded people still put up with this mess on Spotify. Pandora's discovery, recommendations, and shuffle algorithms are objectively superior to Spotify - yet, everyone still seems to use Spotify none-the-less. Discovery, recommendations and shuffle are at the heart of what made Pandora a thing... it's literally what Pandora was built on back when it was purely a seeded radio of sorts. Whereas Spotify more-or-…

Spotify won the same way Dropbox and Slack did. They didn't invent anything magical, they just had a client for every platform that worked when people tried it. Like web apps? Here you go. Linux nerd? Here is a deb repo. Have a smartphone? Cool, we don't care what kind.

Even now I googled "Pandora windows app", clicked a few times, and ended up on some Microsoft Store page. Interestingly enough if I add "mac" to my search terms I just get a download...

Re: How bad is your Spotify?

#474

Post by CoryAlexMartin »

t0mbstone wrote: post #252

As someone who listens to spotify all day while programming, here's my secret to success: I create a playlist to fit a mood (for example, ambient electronic music with a good beat and no words), and I seed it with at least 10 songs. Then, I go down to the "Recommended Songs" section and I just play whatever it recommends. If I don't like a song, I hit the skip button on my keyboard. The vast majority of what it recom…

My solution to me getting tired of tracks in my work playlist was to keep adding more. It's currently at 2885 songs, or 5.2 days of music. It's mostly video game music, since a lot of video game music is written to not be too distracting.

Though maybe I should say the majority of the playlist consists of songs I've imported into iTunes. Apple does a decent job at letting you seamlessly integrate your personal library with stuff from their streaming catalog.

Re: How bad is your Spotify?

#475

Post by Alupis »

mike_d wrote: post #473
Alupis wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm dumbfounded people still put up with this mess on Spotify. Pandora's discovery, recommendations, and shuffle algorithms are objectively superior to Spotify - yet, everyone still seems to use Spotify none-the-less. Discovery, recommendations and shuffle are at the heart of what made Pandora a thing... it's literally what Pandora was built on back when it was purely a seeded radio of sorts. Whereas Spotify more-or-…

Spotify won the same way Dropbox and Slack did. They didn't invent anything magical, they just had a client for every platform that worked when people tried it. Like web apps? Here you go. Linux nerd? Here is a deb repo. Have a smartphone? Cool, we don't care what kind. Even now I googled "Pandora windows app", clicked a few times, and ended up on some Microsoft Store page. Interestingly enough if I add "mac" to my s…

What's wrong with Pandora in the web browser?

Re: How bad is your Spotify?

#476

Post by reissbaker »

Alupis wrote: post #437
t0mbstone wrote: post #252

As someone who listens to spotify all day while programming, here's my secret to success: I create a playlist to fit a mood (for example, ambient electronic music with a good beat and no words), and I seed it with at least 10 songs. Then, I go down to the "Recommended Songs" section and I just play whatever it recommends. If I don't like a song, I hit the skip button on my keyboard. The vast majority of what it recom…

I'm dumbfounded people still put up with this mess on Spotify. Pandora's discovery, recommendations, and shuffle algorithms are objectively superior to Spotify - yet, everyone still seems to use Spotify none-the-less. Discovery, recommendations and shuffle are at the heart of what made Pandora a thing... it's literally what Pandora was built on back when it was purely a seeded radio of sorts. Whereas Spotify more-or-…

IME Spotify's recommendations, while not perfect, are way, way better than Pandora's. Spotify is comfortable letting you explore niches; Pandora, when I used it, always seemed to try to hill-climb out of whatever niche you were listening to as fast as it could into whatever music was the most broadly popular at the moment.

Re: How bad is your Spotify?

#477

Post by smcnally »

t0mbstone wrote: post #252

As someone who listens to spotify all day while programming, here's my secret to success: I create a playlist to fit a mood (for example, ambient electronic music with a good beat and no words), and I seed it with at least 10 songs. Then, I go down to the "Recommended Songs" section and I just play whatever it recommends. If I don't like a song, I hit the skip button on my keyboard. The vast majority of what it recom…

> I create a playlist to fit a mood (for example, ambient electronic music with a good beat and no words) ... what it recommends and plays is tolerable but not great. ... (maybe one out of every 20-30 songs) I will discover a shiny new gem of a song that really resonates with me.

SoundCloud Weekly[0] recommendations have been solid for months specifically with ambient: ~85% Good tracks with ~30% Resonating enough to Favorite. My other contexts / use cases include listening by Album and Artist, Genre, Mood- and Mind-Setting, and Discovery.

Spotify works well for Albums and Artists. HypeMachine is my go-to for Discovery and Genre. SoundCloud and BandCamp work well for diving into artists and labels discovered. Playlists and Favorites across these are best for Mood- and Mind-Setting, as are "special purpose" options like Brain.fm and Ragya.

[0]https://soundcloud.com/discover/sets/weekly::[username] [1]https://www.ragya.com/

Re: How bad is your Spotify?

#478

Post by nefitty »

guidovranken wrote: post #82

It looks like the API is overloaded. With regards to taste, you usually need to find a suitable gateway into an unpopular genre to begin appreciating it. I always hated jazz until I turned 30, when I heard the melodic jazz of Avishai Cohen [1] and Phronesis [2], which led me to Eric Dolphy [3] and ultimately to free jazz outfits like Alexander von Schlippenbach and Peter Brotzmann. Having grown bored of everything el…

I study the Spotify web app a lot. What is it about the app that you don’t like?

Re: How bad is your Spotify?

#479

Post by colinmhayes »

Alupis wrote: post #437
t0mbstone wrote: post #252

As someone who listens to spotify all day while programming, here's my secret to success: I create a playlist to fit a mood (for example, ambient electronic music with a good beat and no words), and I seed it with at least 10 songs. Then, I go down to the "Recommended Songs" section and I just play whatever it recommends. If I don't like a song, I hit the skip button on my keyboard. The vast majority of what it recom…

I'm dumbfounded people still put up with this mess on Spotify. Pandora's discovery, recommendations, and shuffle algorithms are objectively superior to Spotify - yet, everyone still seems to use Spotify none-the-less. Discovery, recommendations and shuffle are at the heart of what made Pandora a thing... it's literally what Pandora was built on back when it was purely a seeded radio of sorts. Whereas Spotify more-or-…

Imagine thinking recomendations can be objectively better than others. Personally I don't care for pandora recommendations one bit and love my spotify mixes.
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