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Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

news.cornell.edu

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Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#451

Post by jorvi »

jstummbillig wrote: post #443

> Cornell researchers recently asked the question: Why do they still not let you vote down a song? They do. "skip" does things other than skip the song. They also had a dedicated dislike button and removed it years ago. Apparently what they are doing now works better. > Specifically, they demonstrated that a listener is roughly 20 percent more likely to “like” a song if the algorithm is trained on 400,000 likes and d…

> They do. "skip" does things other than skip the song.

This seems very unlikely as some people enjoy listening to just certain parts of a song.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#452

Post by RobertKerans »

bottled_poe wrote: post #371
the_pwner224 wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

if that’s true, then podcasts are only a bandaid solution for a fundamental problem with Spotify’s business model.

Well...yes, not necessarily fundamental, but it's the same class of problem cinemas and restaurants have (to pick two). What do cinemas mainly make money from? What do restaurants mainly make money from?

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#453

Post by Broken_Hippo »

a5aAqU wrote: post #378
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…

Pandora's music recommendations are amazing, and the stations stay within their genre. I've discovered a huge amount of new music that way. I've never used Spotify, so I can't compare. I don't like podcasts either. I get more out of audiobooks.

It has been years since I've tried Pandora: Back when I tried it, they only let you skip a number of songs in a short time and often played things I didn't care for. Lots of slightly obscure songs weren't available. It might be better for more popular music or have improved in the last decade, I don't know. I started using Spotify.

And still now as then: It is only available in the US. I no longer live in the US.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#454

Post by petre »

the_pwner224 wrote: post #368
bombcar wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is like adding a MSG and soybean protein based filler to your burger because McD doesn't make a profit from selling burgers.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#455

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

liquid_x wrote: post #439
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #438

been using spotify for about 5 years and i swear the recommendations get worse and worse. i can't use the release radar or discover weekly playlist because they're so awful. maybe thats a reflection of my usage, but would be nice to have a way to reset the recommendations or dislike. there wasa period when i would keep static noise from spotify on the background for a few hours and now 80% of my recommendations are s…

Biggest issue for me with release radar is that Spotify still doesn't handle the case that multiple artists use the same name while not being close to the same style of music. (Exodus the trash metal band isn't remotely the same as exodus the gospel group)

yeah it doesnt seem like a very nuanced system, well at least the end result doesnt.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#456

Post by owlmirror »

jorvi wrote: post #451
jstummbillig wrote: post #443

> Cornell researchers recently asked the question: Why do they still not let you vote down a song? They do. "skip" does things other than skip the song. They also had a dedicated dislike button and removed it years ago. Apparently what they are doing now works better. > Specifically, they demonstrated that a listener is roughly 20 percent more likely to “like” a song if the algorithm is trained on 400,000 likes and d…

> They do. "skip" does things other than skip the song. This seems very unlikely as some people enjoy listening to just certain parts of a song.

Do you know if the algorithm takes that into account? I also became suspect of the behavior of the skip button, I sometimes skip songs of artists I really like and could observe that I did not get them recommended anymore until I explictly played a song of them. Of course this could be just random luck but it made me careful to skip my favorite songs and instead I open the playlist and select the next song.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#457

Post by design-material »

hutattedonmyarm wrote: post #384
rsyring wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Spotify didn't pay Rogan to be exclusive to them?

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#458

Post by vidarh »

tempestn wrote: post #400

I'm apparently in the minority, but I long for a return of the 5-star ranking. I really miss that about itunes, being able to rank each song, and set up smart playlists based on genre and how much variety (how deep in the star rankings) I wanted. I'd have to think an intelligent recommendation engine could do a ton more with star rankings than a simple up/down too. 5=love, 4=like, 3=ok, 2=dislike, 1=hate. It could ev…

It needs more than that. I often hesitate to rank because my preference often varies by time and mood and setting. I might not dislike a song, but don't want it played when I want something mellow to fall asleep to, or when I'm happy or when I'm sad. Having a given song show up in one context might irritate me because it breaks the mood while I might love it another time.

A good recommendation system for music needs to take into account proximity in play order to other songs you've ranked when you rank it, and their tempo and genre, time of day, etc.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#459

Post by owlmirror »

PeterisP wrote: post #426
verve_rat wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is a difference between "I don't feel like this now" and "I hate this" that skipping a track doesn't capture.

That difference is easily captured by the cases where you don't skip that track. If you have listened to a track two times and on the third case skip it, then that's "I don't feel like this now"; if you have been offered that track twice and skipped it both times immediately, then you probably hate this.

Or I just am not in the mood again. If I do not like something I want a way to tell the engine that and not be afraid of skipping my favorite songs because I want to listen to them at another time. I think alogrithms are great but feel really frustrated and helpless because it somehow became impossible to explicilty give it signals or tweak it. It's like living together with someone who always tries to guess your needs but you are not allowed to talk to them. That's just a broken system.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#460

Post by heed »

jstummbillig wrote: post #443

> Cornell researchers recently asked the question: Why do they still not let you vote down a song? They do. "skip" does things other than skip the song. They also had a dedicated dislike button and removed it years ago. Apparently what they are doing now works better. > Specifically, they demonstrated that a listener is roughly 20 percent more likely to “like” a song if the algorithm is trained on 400,000 likes and d…

When you remove a song from one of the auto-generated playlists (Discover Weekly / Release Radar) the app requires you to specify a reason, “I don’t like this song/artist”. Isn’t this effectively a dislike button? Or is this input not used in playlist generation?
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