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An odd discovery on Spotify

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Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#421

Post by cycomanic »

kennend3 wrote: post #391
cycomanic wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

Well i think the statistics are very strongly in my favour because English pop music is very popular all over the world and there are plenty of countries where the majority of people don't speak English (and still listen to English music).

When I was young we (in all the kids my age) listened to plenty of of English music even though we didn't understand anything. And let's not even talk about the plenty of examples of songs in English where even native speakers don't understand the majority of the lyrics.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#422

Post by tornadofart »

These generated 'things' only pass as music if you are truly uneducated in this regard. I'm tired of people saying, as I've read in some comments here, that this will be our dystopian future.

These generated pieces of text, art, music, etc. are mere mashup copies without sense and purpose. None of the tricks of trade and conventions the artists know and apply to their art (such as, for pop music, a standard pop song is approx. 3 to 4 minutes long, has a verse, a chorus, a bridge which are played and repeated in a specific sequence) are recognizable here. Even the deviations from said conventions are so obviously non-intentional and random, without sense or 'dramaturgy', build-up and release of tension, etc. It's not music.

If this is our future, it is only if we become less educated and, sorry, somehow significantly dumber.

And if, according to the numbers on Spotify, people willingly listen to this garbage, I only have a misanthropic "we've earned it" for you.

The only takeaway from this article is that people are staggeringly stupid and uneducated and will consume whatever trash whichever industry will throw at them.

Perhaps it's time we spent money on education again.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#423

Post by vintermann »

danjudgemusic wrote: post #165

As a producer, I feel like this could be more related to people using Splice and other popular sample packs in order to just get something uploaded onto Spotify? I've come across a lot of very similar tracks on Spotify which utilise all the same sounds from the same sample packs and they're almost identical.

If it was remotely good faith, it wouldn't be a single track that's 0:47 long on umpteen different artists.

There's minimalistic music, and there's low effort music, but this is not that. This is spam.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#424

Post by adamauckland »

midasz wrote: post #243
adamauckland wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't really complain if they offer Spotify Family which gives you 6 separate premium accounts, I think it's only double the cost of a normal Spotify account.

So the solution is paying double so I can log out of my own account and into an account I created for my 2 year old so we can listen to a disney song? And when I want to listen to my own songs again then I have to log out of my kids account and back into my own?

Yes, if you want multiple accounts you pay for multiple accounts. It's a solved problem you just have to pay the $9 a month.

I have two children, myself. I just installed second account on an old phone which has no SIM card in it, it has all the kids playlists and I don't have to worry about them getting recommended any of my 90s thrash metal. :)

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#425

Post by adamauckland »

hakanensari wrote: post #231
adamauckland wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't really complain if they offer Spotify Family which gives you 6 separate premium accounts, I think it's only double the cost of a normal Spotify account.

That unfortunately doesn't solve it. There will always be moments where kids will want to ask for songs on your Spotify, like you're renting a car and have your phone hooked up.

Click on your account dropdown in the top header, choose Private Session. Now nothing you listen to will affect your recommendations.

Come on, guys, I'd expect better from HN than complaining about features which already exist.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/FAQs/What-is-Private-Sessio...

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#426

Post by vintermann »

hokkos wrote: post #247

So I played a few of those song into shazam and it gave me others similar songs : https://open.spotify.com/track/35lnhh0LCDZOu10Lasv6bi?si=257... and lots of others that were not on spotify : Boss Through the Author by MemethSoyal Ariya Saunders by Raphy Fraser So it means it is possible to catch them, and spotify is probably actively trying to remove them.

Nice discovery! I suspected the same, since all the accounts were made a few months ago, but I couldn't find any on any of the other streaming services.

It could be that you're right, that this fake artist used to be on Spotify but was removed. But that doesn't explain why you can find e.g. Romilda Gebbia on Spotify but not on YouTube.

When I think about it, it could also be that the spammer is on multiple services, but they use different algorithmically generated artists for each service.

What was extremely useful in you finding this on YouTube, is that we can see by which distribution service they got access to the streaming services (information that all the other services hide, annoyingly). It's a French World Music thing.

Which is especially interesting, since I also traced back the "Belle Wood" spammer to a French World Music thing, although a different one (divercities/diMusic). I wasn't 100% sure if they had anything to do with the spam, they could plausibly be a victim of it themselves, but now I have more circumstantial evidence. Thanks!

(If you know of a less noisy forum where we could discuss tracking down/locking out algorithmic spammers, I would be grateful.)

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#427

Post by kaashif »

kennend3 wrote: post #391
cycomanic wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

I think it's likely you're right, although I haven't looked for any hard numbers.

But anecdotally, I only speak English and I listen to lots of Finnish, Swedish, German, and Norwegian music.

I don't know if Spotify just started recommending this stuff based on the few metal bands I knew from those places, but it started recommending other genres too and I really like lots of it. Not sure how I'd find this music otherwise, actually.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#428

Post by vintermann »

exikyut wrote: post #415
vintermann wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I see a screen full of your second to last result: https://twitter.com/HaraldKml/status/1562137336409985025/pho...

Huh... this is pretty interesting. My screenshot shows "15 results" at the top, which a reload of the page just now is still showing. But when I go to load the site through my VPS in Germany... I see the "292 albums" you're talking about! And yep, umpteen copies of the same album art just like in your screenshot. Wow. I think this might be due to Australian consumer protection laws dictating that faulty products MUST…

This is just conjecture, but I think it may have to do with compilation rights. The spam albums contain a random selection of music from the actual artists. Maybe the spammer has some very broad license to make compilations - I can totally see record companies accepting this sort of spam as long as they get their cut. But such rights would perhaps be geographically limited?

There are also problems with this theory, though:

* "Their cut" should, from my understanding of copyright law, be 100%. I don't understand how the spammer would make money off it at all.

* From the metadata, the spammer's one-off label claims to directly own both the music and the recording rights.

* The spammed artists do not seem limited to one of the big three's back catalog.

* The spammed artists include some which are/were well known for not allowing third party compilation albums with their music.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#429

Post by klabb3 »

sushid wrote: post #420
klabb3 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's very important piece of Spotify's rev share model, it has arbitrage built in(!), most people are not aware of this. Spotify pays PER STREAM, meaning that a bot account can funnel a massively disproportionate amount of revenue compared to a human one. In fact, you can generate more revenue than your subscription costs. Artists have complained about this forever, because 24/7 playlists at the gym with Justin…

> If I use my account to listen to one band only, my $10 contribution should go to them (modulo taxes, margins etc). I'd argue that pooling the funds and divvying it up evenly across all played songs is actually the most fair. If anything, your implementation would be more prone to scammy content farmers (e.g. spammers using trials/locale pricing arbitrage to play only one $SCAM_ARTIST song per account). Most importa…

> your implementation would be more prone to scammy content farmers (e.g. spammers using trials/locale pricing arbitrage to play only one $SCAM_ARTIST song per account).

Wat? You're saying that if you misimplement it and count all users including free/trial as equal paying you could get problematic incentives? Well, yeah. The point is today you have correctly implemented per-stream and there is a massive open arbitrage. A bot account can control 100-1000x of revenue compared to a human.

> Most importantly, however, your model is just not how memberships work in the real world. [...]

Spotify doesn't produce music, they act as middle man between you and the artists you listen to. There's a reasonable expectation that Spotify takes a cut between you and the artists you listen to, similar to an app store. Splitting your contribution between the artists you're listening to makes sense and importantly does not have arbitrage for content farm spammers (modulo a tiny bit of value from stolen accounts).

HBO and Costco aren't just funneling money around, they're producing physical goods and content, so it doesn't apply directly. You could make a more convoluted argument that they should follow the same principles but it's really not clear what that would mean, so I'm not gonna defend it. Same with taxes, I don't know what either per-stream or per-customer would even map to in that space.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#430

Post by solarkraft »

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.

Spotify does have an incognito mode to prevent this, but you have to carefully enable it beforehand. Why you can't just delete stuff from your history is baffling.
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