Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

news.cornell.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 660 posts

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#381

Post by crucialfelix »

jdsully wrote: post #153
dfdz wrote: post #115

I have seen this article before. The author are so close to understanding why Spotify does NOT need a dislike button >To dislike a song is easy – to like one, you have to actually invest time in it. Likewise, to detect if a user dislikes a song is easy since the user will not invest time listening to it: the skip button is the dislike button. In contrast, detecting if a user likes a song is more difficult: there need…

Sometimes your just not in the mood for a specific song or genre. A skip doesn’t imply I’d never want to hear a song again.

It can also just mean that I've heard it too many times. Give me something fresh, a hit of dopamine please

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#382

Post by shoto_io »

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.…

You’re probably right. But then again: who cares about Spotify making money? I want to listen to music and not optimize the bottom line of the Company.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#383

Post by brenainn »

tehjoker wrote: post #324
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…

How do you find good music blogs? I've basically given up on the recommendation engines and I don't have a ton of musically tuned in friends.

It was a manual process for me personally, finding them through message boards and forums (I know that's not much help). I'd also use https://www.music-map.com. /r/listentothis on reddit is also a good source of tracks.

What I mainly do now is look for Spotify playlists by record labels that represent artists I like, or look for playlists made by artists I listen to.

Shout out to holyfuckingshit40000 on blogspot, it's long gone now. But that was my favourite music blog, to the point I wanted to meet the person who ran it and buy them a drink or something, because almost everything they recommended I loved. Just now I've found that someone compiled a list of the recommendations, check it out: https://joseph.pallamidessi.fr/2020/05/03/holyfuckingshit400... (it's missing some from memory, but it's a diverse collection of some good music).

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#384

Post by hutattedonmyarm »

rsyring wrote: post #356
fpgaminer wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. I listen to podcasts, but I'm not going to do it through Spotify, who's working to build a walled garden around a traditionally open media. I'm also not interested in Joe Rogan, which they _constantly_ plaster my front page with. I did try a Spotify podcast once. It was on my recommended list and was called daily dad jokes or something. Figured it was worth a quick laugh. Well it turned out to be a bot pod…

I rarely listen to podcasts but was going to try and listen to a specific one Joe Rogan did recently. After listening for a few minutes, an ad came on. I pay for spotify, why am I listening to an ad? Anyway, I waited like 90 seconds and he came back on. Withing about 15 minutes, I had two more ads come on and they were 90 & 120 seconds each. After the second ad played, the podcast didn't start. Fiddling with it cause…

> I pay for spotify, why am I listening to an ad?

Because Spotify doesn’t pay anything to the podcast producers. So podcasts run their own ads. (Well, some do. Others live off donations or offer a way to pay them)

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#385

Post by 01100011 »

Things I want from Spotify:

- Fix the damn album artwork in the browser. A big part of enjoying an album is viewing the cover and liner art. Let me do that full-screen with zoom.

- Let me create genre-limited radio stations from my likes. Don't just play songs from my likes. If I'm in the mood for , say, 80s hip-hop, I want a radio station based off my liked 80s hip-hop songs which includes related artists.

- Hide the damn podcasts. There will never be a situation now or in the future where I want to use spotify to listen to a podcast. Users should be able to hide them.

- Improve your audio quality. I've shamefully returned to bit torrenting flac files because some of what I've heard on spotify is so bad. Part of that is because I want access to a vinyl mix.

- Your interface sucks. One thing I liked about Google Play Music was easier access to an artist's discography. Please give me an option to hide "Popular releases" or put a quick access button to reach either Albums or a full discography at the top of the artist's page so I don't have to scroll down and hunt for an easily missed label to reach the discography when I use the Android App. When I start the app, there should be a search box ready to go. I shouldn't have to click the magnifying glass and then a search box. Either put a search box/icon on the home screen which goes direct to an input dialog, or make the magnifying glass respond accordingly.

I miss Google Play Music. It wasn't perfect but it was, in my experience, a far superior product. It's regrettable that YouTube Music is such a dumpster fire.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#386

Post by bombcar »

xerox13ster wrote: post #288
dfdz wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that this same effect is close to the reason so many services removed the dislike button: humans are emotional and were, in some cases, disliking songs which they were not in the mood for, but would like at another time. As a result, the signal coming from the dislike button was not very useful, and just added unnecessary complexity. Instead, the algorithm can present the user a fixed song in different sett…

I frequently will find one of their auto-mixes I like, and listen to it for a while throughout the day skipping songs I don't like or I'm not in the mood for. Then when I go back the next day, even if I didn't restart the mix, it has updated, and what plays isn't the stuff I liked and repeated. It was the stuff they have financial incentive to get plays on that I skipped the day before and "might be in the mood for n…

I used to track “skip counts” in iTunes and would review the most skipped songs every month or so and determine if they needed to be reduced in star count.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#387

Post by kristopolous »

asveikau wrote: post #369
kristopolous wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gosh you are correct on that. My apologies. I don't know why I associated the two, I try to be pretty good on this stuff.

I'll need to review 90s Latin pop again. Sorry about that.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#388

Post by Gigachad »

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.…

I think the more likely answer is that podcasts can be produced with exclusivity deals while songs can not.

Spotify is large because they were first and because apple/google music suck. But eventually apple and google will stop sucking and users will drain from Spotify rapidly unless Spotify can create content to keep users in.

Spotify is in the position of Firefox 15 years ago right now. Eventually the built in apps will take over.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#389

Post by lokar »

bkraz wrote: post #110
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 agree. Spotify acknowledged the request to remove podcasts from the home screen in June of this year: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/All-Platforms-Po... Keep adding votes and pressuring them.

No, keep starting chats with support asking how to disable podcasts. Draw it out. That costs them $.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#390

Post by bombcar »

zizee wrote: post #204

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.

I also suspect that these companies have tuned the algorithms to emphasize content that is cheaper for them to play.
Post reply on HN