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An odd discovery on Spotify

robinsloan.com

221–230 of 442 posts

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#221

This is the TikTok-ification of music. The required response is the same here, as it is to the consumption of any other media, which is the same as when ordering food. Don't order food out of a random dark kitchen. Order from a brick and mortar restaurant you know . Don't use algorithmic feeds to discover video. Find a channel/producer you like and watch that. The same applies to music. Assume everything fed to you i…

the comment seems to place the blame and responsibility squarely on the consumer

yes consumers create the demand, and yes corporations are simply fulfilling that demand, but no, changing consumer behaviour is not the solution

it is unpleasant to say, but most (all?) people are not rational actors, and no matter how much proselytising to the choir on obscure message boards goes on, that is not going to change

given the free opportunity, especially with the urging of self-interested corporations, most people will become addicted to cigarettes, or slot machines, or micro-transactions, or heroin. the solution is not to teach some bible of consumer behaviour to a group of people that probably don’t do these things anyway, it is to use public organisation to force these large, perversely-incentivised groups of people to follow a set of rules that maintain a healthy media space

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#222
post #152
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They always have relied on live performance (and to a greater extent, education). Talk to some professionals in the industry some time, they're not going to talk about records as a source of income. I could write a ten page rant on why AI and automation aren't a threat to musicians but it basically boils down to the fact that music is a human spectacle and we will continue to grow the industry through performing live…

Your comment ignores 99% of genres.

I don't think it does, if you are alluding to electronic music that's also just as much about the human aspect of it. Lets be real, at the commercial end of the spectrum electronic music is trivial to make, but no one wants to hear "Song seed 2aslk3j25lh" they want to hear what their "Music Hero" has made. Another aspect is DJing, DJs don't even pretend to have made the music yet people will come out just to hear a specific DJ play other peoples songs. It's almost entirely about the human figurehead, the popularity contest, the status and the fashion of it all.

Some labels might try to present artists that have AI music, and no doubt it would still be consumed. But it's a huge risk when it to the human aspect of it as people want authenticity.

Music is consumed in a huge array of contexts though, where I think AI music will end up is as music in movies, backing tracks in adverts and youtube videos, as filler music for all kinds of other media.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#225
I am very curious about the author's comments on whether all these variations have been made automatically.

I think that with a standard Ablenton project, for example, with several VSTs (this sounds like a Kontakt library) and replacing the midi clips by the Magenta's MusicVAE output for example, you could make infinite variations.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#226
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a father of a young child, Spotify's algo's are completely useless to me. If their ML is so smart it should be able to determine that Row row row your boat doesn't mix well with Anthrax. Wish I'd be able to toggle 'don't recommend kids music' somewhere.

I used Spotify to play music at a children's party. I am still getting recommendations for "Happy Birthday" months later. According to Spotify, it goes very well with Sheryl Crow and R.E.M.

Can be helpful to turn off watch history during such sessions, or to remove the videos from your history afterwards. Agreed that there should be an automated solution, but you can avoid it today will a small amount of work.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#227
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Spotify and Apple Music algos have no idea about music mood vs time of the day vs activity. Like late evening before sleep being perhaps not a good moment for heavy metal. And running not a right time for slow classical music. Which is weird in case of Apple Music because Apple knows exactly if I am sleeping, running or driving a car - just from reading my watch.

>Both Spotify and Apple Music algos have no idea about music mood vs time of the day vs activity. You say that, but I attended a conference with Spotify- they are specifically working on that problem now .

If they're working on it then the point still stands that they don't currently have it as part of their product.

Time of day aware recommendations is something YouTube seems to have had for years. It always knows what to give me up top based on if I'm sitting down for dinner or lunch or if I'm looking for an audiobook for bed etc

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#228
post #28

People have been noticing this a lot recently but what nobody seems to know is that this is a form of money laundering/“scamming.” I know because I used to be active on crime forums and talked to some of the people who engineered this scheme. People will set up fake Spotify artist accounts with stolen identities and bank accounts, pay a musician for songs that pass as music, and then bot millions of streams on them.…

hmm would this apply to steam as well? people buying up weird fake cards and on sell for less but cleaner money?

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#229
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Happens to me a lot on Youtube too - you watch just one thing - and now your recommendations are full of things like that one thing. Spotify's recommendation system is much better than youtube's (at least for me). I frequently "joke" that it is one of the few applications of ML that actively make my life as a consumer better. Having been following Spotify's "Discover Weekly" for several years now, I'm actually real…

As a father of a young child, Spotify's algo's are completely useless to me. If their ML is so smart it should be able to determine that Row row row your boat doesn't mix well with Anthrax. Wish I'd be able to toggle 'don't recommend kids music' somewhere.

Seems to be an unsolved problem to train the algorithms for recognizing different situations. One recommendation for all roles the user has. Though, thinking about, it's probably unsolvable as long as the interfaces remain simple and focused on satisfying only the one user, not the different roles, which would complicated the interfaces.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#230
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How on earth can Spotify distinguish real Fanny from fake Fanny? I can't tell if the post is serious or just a setup now.

Wasn’t the whole point of Brexit to have less regulation on things like region of origin? British Fanny is just as good as continental Fanny, even if it isn’t as popular. It’s not “fake Fanny”, it just gets less exposure.

This ends up being quite a hairy conversation, normally.
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