251–260 of 618 posts
Wow reading discussion of music consumption on HN is so surreal for me as a working pianist / keyboardist / accordionist / educator. There’s a guilty pleasure I derive from mostly feeling unworthy when reading through HN posts about tech, you all are amazing! At the same time I really appreciate that HN is aware of your minority tech nerd preferences compared to the greater consumer population who are perfectly happy…
I create a playlist to fit a mood (for example, ambient electronic music with a good beat and no words), and I seed it with at least 10 songs.
Then, I go down to the "Recommended Songs" section and I just play whatever it recommends.
If I don't like a song, I hit the skip button on my keyboard. The vast majority of what it recommends and plays is tolerable but not great.
Every now and then (maybe one out of every 20-30 songs) I will discover a shiny new gem of a song that really resonates with me. So I drag that song up and add it to my slowly growing playlist.
This has the effect of subtly changing the recommendation algorithm for that playlist over time.
Eventually I end up with a playlist with about 100 songs on it, and recommendations that at least roughly align with the mood.
I tend to get bored of songs pretty quickly though, so when a playlist gets too stale, I will prune the old and tired songs from it.
This approach has worked pretty well for me so far, but I really wish that there was a way to explicitly tell Spotify that I "dislike" a song and to never recommend it to me again.
But I would not want to let that site log into my Slotify account.
Gnoosic is a site I love. It creates AI based recommendations without any login:
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I'm not typically one to buy into conspiracy theories, but I really can't help but wonder if the Spotify algorithm favors songs that have more favorable licensing terms. They have already announced they intend to let artists buy their way into playlists in the future https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/could-spotifys-new-discovery-...
I'm surprised that they haven't taken a page out of Netflix's book: sign small artists that sound close enough to what's popular to their own internal record label and push them in playlists?
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Another tip: Spotify seems to ignore anything you listen to during a "Private Session". I listen to a lot of ambient and instrumental music while I work, but I don't want recommendations based on this, so I always start a private session.
Woah, thanks! My 2020 list was topped by some tracks off kids albums which...are for my toddler!
It looks like the API is overloaded. With regards to taste, you usually need to find a suitable gateway into an unpopular genre to begin appreciating it. I always hated jazz until I turned 30, when I heard the melodic jazz of Avishai Cohen [1] and Phronesis [2], which led me to Eric Dolphy [3] and ultimately to free jazz outfits like Alexander von Schlippenbach and Peter Brotzmann. Having grown bored of everything el…
I can’t speak much for the recommendations, as I am fine with getting my recommendations from the radio and I prefer listening to whole CDs over playlists.
I was hoping it was a questionnaire about how bad Spotify recommendations are. I have no idea why Spotify feels the need to clutter my recommendations with radio stations like "Rap Caviar" and "Music for when you know you're the bad bitch", meanwhile it doesn't show me new releases for music I actually listen to because of all the irrelevant suggestions taking up space. I ended up creating a new account because appar…