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An odd discovery on Spotify

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Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#291

Post by stronglikedan »

nosianu wrote: post #131
usednet wrote: 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.…

That's really interesting - although when I read that story I thought the point was the broken recommendation system. 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 . Or Facebook/Youtube, somehow: I watched a single video on Youtube about Viking sword fighting and suddenly my people recommendations on Facebook were at least 20% milit…

Spotify's recommendation system is so bad, that when I find a song I like, I put it into Pandora's free tier to find more songs. I hate how Spotify likes to prioritize every other song from that artist, and every other song from that genre, over songs from other artists and genres that sound similar to the song I want recommendations for. Pandora seems to prioritize the sound of the song, and actually finds similar songs.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#292

Post by dominotw »

txtsd wrote: post #283
dominotw wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

spotify is usually on people's personal device like a phone not on communal device at home like a TV.

Speak for yourself. I use Spotify on my TV at home. Multiple people use it.

rude response.

i said 'usually' .

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#293

Post by user3939382 »

eadmund wrote: post #290
usednet wrote: 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.…

I wonder how much of the traditional music and theatre businesses has been money laundering. One could put out a record (which presumably has a nice margin on it) and pay folks a small amount of money to buy many many many copies of the records with cash, turning the dirty funds into clean ones. Likewise with a theatre production and ticket sales. Seems like any business with significant cash inputs would be vulnerab…

I used to work in the music industry and gaming the charts was common.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#294

Post by pier25 »

Danborg wrote: post #284

Look at the Peaceful Guitar editorial playlist on Spotify. (It’s one of the biggest and most streamed in the world.) Every artist on there that doesn’t have a Bio is a fake artist. Meaning Spotify owns the music. They populate their playlists with these artists they own and that way don’t have to make royalty payments to them. It’s very shady.

It's like Amazon knowing what articles are selling more. So they start manufacturing and selling those themselves and removing the competition.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#295

Post by michaericalribo »

maxehmookau wrote: post #147

How fascinating. I guess this opens the old question "What is music?" This is all definitely generated algorithmically using a really common chord progression in western music. (Think Pachebel's canon). So a person (or group of people?) is creating generatively created music that is designed to be as pleasing to the ear of a human so that Spotify ranks it higher in automatically generated playlists which means more p…

And hey if it’s pleasing to the ear do I even care?

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#296

Post by PurpleRamen »

pelario wrote: post #275
PurpleRamen wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Spotify is missing user profiles, in the Netflix fashion.

From a technical point yes, but profiles are too rough and hard to use for this. What I mean is more some way to automatically maintain a kind of sub-profile, for each different aspect of a user, but exposed user-friendly and effortless. Most people won't maintain a separate user profile just for recommendations, as it's too much work for too little benefit.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#297

Post by notnaut »

user3939382 wrote: post #293
eadmund wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of the traditional music and theatre businesses has been money laundering. One could put out a record (which presumably has a nice margin on it) and pay folks a small amount of money to buy many many many copies of the records with cash, turning the dirty funds into clean ones. Likewise with a theatre production and ticket sales. Seems like any business with significant cash inputs would be vulnerab…

I used to work in the music industry and gaming the charts was common.

Art and publishing too

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#298

Post by seibelj »

vintermann wrote: post #220
seibelj wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single business can be a vector for money laundering. From cash laundromats to high end technology, if the launderer owns the business then it has potential. I would estimate the government catches somewhere in the ballpark of 0.00000001% of all laundering. Businesses also have zero incentive to stop this activity as long as they get their margin.

I have asked people who work with preventing money laundering how expensive it is, how much you get back from a launderer in clean money for every dollar you pay him in dirty ones. They have all estimated a 20-25% premium. That doesn't seem like it would be sustainable if only 0.00000001% was caught.

I think the difference is if you do it yourself vs. trust a third party. The third party is charging a risk premium.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#299

Post by warty_affrays »

vintermann wrote: post #273
hahajk wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or enough other people were fooled and listen to the "fake" Fanny, creating a listener correlation between the real and fake Fannys.

Release Radar by its nature will try to recommend tracks with very few plays (if any). It is supposed to solve the "bootstrap" problem in recommendation systems. In retrospect, I think it's more likely that Fake Fanny Mendlelssohn did NOT inform Spotify that they were a different person, and Spotify only split it out after a lot of Felix/Fanny fans clicked "I did NOT like this" when the track was put in their Release…

The Release Radar playlist is supposed to contain new releases from artists you already listen to. I think you might be right about the release radar being a method they use to separate out bands with the same name. I've definitely noticed bands with the same name in my Release Radar. It would be useful if Spotify exposed a method to report different bands under the same name. The do not recommend is a different signal since maybe I also like the new band. I probably mess up Spotify's recommendation algorithm for me since I use the heart button to flag albums as listened to regardless of my enjoyment since there isn't a another way to mark albums as "listened" like there is for podcasts.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#300

Post by winternett »

stronglikedan wrote: post #291
nosianu wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really interesting - although when I read that story I thought the point was the broken recommendation system. 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 . Or Facebook/Youtube, somehow: I watched a single video on Youtube about Viking sword fighting and suddenly my people recommendations on Facebook were at least 20% milit…

Spotify's recommendation system is so bad, that when I find a song I like, I put it into Pandora's free tier to find more songs. I hate how Spotify likes to prioritize every other song from that artist, and every other song from that genre, over songs from other artists and genres that sound similar to the song I want recommendations for. Pandora seems to prioritize the sound of the song, and actually finds similar s…

Sites like Pandora, and many other "underdog" sites, operate as expected because they are trying desperately to please users in a bid to capture market share. Once they gain market dominance they begin to operate in an unexpected/unfavorable manner, just like Spotify does now, because "tailored" recommendations (strategic content recommendations) generates the most annual revenue for them.

The saying "power corrupts" applies to this circumstance perfectly.

Spotify manipulates recommendations to what makes them the most money, not necessarily what is best for user satisfaction. They do it just enough to prevent users from cancelling their subscriptions as well (usually).

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