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Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

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Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#341

Post by kortex »

newsbinator wrote: post #71
1_player wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

Same here. I like Christopher Tin (e.g. Baba Yetu) and therefore for 6 years I've had no way to tell Spotify I don't like 8-bit video game music. No amount of skipping or "I don't like this artist" seems to convince Spotify to stop offering me variations of 8-bit Tetris themes or MULTIPLE 8-bit Cowboy Bebop Tank! theme variations per every single Discover Weekly. I'd be thrilled to even get a 2% hit rate on music I l…

Man, the spotify algo makes no sense. The other week I was in a really specific mood, starting with Sonic 1/2 OST and moving into 8bit/chiptune/keygen. I probably listened to every rendition of Chemical Zone out there.

Rest of the week, much the same. Nothing in Discover Weekly.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#343

Post by elamje »

klyrs wrote: post #78

An option to hide all podcasts would significantly improve spotify's recommendations. I don't listen to podcasts (though I have accidentally clicked on one, when a podcast interviewed a musician I like... blech). Why is my screen filled with podcasts multiple times per day? I like the music recommendations, "so and so artist radio," etc., but they make me hunt for them. Also, while I like a broad variety of genres, I…

Why Spotify plasters your home page with Podcasts:

Short answer is $$$$.

Longer answer is: Spotify must pay royalties for each song played. Imagine if there was a completely free (for Spotify) form of content that filled users ears for hours, thus removing the need for Spotify to pay royalties. Ahem podcasts. Now imagine if Spotify started injecting ads into said media form to grow their revenue beyond subscriptions. Again, podcasts. So now, you have a very long-form content that both saves you royalty $ and drives new revenue. QED. Podcasts will continue to be plastered all over your recommendations, be top search results, etc, until the above stops being true.

Wrote about this in detail recently: https://www.towardssoftware.com/spotify.txt

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#344

Post by heavyset_go »

greggman3 wrote: post #54

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…

> Account deleted. I know I'm not the norm but Spotify has never done a good job for me recommending music, ever.

Last.fm has always been great for recommendations.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#345

Post by aaron695 »

> But Cornell researchers recently asked the question: Why do they still not let you vote down a song?

Sorry, but what's the fucking answer?

Yes, children know about dislike buttons. Why does Spotify (Google says worth $10-$66 billion) not have one?

It's certainly not because the algorithm is hard.

So, once they can answer that question perhaps they might be able to improve things?

Or is academia officially just a citation farm now? Does HN think a multi-billion dollar company is to stupid to think up and implement a dislike buttons because that's the game now, we think we are smarter than them on nonsense criteria?

Clearly Spotify will have looked at Dislike from the start, will have looked at Dislike from inference (Users actions, like skip or lower volume might imply Dislike) from the start, will have looked at interactions (what was played previous, is it their first time hearing it) around Dislike from the start and rehashed this 100's of times using highly intelligent, well trained mathematicians and whoever else's.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#346

Post by MutableLambda »

I used to use Pandora (even in Canada with VPN), but the sound quality deteriorated for some reason and player options aren't so great. Even with a paid account it sounds worse than Spotify and library is not that huge compared to Spotify.

But back in a day in was an example of a perfect service, where you could just say what music features you like and it would play everything close to it, expanding the boundaries. You could also dislike songs and like them (which made channels really really convenient). I wish Spotify could do something like that.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#347

Post by dehrmann »

MKTSPCLST wrote: post #136
greggman3 wrote: post #54

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…

Spotify used to have a private listening feature for people to play their music, but I've also deleted it so IDK

Private listening is still there.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#348

Post by jonathankoren »

S0und wrote: post #329
brenainn wrote: post #319

A dislike button would be handy. There is that feature on some of the generated playlists, but I don't think they do anything. My two biggest issues with Spotify right now are: 1. Release Radar filled with re-releases and remixes, often from artists who have long since passed away. I want new music as in released for the first time. 2. Name collisions. I'm surprised this is an issue, but I will often get songs from d…

2. "Name collision" unfortunately that's not Spotify's fault but the artist who set the wrong Artists ID. So instead of creating a new one for themself, they just use an already existing one with the same name. What I did in the last i just email the record label ( if they have one ) and ask them. In my case i listen to metal, but every know and then a mediocre rap song shows up in my RR. Usually because the artist i…

Entity resolution is a thing though, and the Discover Weekly algorithm actually tries to combine artists (possibly due to collaborations), which is what goes wrong.

For example, I follow Cornelius, the Japanese guitarist. I liked several of his song. So the data indicates I’m a fan. I’ve been recommended a new song by a different Cornelius. This other guy is an African gospel singer. I don’t follow him. Never even played a song.

That shouldn’t happen. The system knows they’re different Corneliuses, because the catalogs aren’t mixed, but yet string match took over.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#349

Post by playpause »

S0und wrote: post #329
brenainn wrote: post #319

A dislike button would be handy. There is that feature on some of the generated playlists, but I don't think they do anything. My two biggest issues with Spotify right now are: 1. Release Radar filled with re-releases and remixes, often from artists who have long since passed away. I want new music as in released for the first time. 2. Name collisions. I'm surprised this is an issue, but I will often get songs from d…

2. "Name collision" unfortunately that's not Spotify's fault but the artist who set the wrong Artists ID. So instead of creating a new one for themself, they just use an already existing one with the same name. What I did in the last i just email the record label ( if they have one ) and ask them. In my case i listen to metal, but every know and then a mediocre rap song shows up in my RR. Usually because the artist i…

Sounds like Spotify’s fault to me.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#350

Post by jonathankoren »

klyrs wrote: post #78

An option to hide all podcasts would significantly improve spotify's recommendations. I don't listen to podcasts (though I have accidentally clicked on one, when a podcast interviewed a musician I like... blech). Why is my screen filled with podcasts multiple times per day? I like the music recommendations, "so and so artist radio," etc., but they make me hunt for them. Also, while I like a broad variety of genres, I…

I was using Spotify for podcasts because they were there, but then my home feed got dominated by them, and they occasionally get queued up and giving me a mix of podcasts and music, which I don’t want.

I started migrating to Apple Podcasts so I can context switch more easily.

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