Live data from Hacker News

Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

news.cornell.edu

301–310 of 660 posts

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#301

I cancelled spotify recently when I had a guest in my car who proceeded to play all her favorite music on my account. I wanted to remove her music from my history so spotify would hopefully not recommend her music to me but there is no way to delete your history https://community.spotify.com/t5/Your-Library/2021-how-do-we... Account deleted. I know I'm not the norm but Spotify has never done a good job for me recomme…

My account got hacked for a few weeks while I was on holiday, and it took literally years for my recommendations to recover.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#302
post #179

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…

Anything that can be exploited by the user for self-exploration and discovery is being removed - for the purpose of serving content that generates more revenue, I assume.. At first it was subtle, but the gloves came off with the recent UI overhaul. Playlist search result page is just an endless grid of images and truncated names. For the playlist duration, description, number of songs, follower count, etc. you have t…

What’s funny is that I used to love listening to the Joe Rogan podcast and hate Spotify just as much, because I tried to listen to his podcast and somehow ended up listening to about TEN MINUTES of ads and the podcast NEVER started playing. I finally uninstalled Spotify and haven’t listened to his podcast since, sorry. It’s mind boggling that Spotify could drop the ball so hard, as ostensibly they were trying to funnel people like me into their platform, and whiffed in an absolutely astounding manner while also alienating people like you who already use Spotify.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in a similar situation at the moment. Somehow Spotify has decided that I listened to a bunch of Hindu music a couple of months ago and now over 50% of my recommended playlists and podcasts are in that genre. Their refusal to let you delete history is just puzzling.

Sounds like your account was stolen and sold for premium status, possibly.

I think more likely is I searched for something, hit the wrong result, then got distracted while it was autoplaying through related artists for a few hours.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#304
I’ve said this in another comment here, but I see a lot of folks debating about the utility of a dislike button in terms of its improvement on recommendations, and I think that misses the point.

If enough users want the button, that seems like a good enough reason to have it, even if they don’t use it. They may enjoy having the ability to express their opinion, which is an entirely separate derived benefit from such a button’s influence on their recommendations.

It might even be a bit like the “Close door” button on an elevator. Sure, it’s rumored not to even do anything in some cases, but it’s widely available anyway because users appreciate feeling like they have agency over their circumstances (even if that feeling is built on a lie).

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#305

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.

the fix is to listen to other music...

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#306
post #256

But there is a dislike button in Spotify, specifically in the Discover Weekly playlist where most of the recommendations happen? https://community.spotify.com/t5/Implemented-Ideas/Discover-...

No... unfortunately, that has been gone for probably close to a year now, replaced with a "Hide Song" button that doesn't seem to influence the algorithm in any way.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#307
post #7

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.

When this happened to me, I just changed my password. Seems to have worked so far, though it doesn't filter out Latin music.

Yeah me too, a couple of years ago. Initially I was in denial that my account might have been compromised, but eventually I changed my password and haven't had that issue since.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#308

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…

Check out Tom McDonald, will fix up your recommendations real quick.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#309
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted your comment to demonstrate that I disagree with you. I've heard some good arguments against allowing users to show dislikes/downvotes as well as likes, but I've not heard your argument before and it doesn't strike me as accurate. Less used than the positive direction, sure, but still significantly used when available.

Netflix, Youtube and reddit aren't the same medium as short lived music streaming is. Streaming music is a show lived precision game of guessing what's relevant. There is a lot of it depends scenarios, are we showing recommendations on a landing page, are we sequencing songs in a station or are we ordering results on a search page. The CX context is a big part of how you can use signals to benefit the customer. My ar…

Form should follow function. CX used to mean customer experience, and when your customers are telling you they want this feature back then you should reinterperate your data, not tell them they're wrong.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#310
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the exact reason I switched to YouTube Music. I remember even about 10 years ago, last.fm's algorithm on bringing songs I would enjoy basing on previously listened/liked songs was far more accurate than Spotify's today.

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

Youtube music isn't the same as youtube.
Post reply on HN