- Only listen to the DW playlist once through. Find the songs you even remotely like, put them in a new playlist. Listen to that playlist instead (I call these playlists "DW-{datestamp}").
- Find your favorite songs in the playlist, explore that artist/album. Even if you don't think you'd like the other stuff listening to more of an artist seems to help suggestion variety.
- Don't let your listening for the week be dominated by a good Discover Weekly playlist... every time I do this my next 2-3 weeks are total crap. If you must repeat the same songs over and over, move them to a new playlist.
- Try to mix up genres as much as possible... listening to different genres that aren't your favorite often leads to Spotify recommending off the wall artists in the genres that are your favorite.
- Keep a playlist of your most frequently listened songs, regardless of genre, artist, etc. Whenever you want to listen to one of favorites listen from that playlist, instead of going to their artist page. For some reason this seems to have a large effect on my recommendations.
Most of these suggestions are due to personal experience and two theories:
1) Grouping/organization/total play count of playlists influences recommendations much more than people think
2) It's very easy for Spotify to get into positive feedback loops, forcing variety and constantly curating/making new playlists expands your horizons and keeps the recommendation engine from repeating songs/artists too much.
There seems to be a common misconception, even among programmers who should know better, that Spotify will just instantly and always offer you fresh, undiscovered, music you like on demand... which isn't how these systems work. It definitely makes it easier to find new music, and is a valuable tool in finding new artists or under marketed artists, but you're still going to need to put in a modicum of work curating your own experience to get the most out of the discover playlists.