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Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

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Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#201

Post by ranieuwe »

j56no wrote: post #87
schmorptron wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

similar experience here, after 12 years with spotify I had enough of the confusing UI and poor recommendations. They literally know all the music I like and still I don’t discover enough new music as I did just listening to the car radio. Bought into Apple One and will see how that goes, I just need to migrate some playlists.

Did the migration last night with tune my music[1] and it worked flawlessly. Also, they didn’t want yet another account to spam mail me for months.

[1] https://www.tunemymusic.com/

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#202

Post by [deleted] »

jzb wrote: post #185
jcastro wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found out you can break your recommendations without losing control of your account. I listened to one podcast episode and it's been stuck on my home screen for two months. I've tried listening to it, ignoring it, unsubscribing, deleting (you can't!). It's just there forever now. And of course, that means it's always recommending related podcasts all the time so most of my homepage is now filled with this stuff and…

I imagine they’re pushing podcasts because they aren’t paying royalties on most or any of them.

[deleted]

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#204

Post by zizee »

I'd like something similar for Netflix. Let me click a "never show me this again" button. It would unclutter the interface so quickly.

I suspect the reason we'll never see such a feature is because it would be quite revealing how little content Netflix has that is of interest to any one person, and how much filler they have.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#205

Post by oriolid »

notyourwork wrote: post #23
user-the-name wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Have you read about illusion of control (search for elevator door button for one well known example)? If we take the idea that recommendations are really hard and dislike button doesn't help at face value, wouldn't it still improve the user experience to give them the illusion that they can directly affect the recommendations?

I'm not really convinced about recommendations being hard, though. Pandora could do them a long time ago, Netflix had good recommendations at one point but not since they dropped the star ratings and at some point Amazon wasn't that bad either.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#206

Post by addandsubtract »

geoduck14 wrote: post #184
taurath wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube makes recommendations around engagement metrics only (1 political video gets you Fox News recommendations for years), spotify still gives me plenty of small bands - I think if you’re listening to very popular music you’re screwed either ways

I was at a conference the other week and Spotify had a Keynote. They talked about the tradeoff between playing "diverse songs" and "consistent songs". It is a hard problem to solve. When you start your listening session they try and predict how long you are going going listen (based on your past history and time of day). If you are probably going to listen for a while, they are more risky and might play something "di…

They could just ask. I promise my answers will be more accurate than any AI guessing for me.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#207

Post by californical »

Oddskar wrote: post #84

Of course they can't add this: they're too busy rebuilding the UI so the (I assume) new Art Director can climb the corporate ladder.

Yup - cancelled my Spotify account a year ago, after they changed the UI for the 15th time, making features that I wanted to use harder, and pushing things on me that I don't want (podcasts). And introducing bugs constantly in some of the non-default features that I used a lot (eg. changing playlist sort order was broken at one point). Add to that their shuffle playing the same ~20% of songs in my playlists, and never hearing the other 80%, for some unknown reason. Then being gaslit when I tried to report "bugs".

It was just constantly frustrating to battle them, so I switched to Tidal, and it's been amazing. The UI is just simple and lets me play music, and nothing has broken in the last year. The only changes have been minor improvements that make it even easier to do the one thing that I want: to play music.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#208

Post by hk__2 »

campground wrote: post #200

I'm genuinely confused by people who complain about Spotify's recommendation algorithm. I have eclectic, often obscure tastes, and I've found it to be an incredible way to discover new music. I think you do have to prime the engine a bit. I "like" a lot of albums and songs. Every time I hear something new that I like I press the little heart button. Same when I discover music outside of Spotify (I listen to WFMU a lo…

The radio feature is awesome to discover new music. You can make a short playlist of a few songs you like, and start a radio from that. You can later tweak the playlist to change what you get in the radio while it’s playing.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#210

Post by didibus »

notyourwork wrote: post #92
soylentnewsorg wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. I'm not sure what you're suggesting and I don't need to qualify my experience in the software industry or within the domain of recommenders and personalization.

Not OP, but I think they're suggesting to spend a bit more time listening to customers, and a bit less time thinking that you know better what they want then they do themselves, even if you believe that your experience and expertise would make it that you do.

I'm using the impersonal "you" here. Don't know if you do that specifically, but OP seems to complain about software workers who do have this tendency, and seems to think that eventually leads to losing the customer.

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