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An odd discovery on Spotify

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Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#301

Post by ihaveajob »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #229
midasz wrote: 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.

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.

It's fairly trivial to keep the recommendations consistent depending on the latest request, not just the logged user. Pandora does a good job at this. We have it on our Alexa and at dinner, we take turns with the kids requesting songs. If we stop requesting, it keeps playing an internally consistent series based on the latest song we asked for. So if it's the kids' choice, it's a never ending row of Kids Learning Tube :-)

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#302

Post by ihaveajob »

wartijn_ wrote: post #268
probably_wrong wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we talking about the same Spotify? Because the only reference I found to removing songs from my recommendations is a thread from 2020 that says it is not possible. https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/How-do-I-delete-my...

You can start a private session next time you have a birthday party, to prevent even more birthday songs being recommended. https://community.spotify.com/t5/FAQs/What-is-Private-Sessio...

It sounds like a nightmare. Much like my YouTube suggestions, which now are mostly my kids' planet videos, and my wife's workout ones.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#303

Post by bfgoodrich »

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.…

No post body was provided.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#304

Post by [deleted] »

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.…

[deleted]

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#305

Post by TomMasz »

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.…

You have to wonder about the economics of this scheme. The music probably isn't expensive to produce and clone, but Spotify pays so little per stream, how is it viable to purchase bot streams in large quantities?

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#306

Post by spywaregorilla »

DecoPerson wrote: post #7

In the “Release Radar” generated for me last week, there was a 40 second song consisting of rhythmic mechanical noises with a strange title and album art of an alien head. I didn’t like it at all. I think it was recommended to me because the publisher listed its artist as “Fanny Mendelssohn” — a classical composer whose work I definitely enjoy and have probably pressed “Like” a few times on — even though the song had…

I don't think it's nefarious, just incompetence. I like Poppy, the bubble gum pop youtube girl turned metal, turned grunge artist. Her name is pretty generic though, and I've seen multiple artists with the same name have their stuff put under her identity on spotify briefly. The artists I've seen are clearly not fake artists trying to sneak into her brand.

Composer / performer is a whole nother metadata thing that should happen.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#307

Post by winternett »

midasz wrote: post #160
merijnv wrote: post #146

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.

A lot of the time it's not an algorithm in charge. Most of the time now recommendations are based on who paid to promote their song or podcast.

Algorithms cannot be left running totally when sponsored ads can be purchased on the fly by content creators and musicians unless a site is lying to ad buyers about ad effectiveness.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#308

Post by vintermann »

seibelj wrote: post #298
vintermann wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And I'm saying if the risk was that small, they couldn't charge that premium.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#309

Post by bradstewart »

midasz wrote: post #160
merijnv wrote: post #146

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.

I keep hearing this, but it hasn't happened to me yet. I wonder if it's because my Spotify history without kids is ~10 years vs ~2 years with?

We listen to a lot of Disney music, etc in the living room on my account, but I've never had that type of thing show up in my Discover Weekly or any of the Daily Mix playlists.

I will be very displeased if/when it does happen though.... Discover Weekly is a major reason I've paid Spotify for so long.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#310

Post by unethical_ban »

djmips wrote: post #150
objclxt wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a shitton of crap movies in Hollywood. I wonder... The movie doesn't need to be crap to be a product of money laundering! The Wolf of Wall Street[1] was infamously funded by money laundering (from the Malaysian Sovereign Wealth Fund), [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wolf_of_Wall_Street_(2013_...

Wow that's a rabbit hole! https://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/prosecution-tells-jur...

That site screams "malware delivery" or spam at the least.
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