You know what would improve any recommendation system?
A button that says (and does) "wipe my recommendation profile clean, and start learning recommendations from scratch".
Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations
21–30 of 660 posts
Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations
#22So basically they’re developing a product marketed to streaming platforms to identify what’s “more attractive” to consumers. The algorithms are still optimized for increasing sales and engagement, not improving recommendations (for the user).
That’s exactly why I’m unhappy with Spotify lately. I feel I’m being sold a bunch of corporate portfolios on what’s currently in vogue, and not just artistically but politically, with playlists like this-gender-race supporting this-cause. I actually just want to listen to music.
I still use it but stumble my way through looking at related artists while avoiding playlists and recommendations.
Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations
#23I work in this industry and actually we’ve found from online experimentation customers generally don’t want to tell you they dislike something. The expectation is customers get what they like (relevant) and sometimes they want to express stronger affinity for specific things. The converse hasn’t shown to be true. Generally customers don’t have a clear picture of how their explicit signals impact recommendations. Thou…
> one other consideration is disliking can usually be inferred from other activity. Skipping a song after less then 20 seconds for example can train a model as well as incorporating an explicit dislike button. This is nonsense. The fact that I skip a song does not mean I don't like it in general , it means I don't want to hear it right now. Music taste changes with mood and situation. If you treat a skip as "I don't…
It depends right. If you skip a song everytime its played in a sequence is a stronger indication of dislike compared to skip it once but listening to it a few times. The point is there is more to context and recommenders than a adding a dislike button and having a magically awesome recommender.
Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations
#24I work in this industry and actually we’ve found from online experimentation customers generally don’t want to tell you they dislike something. The expectation is customers get what they like (relevant) and sometimes they want to express stronger affinity for specific things. The converse hasn’t shown to be true. Generally customers don’t have a clear picture of how their explicit signals impact recommendations. Thou…
I had to keep deleting my Spotify account because my recommendations kept getting contaminated with music genres I didn't like that were impossible to get rid of. Listening to the wrong song two times could irrevocably ruin my recommendations. I would have very much liked a dislike button, or at least a "forget everything you think you know about me"-button. Now it ended up with me getting rid of Spotify, because of…
Yes that's very frustrating. I'm scared to even listen to new music on it because I'd try to use it for discovery but it would mistake what I listen to for what I like. Besides that it hardly recommends me any new music anyway. I now just use youtube for discovery.
Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations
#25I work in this industry and actually we’ve found from online experimentation customers generally don’t want to tell you they dislike something. The expectation is customers get what they like (relevant) and sometimes they want to express stronger affinity for specific things. The converse hasn’t shown to be true. Generally customers don’t have a clear picture of how their explicit signals impact recommendations. Thou…
> Skipping a song after less then 20 seconds for example can train a model as well as incorporating an explicit dislike button. How do you know I dislike the song? Instead, maybe I just heard it (or a similar song) on your platform or elsewhere outside of your app and don’t want to listen to it again right now? I guess you could try to build a more complex model that determines what songs or music I like at what time…
The paper is making an obvious claim. If I have data showing positive and negative affinity, that will perform better than a model which just has positive day. I don't find this very surprising but my point is in practice exposing dislike buttons to customers are a CX that is hardly ever used. So the point that a model will perform better with data that customer's rarely offer up to your platform makes their claim moot in my opinion.
Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations
#26oh and for streaming platforms. sometimes, it's just because that song you recommended (and started playing) should not be played after the one that just finished because it ruins the mood. this has nothing to do with the song itself.
so again, reducing it to like/dislike buttons is missing a great deal.
Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations
#27I work in this industry and actually we’ve found from online experimentation customers generally don’t want to tell you they dislike something. The expectation is customers get what they like (relevant) and sometimes they want to express stronger affinity for specific things. The converse hasn’t shown to be true. Generally customers don’t have a clear picture of how their explicit signals impact recommendations. Thou…
You are exhibiting google's mistake, caused by over educated people with zero real experience thinking they know better. Or, I should correct that - some code they wrote knows better than the complex brain of the actual person. This results in "AI" (big if/then loop) trying to figure it out, and completely blocking any input from the customer.
Here's the issue with "inferred from other activity." You know how you can find out? Give the customer a way to tell you. And no - you cannot "infer from other activity."
>Skipping a song after less then 20 seconds for example can train a model...
..to be wrong. You know when I usually skip a song after 20 seconds? When I've heard it too much, or just heard it on youtube on my laptop an hour ago. In a couple of days I'll want to hear it again. The reason I heard it too much, is I like the song. Your AI though - if I skip this favorite song of mine a couple of times, will now block it and all other songs like it. The literal opposite of what I want.
What this results in, is you have an inferior product, your customers leave, then you leave and go screw up another company's product without ever learning your lesson.
Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Without specifics I cannot guess as to your specific case but in general customer's just do not use dislike buttons. So exposing them isn't a value add and usually a UI clutter that most customer's have no use for and won't use. In general, you had to be doing something to be getting recommendations so there is some action that when most customer's do demonstrates a high probability that you will like some genre and…
What industry just out of curiosity? I see dislikes used judiciously in youtube and reddit fwiw
Music but I don't work for Spotify currently.
Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations
#29Sure, it would be useful… if users used it. My guess is they don’t. Did you use the like/dislike buttons they tested on Spotify radio? I didn’t, too much effort. They probably get more signal from the skip button
I've used it extensively on Pandora for probably a decade now and it makes a station go from great to spectacular
Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations
#30I have really been hoping for a spotify-API-driven recommendation engine to improve this kind of thing. Which is why I've been scrobbling to last.fm for over a decade.
One algorithm will never work for everyone. Even if it's one of the best in aggregate, that doesn't mean it's not awful for me. It's not feasible (nor does it make business sense) for Spotify to identify and build the best system for each individual user, so I really don't expect them to do more than optimize for the majority.