Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations • Hacker News Board

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#31

Post by MaxikCZ » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 8:27 PM UTC

unstatedAnswers wrote: post #16

Sure, 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 would use it, and dont understand why its only avaiable in Spotify Radio and not everywhere. I think my dislike of a song in an album can still be utilized to refine my suggestions.

Whats worse, there was a song that was constantly playing after my playlist ended. No matter how many times I marked the song as Dislike, it was always in first of 5 songs that play when playlist finished. Made sure the song appeared nowhere in my playlists (had to manually search in each), and neither did the artist. After contacting support and jumping trough few "restart app" styled suggestion, I was suggested to mark the artist as "never play this artist". This surprised me, as I never seen that option before. And then I understood why: its only in mobile version. You cant solve it on PC.

Bleh

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#32

Post by marginalia_nu » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 8:27 PM UTC

notyourwork wrote: post #5

marginalia_nu wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

> 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.

A feature does not need to be used often to be useful.

Take a fire extinguisher for example. Going by this logic, since most people will never even touch a fire extinguisher and most of them are never actually used, we should get rid of them because they're a cause of clutter.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#33

Post by wara23arish » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 8:27 PM UTC

jorgesborges wrote: post #22

So 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…

100%

I remember seeing a promoted playlist about empowering women voices (this is music)

I was so confused. In literally most of the world, this isn’t even a point of contention.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#34

Post by 1_player » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 8:28 PM UTC

marginalia_nu wrote: post #3

notyourwork wrote: post #2

I 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…

I keep hearing from people how good is Spotify "Discovery" playlist. I've been a paid customer for 5+ years and their recommendations have a hit rate of 2%. I listen to a lot of different genres, artists, mostly dictated by my mood. Today it was some easy Dire Straits song, yesterday QOTSA, the other day some psytrance. So Spotify recommends all genres in the same playlist, creating an awful cacophony of songs that don't flow into one another.

Spotify recommendation system is very bad in cases like mine apparently. It's so bad I keep listening to the same old songs instead of discovering something new, which is why I'm no longer a customer until they improve their AI.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#35

Post by laserlight » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 8:28 PM UTC

notyourwork wrote: post #2

I 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…

> we’ve found from online experimentation customers generally don’t want to tell you they dislike something.

I'm curious. Can you tell what kind of experiments you ran and what results you got?

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#36

Post by bdcp » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 8:30 PM UTC

simlevesque wrote: post #4

I'll never use Spotify again. My account was hacked by a latino and now my recommendations is 100% latin music. They told me there is nothing they can do to fix this. My recommendations are broken and my only option is to create another account, cancel my subscription, buy it again... Not gonna happen.

I keep getting recommended German music. I'm not German.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#37

Post by schmorptron » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 8:30 PM UTC

jorgesborges wrote: post #22

So 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…

Yeah, this is the exact reason I switched to Apple Music even though I'm on Android, since their playlists (for the most part) seem to actually be made based on what they think will be interesting for the listeners, not what they got paid to promote. I might be wrong though and just getting played.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#38

Post by schmorptron » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 8:30 PM UTC

young_unixer wrote: post #10

Mi problema con Spotify es que cuando le hackeo la cuenta a un gringo y escucho mi música, a este le molestan las recomendaciones latinas y despues de un tiempo deja de pagar la cuenta.

hue hue hue hue

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#39

Post by feanaro » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 8:32 PM UTC

notyourwork wrote: post #5

marginalia_nu wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

I must say your dismissal of this is rather annoying. Multiple users are telling you they are facing a real -- and completely obvious and predictable -- problem due to the feature not being available. In a comment section regarding research showing it would be an improvement to recommendations.

Increased UI clutter due to a single extra icon is not a good nor sufficient argument for not including it.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#40

Post by dagi3d » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 8:35 PM UTC

I just wish they fixed the problem with the bands disambiguation. I just hate everytime I get a recommendation in the release radar for a band that happens to have the same name as the one I like but stylewise they have nothing to do with the music I usually listen.