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Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

bbc.com

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Re: Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

#111

Post by nitrogen »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #49
shaoonb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this business model. How does taking podcasts (something people are used to getting for free with few or no ads) and breaking the currently open ecosystem there is around them benefit anyone, least of all Spotify themselves?

I assume they believe exclusive podcasts will gain them paying subscribers. Of course by fracturing the open ecosystem they may find themselves unable to acquire some podcasts, but given that they are a large player they are well positioned to out bid the competition.

They might also make a cut off of dynamic sponsorship/ad segments within podcasts.

Re: Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

#112

Post by Mashimo »

ttt0 wrote: post #67
12bits wrote: post #59

Stuff like this will just have me on bandcamp exclusively. Spotify has been a terrible experience, but for the sake of my teenage son, we decided to get a family account. Spotify is too obsessed with telling me how to consume music, I don’t need an album shuffled by default, the artist picked the track listing for a reason. The way Spotify cues music is bizarre. Their user interfaces are confusing and clunky. For a p…

That's what happened to YouTube. It used to be fine, everything just worked, but they just couldn't stop themselves from fucking it all up.

YouTube works well for me. It often suggest videos from channels that I watch regularly but I'm not subscribed to.

Re: Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

#113

Post by IneffablePigeon »

millstone wrote: post #7

Here is the referenced July paper [1]. Spotify has a very cool feature called Community [2] where users can talk about what they want Spotify to do. The most upvoted ideas are things like "change my username" or "filter explicit songs." My personal wishlist is a "don't play this song again" button [3] and native Homepod support [4]. The point is that users aren't asking for Spotify to interpret their emotional state,…

I've given up even wanting extra features, I just want them to fix the glaring bugs they've had for years.

My current favourites:

- if you sort a playlist you're playing, then click the album art to find the currently playing song, it will skip to the position of the track in the _unsorted_ list

- playlists over a certain length just won't play via Spotify Connect. There's a couple of playlists I just can't play on my Sonos speakers.

- playing a daily mix hides the shuffle button, and yet it still uses the shuffle state you had selected previously. If you want to turn shuffle off you have to play something else, toggle shuffle, then play the daily mix again

I've tried reporting these. They made me jump through a thousand standard troubleshooting hoops despite them all happening on every device I own. Then a few days later they came back and said it was "working as intended". Mind blowing.

Re: Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

#114

Post by globular-toast »

millstone wrote: post #7

Here is the referenced July paper [1]. Spotify has a very cool feature called Community [2] where users can talk about what they want Spotify to do. The most upvoted ideas are things like "change my username" or "filter explicit songs." My personal wishlist is a "don't play this song again" button [3] and native Homepod support [4]. The point is that users aren't asking for Spotify to interpret their emotional state,…

Sounds like they've got plenty of people to work on the shiny new things but nobody to maintain the boring stuff. It's a shame because there are loads of engineers out there who enjoy maintaining stuff over long periods of time and generally doing the boring stuff that makes customers happy. These engineers are really undervalued in companies like Spotify. I think the success of companies like Microsoft is due in a great deal to valuing engineers who do the boring stuff.

Re: Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

#115

Post by p49k »

piva00 wrote: post #105
nameequalsmain wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I named a playlist "metal", it started recommending metal songs without me having added anything yet.

That would be just one signal for the recommendation engine, given that you only named the playlist without any songs that probably weighed in quite heavily on the recommendations. Did it change after you added songs or kept suggesting metal songs?

Just tested it and yes, it keeps recommending metal even after adding a handful of obvious non-metal songs.

Re: Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

#116

Post by DoingIsLearning »

MrYellowP wrote: post #96

> emotions using speech recognition technology. Because many don't know the actual term for what they're analysing, I thought I'll post it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_prosody Honestly, I don't think this is a good idea. It opens one up for manipulation. You feel this way and Spotify will suggest you something that makes you feel rather that way. It doesn't matter if it's one or more songs meant to s…

Unrelated to Spotify discussion, I remember quite a few years ago that there was research on algorithmically detected fatigue in human voice, the scope of the research was to implement a means of fatigue warning for airline pilots and ATC staff.

My point there is that there is absolutely intrinsic value in researching in this field, but it just seems to be rather misguided whenever companies suffer from a high VC valuation.

Re: Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

#117

Post by TeMPOraL »

airstrike wrote: post #9
millstone wrote: post #7

Here is the referenced July paper [1]. Spotify has a very cool feature called Community [2] where users can talk about what they want Spotify to do. The most upvoted ideas are things like "change my username" or "filter explicit songs." My personal wishlist is a "don't play this song again" button [3] and native Homepod support [4]. The point is that users aren't asking for Spotify to interpret their emotional state,…

> The point is that users aren't asking for Spotify to interpret their emotional state, they just want rather basic features to work. Obligatory “If I’d asked customers what they want, they would have told me a faster horse.” People may not realize the value of this new feature because they have not even imagined it.

> People may not realize the value of this new feature because they have not even imagined it.

Sure, but in the meantime, they do realize the value of the features they keep requesting.

The sad reality is: not many people are going to leave Spotify because they can't change their user name or filter explicit songs[0]; they're essentially captive. The company instead wants to focus on features that will attract new users. The service will remain as bad as it can possibly be without hemorrhaging users, because from the POV of a growth-oriented company, existing users are worthless and not worth paying attention to.

--

[0] - Though I'm pretty sure at least marking songs as explicit was a feature years ago, when I used Spotify. A regression?

Re: Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

#118

Post by lethologica »

TomGullen wrote: post #107

A musical echo chamber where you end up trapped in your mood forever!

So business as usual fo Spotify then. I swear, I listen to one German rap song and my entire discover weekly is German rap. I don't even speak German.

Re: Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

#119

Post by TeMPOraL »

mackrevinack wrote: post #110
MrYellowP wrote: post #96

> emotions using speech recognition technology. Because many don't know the actual term for what they're analysing, I thought I'll post it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_prosody Honestly, I don't think this is a good idea. It opens one up for manipulation. You feel this way and Spotify will suggest you something that makes you feel rather that way. It doesn't matter if it's one or more songs meant to s…

also, not everyone wants to listen to happy music when they are sad. source: me

Me too. I've learned over time that I tend to gravitate towards music that resonates with my current emotional state. So sad music when I'm sad, energetic music when I'm energetic, etc. But I guess they know that phenomenon too.

Re: Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

#120

Post by loceng »

MrYellowP wrote: post #96

> emotions using speech recognition technology. Because many don't know the actual term for what they're analysing, I thought I'll post it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_prosody Honestly, I don't think this is a good idea. It opens one up for manipulation. You feel this way and Spotify will suggest you something that makes you feel rather that way. It doesn't matter if it's one or more songs meant to s…

My first thought was what accountability or required liability will there be? Laws are nowhere near caught up to be relevant or significant for the times, and so the answer is there will be no accountability, liability, understanding or responsibility for the impact of their algorithmic decisions; we know the experiment Facebook did with showing more negative or depressive posts had on people, yet nothing happened to them for this.
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