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

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#361

Post by kortex » Sun, Oct 17, 2021, 3:53 AM UTC

wly_cdgr wrote: post #74

This is the #2 feature I most want in every music streaming app (The feature I most want is an interface for tweaking the rec algo to my liking - at minimum, for being able to crank up its adventurousness. Rec algos are depressingly conservative as a rule, I guess because most customers are the kind of people who eat at McDonald's when they travel abroad, stay at package resorts, and complain movies have gone to shit…

> at minimum, for being able to crank up its adventurousness.

Absolutely. At times, it makes me wanna blast it with cosmic rays, induce a burst of mutations, mix things up. Just give me a knob. Sometimes I want to stick on one specific sound. Other times I need to explore.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#362

Post by siva7 » Sun, Oct 17, 2021, 3:56 AM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #278

madisp wrote: 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-...

The dislike button seems to come and go at random. Sometimes it's available in the desktop app, sometimes not. Sometimes I have the option to dislike songs in CarPlay, sometimes not. It's as if they hired B. F. Skinner as an engineering consultant.

Not only that, sometimes the dislike button doesn’t seem to do anything

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#363

Post by stevesearer » Sun, Oct 17, 2021, 3:57 AM UTC

I’ve kind of been getting back into listening to the radio recently.

Am curious if there are any radio station-style djs one can support through Patreon where there is a mix of banter and music you can listen similarly to a podcast, though more regularly like a morning show.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#364

Post by quadrangle » Sun, Oct 17, 2021, 3:59 AM UTC

when are we gonna have an anti-pandora or anti-spotify that specifically shuffles non-randomly to provide maximum diversity?

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#365

Post by jrm4 » Sun, Oct 17, 2021, 4:03 AM UTC

By observation; why crowdsourced recommendations for music suck is that there's no "cost" to being a critic/influencer, and therefore no real effective filter.

I realized that this is why current hip-hop is so much worse now; it's not (mostly) the artists; its that the "filter" used to be much more ruthless. Fewer opportunities for deals and "difficulty" in being an influence (e.g. DJ gigs, selling tapes from cars, general violence, general censorship etc etc) weeded out every content that wasn't good and every participant that wasn't dedicated.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#366

Post by bombcar » Sun, Oct 17, 2021, 4:10 AM UTC

elamje wrote: post #343

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.…

Welcome to McDonalds, home of the Mcadoyble.

Now given that burgers cost us money to produce, wouldn’t you rather have a podcast?

Does this whole thing not seem insane to anyone else?

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#367

Post by MutableLambda » Sun, Oct 17, 2021, 4:11 AM UTC

mimanning wrote: post #312

Does anyone know if the spotify recommendation algorithm analyzes the actual music in order to group songs? Or does it only do clustering based on users' listening habits? It seems like incorporating the former could help with discovering new and potentially less well known music, which is an area I'd like to see spotify improve on.

I'm pretty sure it's done via collaborative filtering (other user preferences), and not the actual music features (like Pandora does, or did before).

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#368

Post by the_pwner224 » Sun, Oct 17, 2021, 4:16 AM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #366

elamje wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Welcome to McDonalds, home of the Mcadoyble. Now given that burgers cost us money to produce, wouldn’t you rather have a podcast? Does this whole thing not seem insane to anyone else?

Selling a burger is inhernelty profitable for McD, they sell it for more than they spend on manufacturing and shipping and serving it. Each new burger sold adds more profit.

Serving music is unprofitable for Spotify. They collect your monthly subscription fee, then every additional song play makes Spotify lose money. They don't want to have zero song plays since then nobody would subscribe, but their goal is sell the profitable thing (subscriptions) while minimizing the unprofitable thing (song plays).

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#369

Post by asveikau » Sun, Oct 17, 2021, 4:20 AM UTC

kristopolous wrote: post #271

charcircuit wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A song you always want to listen to is better than one you only want to listen to sometimes.

It's far more complicated than that. Some songs have extremely long shelf life and others are extremely short. For instance, an "adult contemporary" station could probably get away with playing Elton John's "Tiny Dancer", a 49-year old song, without anyone thinking anything is weird. More popular songs of that year such as those by Roberta Flack or Gilbert O'Sullivan would not get the same non-reaction Some songs hav…

> Ones that you may be familiar with such as Rick Martin's Macarena

It was done by a group from Seville. Los del río. Very southern Spanish accent which is quite different from Ricky Martin.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#370

Post by moneywoes » Sun, Oct 17, 2021, 4:23 AM UTC

elamje wrote: post #343

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.…

Does Spotify inject ads in free podcasts? Don’t all commodities not do that