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The lie of music discovery algorithms

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Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#131

Post by InitialLastName »

gs17 wrote: post #116
InitialLastName wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the opposite: my Spotify recs (after at least 8 years with an account) tend to get stuck on whatever I've been listening to recently. I've had to consistently go afield to find any new (to me) music. Even their "new releases for you" falls short of recommending me releases from artists I follow. How much less capable could it be?

Release Radar is consistently the worst feature of Spotify. It misses entire new albums from artists I listen to regularly, and seems to have a quota of songs to fill so after the first two or three it's no longer aligned with my interests. I can forgive it not being coherent since it's supposed to include multiple genres together, but I can't forgive it going way off from what I like just to hit 30 songs.

Not even Release Radar, but the "New Releases for You" list should probably have new releases by the artists I follow (as a basic minimum).

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#132

Post by musictubes »

MrDrMcCoy wrote: post #119

Way back when Last.FM has its own radio service, I could throw a few random genres and/or artists at it, and it would recommend me pretty much exactly want I wanted every time. I gladly enabled scrobbling in my music players, and it tended to recommend me good stuff every time. Ever since its radio feature got killed, its database has been getting worse and worse. Just now, I tried to search for some things it used t…

Last.fm had the best categorizing features I ever saw. Songs would. It only be listed under “female artist” but would also have things like “extensive vamping,” that really got to the heart of what the song was about. They got closer to understanding why I liked songs than any other service. All of the other services feel rather dumb when it comes to preferences. It feels like they still rely on associating other people that liked artist x also liked artist y. As a music aficionado it’s infuriating.

Apple has tried to help by using human curated playlists but I frequently find myself thinking I have better taste than their “experts.”

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#133

Post by DiggyJohnson »

a-french-anon wrote: post #46
bsenftner wrote: post #10

Music discovery has never worked for me, for the simple reason it's the lyrics, not the music. I listen to anyone speaking truth, (the truth I believe, of course), and that gives me a wide disjoint range of music, but they are all singing about political social truths. Marvin Gaye, Public Enemy, Rage Against The Machine, Beyonce, The Stranglers, The Jam, Psychic TV... It's the lyrics, and now today, we finally have t…

> with the lyrics, with the intellectual content of the music and not just the dressing. > Marvin Gaye, Public Enemy, Rage Against The Machine, Beyonce Thanks for the laugh, man, I needed it.

Even though you'r being mean I feel the need to defend you, only because I agree that this was one of the most unrelatable things I've ever read on the site (i.e. GP's preference for music with a political or social theme in the lyrics rather than a specific genre, theme, sound, style, or mood).

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#134

Post by 2o93u4592u »

cush wrote: post #82

So I've been using Tidal for 5 years now, and feel they run circles around Spotify in terms of curation. Their algorithms and curated tracks are better, and they steer away from the social/gamification features and lean in to artist-centric features. For example, they've had a "credits" feature since day one - you can look up the producer, guitarist, oboeist, etc of any song, and see what other work they've done. In…

I used Tidal twice, for a year or so each time, and I found that their recommendations were the best by far. But their app was so insanely buggy. On multiple different phones it would have to be force-closed and restarted about hourly. Usually it froze when starting a new song. The whole screen would be frozen and unresponsive. Now I use Apple music and the recommendations are garbage, and it also freezes frequently, but specifically only when I wake the app up from sleep.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#135

Post by corytheboyd »

bocytron wrote: post #68
corytheboyd wrote: post #58

Personally all I want out of a subscription based music service is excellent quality, constantly updated/created, thematically consistent, human curated playlists. I don’t really care if it’s super popular or fringe stuff, but I do want it to be as “good” as the other stuff on the playlist, and I want a human who also cares about the music to be making that decision. Sometimes the playlists in Apple Music scratch thi…

Deezer has human curated playlists updated frequently, which has been my main way of discovering new artists these days. For example, the prog metal playlist as been updated 5 days ago. [0] There are lots of those playlists.. [0] https://www.deezer.com/fr/playlist/1588605745

Hell yeah Deezer is already so much better, I’ll switch to this permanently I think. I knew it was a thing but just never thought to try it.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#136

Post by frankus »

I think I speak for most people when I say I want my music "discovery" playlist to be something like "mostly stuff that sounds like stuff I've indicated that I like" with a small amount of "not sure I'll like it, but suprise me". It sounds like OP is looking for the ability to turn up the "surprise me" factor at the expense of maybe having to skip a few more songs that just aren't clicking with them. So maybe something like a "temperature" knob is in order?

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#137

Post by thinkingtoilet »

cush wrote: post #82

So I've been using Tidal for 5 years now, and feel they run circles around Spotify in terms of curation. Their algorithms and curated tracks are better, and they steer away from the social/gamification features and lean in to artist-centric features. For example, they've had a "credits" feature since day one - you can look up the producer, guitarist, oboeist, etc of any song, and see what other work they've done. In…

Pandora is still really good at that too. I happily pay for it.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#138

Post by ezpuzzle »

you could suggest music from artists that have released music on the same record label within +/-5 years of what you listened to and get close enough. the human curation is already "baked in".

graph traversal playlists are the most interesting idea to me, especially if you can put some bounds on (i.e. weight positively and negatively certain artists in the graph)

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#140

Post by Triphibian »

One of the things I find frustrating about music suggestions is that the app/algorithm doesn't care why you like a certain band. A long time ago I asked Pandora to make David Bowie station and it rolled me a generic classic rock station -- Zeppelin and the Stones. I was hoping for old school glam, maybe T-Rex and Eno. There's no way to communicate that desire to our music players. To say, "please don't think me a basic AF music listener."

I have noticed an interesting phenomenon around TOOL. If you start a playlist on Apple Music from TOOL it will start playing everything from Metallica to Nirvana. A lot of people like TOOL for a million different reasons and Apple doesn't know any different except for the overlaps in taste. If you play a Mike Patton band, such as Mr. Bungle though -- you will get some TOOL in your playlist -- because both bands are esoteric and often challenging.

I'm looking forward to the day (or wishing maybe) when my app considers these factors. For me the issue isn't discovery, but rather I want my robot DJ to vibe more closely with me.

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