The Dynamics of Music Exploration on Spotify
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The Dynamics of Music Exploration on Spotify
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Re: The Dynamics of Music Exploration on Spotify
#2The amount of data Spotify has on user behavior must be awe-inducing. Not that I'm complaining, the Algorithm has shown me plenty of good music that I would have missed otherwise. Seeing the data analyzed like this and the results published publicly is pretty cool!
I just wish sometimes there would be better ways to feed Spotify data on my preferences. I have a running playlist for example that I listen to over and over -- that does not mean I enjoy the genre 'DnB at 175BPM' so much that I want the same kind of music in my Discover Weekly.
It would be great if there either was a 'mood' you could set to say: I'm now listening to stuff that's only relevant in this context and shouldn't pollute other 'moods'; or if you could at least mark playlists as 'do not track'. I suspect you could already hide individual listening sessions from the data collection by making it a private session (would make sense at least, though I haven't checked), but who would remember to do that consistently, especially given how you need to set that switch manually in the settings.
Re: The Dynamics of Music Exploration on Spotify
#3The amount of data Spotify has on user behavior must be awe-inducing. Not that I'm complaining, the Algorithm has shown me plenty of good music that I would have missed otherwise. Seeing the data analyzed like this and the results published publicly is pretty cool! I just wish sometimes there would be better ways to feed Spotify data on my preferences. I have a running playlist for example that I listen to over and o…
+1, had to switch to another app for white noise to sleep at night after my discover weekly became exclusively color noise (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colors_of_noise)
Re: The Dynamics of Music Exploration on Spotify
#4First of all, what does “variety” even mean?
There used to be this cool script called "super eclectic score"[1] for last.fm. It had a pretty clever way of measuring how varied your tastes in music are.
The following script takes the 50 top artists in your musical profile from Last.fm, and finds the collection of top 20 similar artists (where the artist itself is the #1 most similar artist) for this top 50. The resulting is a list of artists similar to your preferred artists. As the list is larger (maximum = 1000), your musical preference is more diverse.
[1] http://anthony.liekens.net/pub/scripts/last.fm/supereclectic...
Re: The Dynamics of Music Exploration on Spotify
#5Great blog post, appreciate the level of detail on the results and metrics looked at. Would be very curious to see how genre impacts things and if age groups remain stratified (or become more stratified?) controlling for it.
Re: The Dynamics of Music Exploration on Spotify
#6The amount of data Spotify has on user behavior must be awe-inducing. Not that I'm complaining, the Algorithm has shown me plenty of good music that I would have missed otherwise. Seeing the data analyzed like this and the results published publicly is pretty cool! I just wish sometimes there would be better ways to feed Spotify data on my preferences. I have a running playlist for example that I listen to over and o…
+1, had to switch to another app for white noise to sleep at night after my discover weekly became exclusively color noise ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colors_of_noise )
That's hilarious, but also highlights a good point in our lack of control/observability into these algorithms
Re: The Dynamics of Music Exploration on Spotify
#7The study is interesting, however I think Spotify's algoritms and user interface in combination with its promotional tools for publishers and labels are interfering with the results. These are specifically designed to make the users make certain choices. I still get loads of recommandations on music I never will listen to in the app. These are not strange and obscure music suggestions, neither are they promotion of artists and music within the broad spectrum of genres I listen to. They are in large promotion of the already top promoted artists in the world. Their search is not very good for finding new and interesting music either. In my experience you need to have very specific knowledge of what to look for, to get good results. So, when Spotify do this kind of research I would be very interested in how they take into consideration the effect their own activity have on their users behaviour? In my personal experience they constantly try to make me less explorational. I prefer Last.fm for exploring.
Re: The Dynamics of Music Exploration on Spotify
#8> Exploration spikes around Christmas, for example, during which people may be influenced to seek out season-specific music.
For my case, exploration does spike around Christmas, but this is due to all the "best albums of the year" lists coming out.
I get more than my fill of Christmas music involuntarily, no need to "discover" more.
Re: The Dynamics of Music Exploration on Spotify
#9The amount of data Spotify has on user behavior must be awe-inducing. Not that I'm complaining, the Algorithm has shown me plenty of good music that I would have missed otherwise. Seeing the data analyzed like this and the results published publicly is pretty cool! I just wish sometimes there would be better ways to feed Spotify data on my preferences. I have a running playlist for example that I listen to over and o…
FYI you can mark sessions as private and the data won't flow into recommendations
Re: The Dynamics of Music Exploration on Spotify
#10For all the complexity... this is something Spotify has got right.
I'm in my 40s, and I still listen to an incredible amount of new music. That is across everything from mainstream rock and pop, through to jazz, jungle, soul, techno, house, hip hop, classical... everything (though I tend to draw the line at screamcore).
And in there last year a tiny unsigned band with 2 tracks and fewer than 900 listens (at the time) got suggested. That band is now one of my favourite bands, a Scottish punk band... Dead Pony https://open.spotify.com/artist/3lGO6uBIzoFyU6OoGMER1B?si=OT... . Since hearing them I've told my old contacts in the music business about them (typically DJs at 6 Music, a few people that own labels, and a few musicians too). Earlier this year they've been signed (nothing to do with me, though I hope whispers meandered and it helped), been featured on BBC 6 Music, and are now working on an album and one of their tracks has hit over 1M listens. I've seen them live and holy crap, they rock... destined for far larger venues than the 50 person under-arches theatre in London that I saw them...
Spotify is doing something very right when I'm not solely rediscovering things I've been listening to for 30 years, but am finding the things I'm going to listen to for the next 30 years.
I've tried Tidal, Deezer, Apple, and my own heavily loaded Plex with all of the music labelled and richly tagged... but the discovery capability of Spotify along with the playlists are their killer feature.