An odd discovery on Spotify • Hacker News Board

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#311

Post by alexb_ » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 1:51 PM UTC

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…

All art is subjective, which of course makes detecting funny business way harder.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#312

Post by nivenkos » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

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.

This doesn't make sense though - Spotify doesn't pay per stream (no-one does) but by a revenue share. So they would still pay out the same more or less - i.e. your premium subscription is put into a big pool and then divided out, it's not like your individual subscription goes to what you listened to.

I guess it could help shift some streams to indie artists with a less favourable contract compared to the big 4 record companies, but it hardly seems worthwhile?

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#313

Post by kennend3 » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 2:00 PM UTC

probably_wrong wrote: post #194

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.

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.

Almost every monday when the "discover weekly" is rebuilt i get new songs which are not in english.

I have no non-english songs in any of my playlists and when they show up on discover weekly i flag them.

I would think that recommending me Spanish/Russian music when my entire collection is english should flag a problem with the system?

Yet week after week at least one song on discover weekly is in some foreign language.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#314

Post by nsilvestri » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 2:01 PM UTC

spywaregorilla wrote: post #306

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 sh…

It's a common enough problem that Distrokid has a support article on the matter. https://support.distrokid.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015182574...

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#315

Post by darkr » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 2:01 PM UTC

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.

Using the Spotify kids app is a solution to this problem.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#316

Post by honkdaddy » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 2:03 PM UTC

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.

This is crazy. Every single one I looked at was like this. Are these even real people playing guitar? If it were piano I’d say it’s 100% just MIDI arrangements.

I’m gonna look into this more. I have friends trying to break into the industry and gaming the Spotify and TikTok algorithms is (unfortunately) a big part of that these days. Having fake, phantom artists filling up your flagship playlists is so anti-creator I’m truly appalled at Spotify.

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2wdHPx6lvGu3MvTH61uvTi?si=3n...

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#317

Post by rockostrich » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 2:04 PM UTC

Seems like most of the discussion here is focused on everyone's own experience with this, but can I just recommend Robin Sloan as a human in general for folks to follow in their lives?

His 2 novels, "Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore" and "Sourdough", are both really engaging reads. His 3rd novel is in progress and it seems like it's going to be more of the same quality. He also has a couple of novellas and a bunch of great short stories (some of which he did limited printings of and mailed out and one of which was procedurally generated and unique to the person who purchased it).

His newsletter is constantly filled with great media recommendations and he's always working on something interesting in that bridges the media and tech worlds.

He also makes great olive oil (Fat Gold).

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#318

Post by allochthon » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 2:05 PM UTC

I am waiting for services to give up on purely algorithmic approaches and start exploring recommendations based on other users whose tastes the user likes. Even better if you could have different clusters of selected users for different occasions.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#319

Post by avg_dev » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 2:09 PM UTC

rockostrich wrote: post #317

Seems like most of the discussion here is focused on everyone's own experience with this, but can I just recommend Robin Sloan as a human in general for folks to follow in their lives? His 2 novels, "Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore" and "Sourdough", are both really engaging reads. His 3rd novel is in progress and it seems like it's going to be more of the same quality. He also has a couple of novellas and a bunch of…

Thanks for the recommendation. It is nice to see. I have read both of the novels myself, as well as at least one of the Penumbra novellas (it's been a while). I really enjoyed the Penumbra stuff; I have to admit I remember feeling slightly unsatisfied with the conclusion but I was definitely hooked and kept turning the pages and it was the first time I had seen a fictional book refer to Ruby programming. I really enjoyed his characters. I recall enjoying Sourdough as well, perhaps not as much as Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore, but that was an absolute pageturner for me so it's hard to compete with.

I am subscribed to his newsletter but I confess I rarely if ever read it. After having read this post and your comment, I'll make an effort to give it a solid look.

Festina lente!

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#320

Post by metalliqaz » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 2:11 PM UTC

ABraidotti wrote: post #279

This reminded me-- years ago, I ran into an old high school friend and asked him what he had been up to. He had gotten into graphic design and wound up partnering with a couple of guys who had a recording studio. They had a niche product and needed cover art -- and lots of it. He explained to me that they would release albums of fart noises on iTunes -- like many, many albums -- and the tracks would get a ton of play…

this is one of my favorite HN comments of all time