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Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

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Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#621

Post by sasha_at_piki »

lrem wrote: post #432
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…

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.

Yes, Youtube music is catching up fast. I'm the creator of Piki, the Cornell Tech app mentioned in the article. Give it a try, it's focused on discovery and you can connect it to Youtube and Spotify: https://piki.page.link/Rng5

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#622

Post by sasha_at_piki »

raffraffraff wrote: post #404

Last.FM could have been great. Back in 2005 (17 years ago!!) it had a veritable encyclopedia of artists, albums and tracks, a decent recommendations system, "neighborhoods" that matched you with other users who listened to similar artists (and they even told you what you had in common so you other ignore users whose 12 year old also likes the Barbie song). You could add specific users to a 'Friends' section. You coul…

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

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#623

Post by sasha_at_piki »

ardit33 wrote: post #81

Spotify had both thumbs up and thumbs down button a while ago. It even asked why do you thumb down something: Wrong Rec Do not like the artist/show less Do not like this song Heard it too many times/pause for a bit etc... It got removed... as the whole functionality (Radio) got phased out, and the new stuff didn't incorporate it. Employees changed, and moved on to other companies, and the new that came didn't think i…

Each time the dislike button is pressed, it reminds the user that they might want to unsubscribe. So they removed it ;) I'm the creator of Piki, the Cornell Tech app mentioned in the article. Give it a try, if you want next level recommendations. We actually embrace the dislike button https://piki.page.link/Rng5

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#624

Post by sasha_at_piki »

notyourwork wrote: post #104
ardit33 wrote: post #81

Spotify had both thumbs up and thumbs down button a while ago. It even asked why do you thumb down something: Wrong Rec Do not like the artist/show less Do not like this song Heard it too many times/pause for a bit etc... It got removed... as the whole functionality (Radio) got phased out, and the new stuff didn't incorporate it. Employees changed, and moved on to other companies, and the new that came didn't think i…

You might be on to something with the idea that it was there it was removed. I might presume it was removed because data showed that customers don't use it. The rest of this thread seems to think otherwise. The idea of resetting recommendations is a minority feature ask from customers as well and I wish companies (including my own) handled that better. Sadly its a pretty expensive project for such a minority stake.

I'm the creator of Piki, the Cornell Tech app mentioned in the article. It's like a Tinder for Music, so the dislike is a big part of the recommendations: https://piki.page.link/Rng5

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#625

Post by sasha_at_piki »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #509
thepasswordis wrote: post #135

Has pandora licensed their music DNA engine to anybody? Pandora recommendations have always been 1000x better than anybody else. It’s not even a comparison.

I find pandora recommendations to be absolute garbage and HEAVILY weighted to certain local maxima, typically favoring mainstream songs. A few that invariably came up for me that I remember and didn't block: This must be it by Royksopp Headstrong by Trapt Outside by Staind

I'm the creator of Piki, the Cornell Tech app mentioned in the article. Pandora believes in the music genome project, the idea that if I like a song, I will like every sonically similar song, with a popularity bias, of course. If you want something better, give us a try: https://piki.page.link/Rng5

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#626

Post by sasha_at_piki »

ant6n wrote: post #413
californical wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup - cancelled my Spotify account a year ago, after they changed the UI for the 15th time, making features that I wanted to use harder, and pushing things on me that I don't want (podcasts). And introducing bugs constantly in some of the non-default features that I used a lot (eg. changing playlist sort order was broken at one point). Add to that their shuffle playing the same ~20% of songs in my playlists, and neve…

I find Spotify is riddled with small annoying bugs and antagonistic UI, I'm really really sick of it. Instead of having a discussion about how it could be improved, maybe we can have one about which alternatives exist and how good they are (tidal, is it?) EDIT: I tried Tidal, that app has a confusing mess of an interface just like Spotify. Plus they have a "convenient" bug during sign up that may sign up students wit…

I'm the creator of Piki, the Cornell Tech app mentioned in the article. Give it a try, if you want a pure discovery app, with a focus on likes/dislikes feedback https://piki.page.link/Rng5

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#627

Post by sasha_at_piki »

toomanyrichies wrote: post #304

I’ve said this in another comment here, but I see a lot of folks debating about the utility of a dislike button in terms of its improvement on recommendations, and I think that misses the point. If enough users want the button, that seems like a good enough reason to have it, even if they don’t use it . They may enjoy having the ability to express their opinion, which is an entirely separate derived benefit from such…

I'm the creator of Piki, the Cornell Tech app mentioned in the article. The interface is like a Tinder for music, and users dislike about 55% of the songs they are presented with, so the dislike button is an integral part of the recommendations. It's not there just to "feel good". Give it a try: https://piki.page.link/Rng5

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#628

Post by sasha_at_piki »

cletus wrote: post #224

I wonder if you really need a like or dislike button. I'm increasingly convinced they're both being used wrong. If you're listening to a random stream of songs there are only really two actions by the user that matter: 1. They keep listening. This is about the best "like" signal (IMHO); and 2. They skip to the next song. This is effectively a "dislike". Both can be situational not absolute too. But what does like/dis…

What you're describing is basically how TikTok works, it's based on the time spent on a piece of content. A problem with this approach is that sometimes we spend time on things we don't really like (think sexual or fake news content) so an explicit feedback (like, dislike, superlike) is helpful for the algo. 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

#629

Post by sasha_at_piki »

kjgkjhfkjf wrote: post #325

It seems extremely unlikely that nobody at Spotify has considered this. It's probably safe to conclude that Spotify are optimizing their UX and algorithms for different metrics than the ones used in this academic study.

Indeed. Their metrics are focused on minimizing subscription cancellations. This means they give recommendations that are not surprising or risky. I'm the creator of Piki, the Cornell Tech app mentioned in the article. Give it a try, if you want more exciting recommendations https://piki.page.link/Rng5

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#630

Post by sasha_at_piki »

dmitriid wrote: post #21

You know what would improve any recommendation system? A button that says (and does) "wipe my recommendation profile clean, and start learning recommendations from scratch".

I'm the creator of Piki, the Cornell Tech app mentioned in the article. Give it a try, if you want to start your recommendation journey from scratch: https://piki.page.link/Rng5
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