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Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

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Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#481

Post by amir »

lanevorockz wrote: post #401
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…

The more information the better, thing is platforms want to sell their content first and foremost. This removal of user input was pushed by the business so they could push content regardless of personal interest. Ever wonder why Netflix keeps on pushing bad content ?

One reason to keep on pushing bad content despite knowing the user will not watch them is to hide the fact how small their catalogue is and shift the blame onto user's particular taste.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#482

Post by lwkl »

nikanj wrote: post #445
campground wrote: post #200

I'm genuinely confused by people who complain about Spotify's recommendation algorithm. I have eclectic, often obscure tastes, and I've found it to be an incredible way to discover new music. I think you do have to prime the engine a bit. I "like" a lot of albums and songs. Every time I hear something new that I like I press the little heart button. Same when I discover music outside of Spotify (I listen to WFMU a lo…

Spotify's recommendation algorithm comes with a healthy pinch of Payola. "Hey you've been listening exclusively to chiptunes and power metal from the 80s. Here's a new single from $local_mumble_rapper you might love!" And you can't dislike the recommendation, so next week the algorithm is going to go "Oohh last week he played some mumble rap, let's give him a little bit more of it!"

If you go to the artists page you can open a menu right next to to „follow“ button and select an option to not play any song from this artist.

I remember this being easier to find. I guess Spotify might have changed it.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#483

Post by Mehdi2277 »

cardanome wrote: post #478
Mehdi2277 wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two issues with 5 star ranking. One the more thought required to give feedback the less likely users give feedback. More interactions is very helpful for ml so minimizing the decisions needed by a user helps a lot. Great ui/ux for engagement aims for signals to require as little action from the user as possible. As a side effect short content is very nice as finish/playtime become strong signals that requir…

> One the more thought required to give feedback the less likely users give feedback. That is great! This means the people giving feedback would tend to be power users that are able to giver higher quality feedback. > As a side effect short content is very nice as finish/playtime become strong signals that require a user to do almost nothing. Perfect! It is clear by now that users vastly prefer short content that get…

Your first point isn’t true because most of the 5 star usage boils down to 1/5 stars and not 2-4. There are some users that use whole range and the info does have value. The main problem though is while that system may be better for certain users, it will be worse for the entire user base as you want a system that works well for both casual and power users. Really you want a system that works better for casual users as most users on typical system like YouTube/spotify/tiktok/etc would be casual users. And while having model distinguish between user types is possible, ui wise you aren’t going to want to have both thumps up/down as an option and 5 stars. A toggle is possible but even for users that would use full ratings, a toggle is fairly unlikely to be used.

Even for power users it may not be net benefit for them. Recommendations are not based solely on that user’s ratings but all ratings. If power users give better signal but total quantity of signals decreases then it’s likely that recommendation quality drops for both casual/power users. Making up guess numbers a 5 star system is likely to get you 3x less data points and many of those data points are of similar quality anyway (users that only rate 1/5 stars). Worse signal that has higher volume often leads to better model.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#484

Post by JumpCrisscross »

another-dave wrote: post #465

Would be great if Spotify had * "good fit"/"bad fit" button — I like a wide variety of music, but it needs to be appropriate to context. If I start a radio from a song, I'd like to teach it to tailor the suggested songs better but that doesn't mean I dislike the songs it _is_ suggesting. * Ability to give the social context — a band playing at a music festival will lean more towards hits in their back catalogue. At t…

There is an opening for this. I would switch streaming service for a better shuffle algorithm.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#485

Post by vintermann »

johnsoft wrote: post #340
S0und wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is it really that easy? Can anyone just sign up for Spotify as an artist and upload a Beyonce album?

No, you have to sign up with a company Spotify has a deal with. Spotify seems to no longer have a deal with the sort of "artist services" companies that don't check if the uploaded music is a Beyonce album.

Spotify, or rather the old Echo Nest folks I suspect, actually do a lot to combat spam compared to the other streaming services.

I tried out the French service Deezer for a while, they had a huge compilation spam problem. I found one spammer in particular, who around four times per months would upload 300+ albums, all with the same title and cover art, only the artist name would be different. Thus you would get the album "Angry Man" by Frank Sinatra, "Angry Man" by Charles Aznavour, "Angry Man" by Johnny Rivers, etc. for another 300 artists. Thing is, they would contain music from the actual artist. The spammer probably speculated that if you wanted to add, say, Doc Watson's "Sitting on top of the world" to a playlist, searching would lead you to one of his "compilations" instead of the original. Or maybe it's part of a scam with hacked accounts "listening" to these teams. Either way, it must have been profitable, because with some searching I found out he'd been at it for almost a decade. He uses one of the "artists services" companies that lets him pick a new label name every time, but his laziness in generating images reveals it's the same guy (and I'm pretty sure I know his name, too).

He's not on Spotify, they kicked him off ages ago. But he's on literally every other streaming service that I know.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#486

Post by Ageodene »

cplusplusfellow wrote: post #315
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…

There are 3 artists that Spotify continually play to me and I preemptively will fast forward them even during the crossover play because I dislike them so much. I’ve submitted requests before to have a “don’t play me this artist” feature. I don’t know why this is so hard for them.

Deezer have that option. When you're listening to something you don't like you can click on a little frowny face, then they will ask you if you want to never hear this song again or the artist. It's neat.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#487

Post by philipps »

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.

Sasha Frere-Jones used to be the music critic at the New Yorker and writes a fantastic (although somewhat irregular) substack blog > https://substack.sashafrerejones.com/

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#489

Post by cja »

01100011 wrote: post #385

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 th…

I preferred GPM in every way except that it would silently remove songs from my playlists, probably as a result of the publisher updating or removing them. This lead to me losing songs I had painstakingly worked to discover over many years. I discovered this only after several years of using GPM. Spotify seems to leave removed songs in playlists but disabled, which at least means I don't forget them.

The Spotify UI is atrocious. It must be designed for income/royalty maximisation because it certainly isn't designed to help me find and play the music I like.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#490

Post by kettleballroll »

nickmyersdt wrote: post #433
kettleballroll wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence for that claim, or is that pure speculation on your part?

I don't have any written or direct evidence, however I worked for a public service broadcaster, who regularly dealt with Apple and Netflix, and the feedback from both was that star-rankings were driving a lot of royalty payments and user choice (people would ignore poorly ranked content). The impact of this was that low performing content providers made less money. By removing the collective scoring, the company woul…

That makes sense, thanks for elaborating! I could imagine a different solution where instead you just don't report the overall star-average, to make it a harder metric to game, but still get to have a stronger feedback signal for your recommendations.
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