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The lie of music discovery algorithms

zeynepevecen.dev

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Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#121

Post by BobaFloutist »

aljgz wrote: post #17

In the age of internet, engagement optimization and recommendation algorithms create a new way that we are affected by the behaviour of others. That annoying dark pattern on a piece of software you use? Because there are people who fall to it, clicking on an ad or "engaging" more. That stupid show that keeps being recommended to you? Because a lot of people just sit on the couch, watching something on the list that d…

> Looks like if we describe musical work with high dimensional vectors, I like to find good vectors that are not too close to each other.

It's the classic problem of "Ok, but how do I sort these by which ones are actually any good?!"

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#122

Post by fallinditch »

Another good music discovery method is to use AOTY - albumoftheyear.org

I find their comprehensive section of Lists (featuring lists from all the major publications) and aggregate lists is inspiring for discovery.

For example, check out this list of the best albums so far this year according to The Quietus, containing some great stuff your algorithm would never consider:

https://www.albumoftheyear.org/list/2284-the-quietus-albums-...

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#123

Post by nox101 »

calimoro78 wrote: post #69

Pandora, Pandora, Pandora. No other service for me worked to reveal new songs and artists I did not know about that nailed my taste. But Pandora relies on manual tagging by music experts. Fantastic, but probably not very scalable.

A problem I had with pandora is I'd say I don't like track X so it would play other mixes of track X.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#124

Post by nox101 »

The service I got the most use out of was Rhapsody back in like 2005. Instead of playlists and "radio" it listened artists that influenced this band and artists that were influenced by this band. That lead directly to music I liked.

Otherwise, most of the services (Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube Music) have been really bad at recommending music. No amount of downvotes on songs seems to give their algos any input on bands I don't want to hear. Further, they always seem to devolve in to ridiculous recommendations. I've asked for "Louis Prima" radio and have them insert hip-hop or rap.

Google Play Music did better than those 3 but that died.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#125

Post by ska »

fantasybuilder wrote: post #99
cainxinth wrote: post #36

I’ve used everything, new and old media: Spotify, Napster, CMJ, pitchfork, bandcamp, allmusic, mojo, SoundCloud, beatport, last.fm, Apple Music… Nothing beats that one friend who used to DJ and still obsessively digs crates.

In my experience literally anything beats that one friend who is a DJ. My friends - professional DJs in Berlin - haven't even heard of Can, to my absolute shock.

The “and still obsessively digs crates” was important I think. DJ’ are not even close to fungible (hell, I’ve even met a couple who don’t like music much)

All music recommendation engines at this time still aspire to be mediocre, they aren’t even playing the S.A.,e game as a human who is good at it.

Unfortunately, such humans are unevenly distributed.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#126

Post by TheCleric »

Pandora has always been the best at this (for me at least). Especially because they are the only tool I know of that has a MUST HAVE feature for me: contextual thumbs up/down.

If I'm in the mood for a certain mood/genre, that's what I want to listen to. Even if a song comes on that I normally love, if it doesn't fit the mood, I want a way to say "that doesn't belong here right now". So in Pandora I start a station and can thumb down songs that don't fit that station's theme, and Pandora understands that doesn't mean I don't like that song. It just means I don't like that song in this context.

As far as I've seen, every other service only registers these globally. Either I like a song or I don't. That doesn't make any sense to me.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#127

Post by scelerat »

It's not the only way to discover new music, but in the age of 99.9% online presence, I feel simply going out to listen to music is way overlooked.

Most cities and metro areas with more than a few hundred thousand people have jazz, punk, indie, hip hop, country, choral, and classical scenes. Certainly true of any ville with a university.

Check out a local weekly, listen to college radio, look at the online calendars of local venues and clubs, take a risk, check something out you've never heard of before. You may be surprised. There are musicians and scenes which fly under the radar of widespread Spotify and Youtube popularity which nevertheless deliver great performances and often themselves lead to other new, interesting discoveries.

A side effect is you may also end up talking to someone at these gathering places and making new acquaintances: again, another great way to discover music and other things.

There is so much that has been built online whose subtle or sometimes overt goal seems to be to eliminate actual human contact. I suppose that is attractive for some, but I feel the opposite is what a lot of people yearn for, and it can be achieved with just a little bit of investment.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#128

Post by fantasybuilder »

ska wrote: post #125
fantasybuilder wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience literally anything beats that one friend who is a DJ. My friends - professional DJs in Berlin - haven't even heard of Can, to my absolute shock.

The “and still obsessively digs crates” was important I think. DJ’ are not even close to fungible (hell, I’ve even met a couple who don’t like music much) All music recommendation engines at this time still aspire to be mediocre, they aren’t even playing the S.A.,e game as a human who is good at it. Unfortunately, such humans are unevenly distributed.

My point is more about DJ specialization I guess. The vast majority of DJs I know personally still dig crates all the time - but they are techno/house/D&B/etc DJs, they know close to nothing about music outside of these genres. This goes so deep that some German techno DJs haven't even heard of Krautrock, the German scene that in many ways was a precursor of electronic music.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#129

Post by DiggyJohnson »

fantasybuilder wrote: post #99
cainxinth wrote: post #36

I’ve used everything, new and old media: Spotify, Napster, CMJ, pitchfork, bandcamp, allmusic, mojo, SoundCloud, beatport, last.fm, Apple Music… Nothing beats that one friend who used to DJ and still obsessively digs crates.

In my experience literally anything beats that one friend who is a DJ. My friends - professional DJs in Berlin - haven't even heard of Can, to my absolute shock.

Why is it weird that a DJ friend hasn't heard of a artist that you are a fan of?

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#130

Post by astrobe_ »

zeynepevecen wrote: post #91
astrobe_ wrote: post #89

"You need to enable JavaScript to run this app." What do you mean, "app"? There's no "app" there. If anyone constructed a PDF, which was itself blank but, via embedded JavaScript, loaded parts of itself from a remote server, people would rightly balk and wonder what on earth the creator of this PDF was thinking — yet this is precisely the design of many “websites” [1] [1] https://www.devever.net/%7Ehl/xhtml2

There is an app you are just seeing the landing page

Oh, my bad! It's a "landing page"! Totally normal that it needs to 200 Kb of JS to display 1 Kb of text!
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