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Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

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Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#611
post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While YouTube Music is still a clear regression from GPM, it's slowly catching up. Any year now it'll be good... But it seems it might already annoy you less than Spotify? Which is interesting, most people seem to believe Spotify is superior.

Did it stop mixing YouTube likes with music likes? Destroying my 'liked' music playlist was an unforgivable sin in my book. Fortunately I was able to get my old GPM info with Google Takeout before it went away, so I just scripted up a solution to recreate those likes on Spotify.

I think this has been fixed before they finally turned down GPM. I migrated when they forced me and never saw the dreaded cross-contamination.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The popcorn and soda are valueadds for both - it’s not like a restaurant gets you to “subscribe” and then tries to convince you to not eat anything. The buffets may be the closest and they don’t really seem to care at all, because the price differential is so high. So Spotify is likely undercharging by 50% or more.

Yes, that seems to be true (and is that % you've guessed maybe too low? Maybe far too low?). Even with that though, it's extraordinarily fine margins -- w/r/t the businesses that I mentioned, the majority of the income comes from those value-adds, if they weren't there it would generally be difficult for the businesses to survive financially. That's where I was coming from.

To me, Spotify seems to be using podcasts in a similar way. I assume it's because the central business model is unsustainable when combined with investor pressure; they can't just focus on core product because they're burning too much of other people's money in an attempt to outcompete everyone else

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#614
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out Navidrome [0]. It's the closest one that I've found. It supports the Subsonic API so there are plenty of mobile apps and probably some desktop ones that work with it. I use play:Sub on iOS. 0: https://github.com/navidrome/navidrome

What's the advantage compared to Airsonic? I use Airsonic right now, it is basically Jellyfin for a music collection. I use both of these as reliable alternative to Netflix/.../Spotify (where ... is a plethora of other video services such as Disney+).

For me the advantages are:

1. Doesn't use Java

2. Simpler/Quicker to configure

3. More modern webui (though I recently found a good desktop subsonic client, sonixd which somewhat negates this)

Also, I haven't used the airsonic fork, but I was using subsonic before switching to navidrome

I found subsonic to be rather... unreliable. once in a while the database would randomly become corrupted and I'd have to delete the database files and start over. I haven't had any such problems with navidrome, it's been rock solid.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#615
post #482
post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I remember this not actually working.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If x number of people are asking for something, all of those people are asking for it. I think it was pretty obvious I wasn't claiming all spotify users are asking for this. I'm a PO so feel sufficiently qualified to state that user analytics data is completely redundant for looking at small use high value features & undervaluing direct user feedback from your 'power users' is generally a bad move. Again, just becaus…

> Data doesn't tell you how useful a feature is, it tells you how frequently it's used & how many people use it. They are not the same things. That entirely depends on the the data set. On one hand you are claiming to be an expert and on the other making generalizations about what data can be used for. In reality you know that data is contextual and depending on the data set is what determines what conclusions and ho…

It entirely depends on your perspective.

There's a difference between justifying your decisions with data, and letting data make your decisions for you.

What data would you use to justify not implementing a dislike feature that many users are asking for, for example?

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#617

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…

I'm the creator of Piki, the Cornell Tech app mentioned in the article. Give it a try, if you want next level recommendations https://piki.page.link/Rng5

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#618

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.

Last FM is great, but you might want to try Piki, the Cornell Tech app mentioned in the article: https://piki.page.link/Rng5

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#619

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…

I'm the creator of Piki, the Cornell Tech app mentioned in the article. The recommendations are more "risky" than your typical streaming app recommendations. https://piki.page.link/Rng5

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#620

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…

Last.FM would have worked for you 17 years ago because it did most of that, until they mismanaged it into obscurity.

I'm the creator of Piki, the Cornell Tech app mentioned in the article. Give it a try, it's a more modern version of Last FM, like Tinder for Music https://piki.page.link/Rng5
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