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Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

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Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#41

Post by solarkraft »

notyourwork wrote: post #2

I work in this industry and actually we’ve found from online experimentation customers generally don’t want to tell you they dislike something. The expectation is customers get what they like (relevant) and sometimes they want to express stronger affinity for specific things. The converse hasn’t shown to be true. Generally customers don’t have a clear picture of how their explicit signals impact recommendations. Thou…

> Though some customers have shown desire to want to manage these signals

Let me be one of those. I want to be able to control the algorithm in all of its parameters, but even the ability to control the values for new/familiar and how far to stray from the current genre would be very welcome.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#42

Post by snthd »

wara23arish wrote: post #33
jorgesborges wrote: post #22

So basically they’re developing a product marketed to streaming platforms to identify what’s “more attractive” to consumers. The algorithms are still optimized for increasing sales and engagement, not improving recommendations (for the user). That’s exactly why I’m unhappy with Spotify lately. I feel I’m being sold a bunch of corporate portfolios on what’s currently in vogue, and not just artistically but politically…

100% I remember seeing a promoted playlist about empowering women voices (this is music) I was so confused. In literally most of the world, this isn’t even a point of contention.

They're probably trying to offset the guilt they feel from payola[0].

https://newsroom.spotify.com/2020-11-02/amplifying-artist-in...

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#43

Post by vadfa »

young_unixer wrote: post #10

Mi problema con Spotify es que cuando le hackeo la cuenta a un gringo y escucho mi música, a este le molestan las recomendaciones latinas y despues de un tiempo deja de pagar la cuenta.

How do you even handle this? You can't both be listening music at the same time. Are you sure the gringo doesn't stop paying because he keeps having his playback stopped?

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#45

Post by corin_ »

notyourwork wrote: post #25
ozzythecat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Skipping a song after less then 20 seconds for example can train a model as well as incorporating an explicit dislike button. How do you know I dislike the song? Instead, maybe I just heard it (or a similar song) on your platform or elsewhere outside of your app and don’t want to listen to it again right now? I guess you could try to build a more complex model that determines what songs or music I like at what time…

The paper is making an obvious claim. If I have data showing positive and negative affinity, that will perform better than a model which just has positive day. I don't find this very surprising but my point is in practice exposing dislike buttons to customers are a CX that is hardly ever used. So the point that a model will perform better with data that customer's rarely offer up to your platform makes their claim mo…

I downvoted your comment to demonstrate that I disagree with you.

I've heard some good arguments against allowing users to show dislikes/downvotes as well as likes, but I've not heard your argument before and it doesn't strike me as accurate. Less used than the positive direction, sure, but still significantly used when available.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#46

Post by onion2k »

jorgesborges wrote: post #22

So basically they’re developing a product marketed to streaming platforms to identify what’s “more attractive” to consumers. The algorithms are still optimized for increasing sales and engagement, not improving recommendations (for the user). That’s exactly why I’m unhappy with Spotify lately. I feel I’m being sold a bunch of corporate portfolios on what’s currently in vogue, and not just artistically but politically…

So basically they’re developing a product marketed to streaming platforms to identify what’s “more attractive” to consumers. The algorithms are still optimized for increasing sales and engagement, not improving recommendations (for the user).

It's possible that the recommendations are both good for users and good for corporate interests. They might not work for you, but for millions of Spotify users they seem to work. People listen to them a lot.

I listen to my recommended "Discover" playlists occasionally. They're decent. They include things I haven't heard and quite like. Maybe record labels are paying to be on them. Oh well.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#47

Post by anticensor »

Groxx wrote: post #19
notyourwork wrote: post #2

I work in this industry and actually we’ve found from online experimentation customers generally don’t want to tell you they dislike something. The expectation is customers get what they like (relevant) and sometimes they want to express stronger affinity for specific things. The converse hasn’t shown to be true. Generally customers don’t have a clear picture of how their explicit signals impact recommendations. Thou…

Skipping doesn't imply dislike, though it does correlate (because the reverse is generally true, people skip songs they dislike). But I routinely see skip mentioned as non-downvote sources of dislike information. Easily half of the times I skip it's because I don't want it right now . Some of my favorite songs reproduce absolutely horribly in a car on a highway for example, because the surrounding noise utterly destr…

Correlation does not imply causation, and neither does causation imply correlation.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#48

Post by loudtieblahblah »

jorgesborges wrote: post #22

So basically they’re developing a product marketed to streaming platforms to identify what’s “more attractive” to consumers. The algorithms are still optimized for increasing sales and engagement, not improving recommendations (for the user). That’s exactly why I’m unhappy with Spotify lately. I feel I’m being sold a bunch of corporate portfolios on what’s currently in vogue, and not just artistically but politically…

Crap like this is why, to this day, my collection is digital files, cds, vinyl and streaming only for radio - like pandora

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#49

Post by syshum »

notyourwork wrote: post #2

I work in this industry and actually we’ve found from online experimentation customers generally don’t want to tell you they dislike something. The expectation is customers get what they like (relevant) and sometimes they want to express stronger affinity for specific things. The converse hasn’t shown to be true. Generally customers don’t have a clear picture of how their explicit signals impact recommendations. Thou…

>>>one other consideration is disliking can usually be inferred from other activity. Skipping a song after less then 20 seconds for example can train a model

GOD NOOOOOO

that would be terrible, there are all kinds of time where I will skip a song because I do not want to Listen to it RIGHT NOW, not because I do not like it or never want to listen to it ever again...

Music is very emotional, some times you just do not want to listen to X at the moment, 30 mins later you might.

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