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The lie of music discovery algorithms

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Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#141

Post by joe_the_user »

frankus wrote: post #136

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 somethi…

You're welcome to your preferences but I think you need evidence to claim you "speak for most people".

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#142

Post by Terr_ »

Triphibian wrote: post #140

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 bas…

It seems some of these services (e.g. Spotify) don't really do musical similarity, but instead emphasize indirect "other fans also like" similarity.

That tends to disregard many reasons you like a particular track, and does especially badly when the liked-track isn't part of a uniform style for an album or artist.

I recognize it's a heck of a lot easier to implement, but it's still a disappointment.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#143

Post by frakt0x90 »

There's a VST that creates embeddings of all the sound samples you have in a directory and then projects it down to 2d so you can visually explore and find sounds you're looking for. Similar sounds are near each other.

I always thought doing that with the entire spotify library would be amazing. Give me a low dimensional space to explore the library. Even cooler if the embeddings have similar geometric properties of language embeddings where I could do arithmetic with songs to find interesting combinations.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#144

Post by deepsun »

Google Music used to have a good algorithm:

* There was a thing called "Library" in addition to "Likes". Basically all "your" songs, not necessarily liked you.

* When clicking on a "Feeling Lucky" button, it selected a random song from Library, and started an auto-generated Radio off it.

It allowed to listen to random songs based on your library. I miss that in Spotify.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#145

Post by galkk »

musictubes wrote: post #132
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 peo…

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

It feels like all the time, when there is human curation factor, it ends up being sold off, gamed, exchanged for favors etc.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#146

Post by boldlybold »

joe_the_user wrote: post #141
frankus wrote: post #136

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 somethi…

You're welcome to your preferences but I think you need evidence to claim you "speak for most people".

I think it's an accurate statement. I've heard similar sentiment from friends in the car with spotify on.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#147

Post by zeynepevecen »

astrobe_ wrote: post #130
zeynepevecen wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

There’s an email subscription field thats why i need js hahah you’re so fond of yourself

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#148

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

AlbertCory wrote: post #104

I'd be quite happy if Spotify just went away. The world of music would be much better off. My solution (doesn't work for everyone): I have a large library on the microSD card on my phone, and set the music player to Shuffle. Quite often a song comes on and I think, "Wow, I own THAT??" OK, I'll admit that doesn't play any new music. However, no bills for bandwidth!

> I'd be quite happy if Spotify just went away. The world of music would be much better off.

Why? It's almost exactly the same experience you get from all the competing services, and that experience is fantastic: any album, any song, instantly ready to play.

> I have a large library on the microSD card on my phone, and set the music player to Shuffle.

This is a fine situation to be in but from the perspective of your fellow music consumers it is highly undesirable. Music libraries involve a lot of time and money. For the cost of one album per month you can subscribe to an unlimited service.

> no bills for bandwidth!

This definitely sounds unique to your geographical situation.

I admit that streaming services are bad for artists who want to make money from album sales, but asking consumers to use something else would be like asking people to ride horses to work in order to keep farriers in business. The 1990s are long gone; being a famous musician isn't guaranteed to make you rich anymore. Meanwhile the not-famous musicians who make up 99.999% of the music population can happily continue not making any money off of album sales the same way they've always done.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#150

Post by bsder »

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…

> Whatever happened to the good databases and their algorithms? They definitely used to exist.

It was called a record store employee, and they no longer exist.

There's an AI search engine I'd like to see ...

Even the "market segmentation" of pop music still doesn't work for crap. Even something as basic as "Gee, I like 80s New Wave, how about recommending some artists born roughly in the 21st century who would fit?" seems to be totally beyond the pale of anything currently existing.

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