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An odd discovery on Spotify

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Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#391

Post by kennend3 »

cycomanic wrote: post #354
kennend3 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 langua…

I would argue for the vast majority of people language is not the primary indicator of what they consider good or bad music. I would assume it doesn't go into the algorithm at all and I certainly would not want it too. I have discovered some really cool music that I'm not even sure what language they are in this way.

I would wish you great success trying to frame an argument that the "vast majority" of people are not primary concerned with language.

It is a bit hard to listen to/enjoy music when you cant understand a single word.

Sure they had "gangnam style" but that was really a more a "one off".

> I certainly would not want it too.

I'd love to know if the majority feel this way.

given there are countless articles such as this: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/How-to-get-...

i would think most find this annoying?

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#392

Post by kennend3 »

243423443 wrote: post #323
kennend3 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 langua…

Why would you only listen to English songs?

i would think it would be obvious, but here goes - because i only speak/understand English?

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#393

Post by dublinben »

nivenkos wrote: post #312
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 recor…

The less 'real' music you listen to, the fewer royalties that Spotify has to pay to the record labels. If you're listening to more 'fake' music, then this saves Spotify money, and increases their profit margins. This is the exact same incentive behind their push into podcasts, another kind of audio content they don't have to pay royalties on. In this case, either because it's shared freely, or because they've acquired the original publisher themselves, e.g. Gimlet Media, Parcast and The Ringer.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#394

Post by macrolime »

kennend3 wrote: post #392
243423443 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you only listen to English songs?

i would think it would be obvious, but here goes - because i only speak/understand English?

For me the lyrics of songs are mostly irrelevant and it doesn't matter if I understand it or not. I usually don't pay attention to to it anyway.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#395

Post by olivertaylor »

hedora wrote: post #72
olivertaylor wrote: post #24

Related: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/an-mbw-reader-just-bl...

> Recently, Spotify announced their Discovery Mode program. This allows labels to discount selected parts of their catalog in return for increased promotion via Radio and Autoplay Uggh. I wish payola were actually illegal in practice. > So who’s really losing in this equation? Possibly, older out of touch-artists who think music should always be something meaningful and “culturally important” and are perhaps – just s…

Personally, I think it's sarcasm.

I found it totally fascinating myself. And now that I've read it I see the effects everywhere (musically).

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#396

Post by NIL8 »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #196
bb101 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. There are some playlists and songs I only listen to in the gym, and similar songs constantly float to the top of Spotify's recommendations for me due to gym being 3x week. I did consider creating another "gym-only" user on our Family plan, but Spotify should really have a way to create named contexts for the one user. e.g. commute, gym, run, working from home, on a plane, etc.

Pandora does this with 'stations'.

There's a lot I like about Pandora and a lot I don't. The "stations" you mention can be pretty good. The problem I have is with the app itself. It's buggy and learning to use it well can be frustrating. A simple example would be when using the back arrow to return to where I was in the app. If I try to go back to a previous screen, it shrinks the app and when I resize it, Pandora restarts from scratch. This seems to take forever and it happens just about every time I use it. The only reason I haven't deleted it and switched to another app, is that I can't be bothered with all that while I'm working or driving (the only time I use it). Of course, there's other, more common issues like searching for a favourite song and only finding live sessions or worse, finding out they've stopped carrying a certain artist on my playlist.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#397

Post by vintermann »

warty_affrays wrote: post #299
vintermann wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sign…

There is a tool, but it's for the artists only. Probably kept as a carrot to encourage artists to register with Spotify.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#398

Post by vintermann »

exikyut wrote: post #389
vintermann wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spammer is still at it, I see: https://www.deezer.com/search/%22From%20the%20box%22/album

FWIW this is all I see, not logged in (never had an account), from AU: https://imgur.com/a/HXpn9JG Not sure if I'm seeing something different to you...?

Yes. I see a screen full of your second to last result:

https://twitter.com/HaraldKml/status/1562137336409985025/pho...

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#399

Post by discardedrefuse »

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 feel like this could be easily solved by adding an "incognito mode" to the Spotify app.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#400

Post by klabb3 »

bombcar wrote: post #344
werds wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i cannot fathom how your example here supports the idea that Bieber playing 24/7 in a gym is stealing money from the niche artist who are listen to by only a handful of fans?

I think the idea is that there are two Spotify subscribers in the whole world. You, who listen to IndieBand™ for a total of an hour a week or so. The Gym™ who plays Bieber 24/7 every day, all month. You each pay $10 a month, so $20 total. Spotify allocates based on plays, so Bieber gets 720 "played hours" and IndieBand™ gets 4. So Bieber gets 720/724 of the $20. The OP is saying in this case, Bieber should get $10 an…

Exactly. Per stream means that accounts that play music 24/7 are allocating orders of magnitude more revenue than yours or mine, much more even than what they paid in subscription fee. It's an open arbitrage incentive model, ripe for minimum risk exploitation by gray hats. Of course, this practice has the ability to erode actual artist revenue, which is already very low.
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