The lie of music discovery algorithms • Hacker News Board

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#51

Post by Mountain_Skies » Tue, Jul 30, 2024, 1:52 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #16

BillFranklin wrote: post #5

This is great to hear, though I'm curious why photos on your phone / pinterest would be relevant to a recommendation system? Surely the biggest signal would be what Spotify already uses: the features of various relevant factors (your previous listening sessions, your current session, what other similar sessions look like, etc.), that said, their recommendation system is surprisingly terrible given how much easier mus…

YouTube’s algorithm isn’t very good for users because it doesn’t really separate mildly interesting videos that you finish from awesome content you loved. YouTube of course doesn’t care because they don’t make more money when you see something awesome.

YouTube didn't help things any when they neutered the dislike button. It's still there but functionally useless. Yes, we all know why they did it to save the feelings of a few political staffers at campaigns aligned with the values of workers at Google but it's been an absolute godsend for scammers and terrible for signaling interests to the recommendation engine.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#52

Post by Mountain_Skies » Tue, Jul 30, 2024, 1:58 PM UTC

Think they also direct listeners to cheaper to license sound-alike version of songs, especially from previous decades. I've pretty much given up on the recommendations from any of these companies. Pandora used to be reasonably good but they started playing the Studio 54 game where there was always another higher level of subscription to buy to avoid annoyances they would create. The best recommendation engine I've used was last.fm for the xbox. I could leave that on all day and rarely need to do a skip. But that was discontinued long ago, maybe ten or fifteen years ago? Haven't seen anything come close since. Amazon keeps giving me free Amazon Music but it's not even worth the bother of loading up as the system is so focused on anything and everything except my musical tastes.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#53

Post by toofy » Tue, Jul 30, 2024, 2:21 PM UTC

zeynepevecen wrote: post #21

aljgz wrote: post #17

In the age of internet, engagement optimization and recommendation algorithms create a new way that we are affected by the behaviour of others. That annoying dark pattern on a piece of software you use? Because there are people who fall to it, clicking on an ad or "engaging" more. That stupid show that keeps being recommended to you? Because a lot of people just sit on the couch, watching something on the list that d…

Yess! Thank you for commenting. I am very interested in this topic. Please do share with me if you find any interesting ways to explore new music for your taste

local record store. talk to the people who work there, tell them the 5 albums you’ve been hooked on lately.

at the end of the day no matter how many times we beat our heads into the same wall, we’re not even close to an accurate discovery model, music nerds are far better at recommendations than any discovery models. far better.

don’t let their insufferability discourage you. you will be too once you start diving into and going on rants about music which is outside of mainstream fluff. it’s like this with any $subject involving wonks. we’re insufferable to anyone who isn’t into our particular genre of technology. food wonks are insufferable, car geeks are insufferable, gamers are insufferable. that’s ok, if you’re looking for someone who is a geek in a topic, you’re likely to become one too :p just be normal around $subject non-wonks and you’ll be fine.

but yeah, music nerds working in a good record store really do know their stuff.

other places:

- music nerd streams on twitch

- music reviewer youtube channels

- college radio stations (most have an online presence) 770 radiok out of minneapolis is incredible

- kexp out of seattle is absolutely amazing (they’re heavily online as well.)

- just about every mid+ sized city has some amazing radio, usually found in the low FM areas.

at the end of the day though, it’s other people. there are far too many variables for every individual which drives why they may or may not like a song at any given moment. other humans are still absolutely unmatched when it comes to navigating this.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#54

Post by toofy » Tue, Jul 30, 2024, 2:33 PM UTC

cainxinth wrote: post #36

I’ve used everything, new and old media: Spotify, Napster, CMJ, pitchfork, bandcamp, allmusic, mojo, SoundCloud, beatport, last.fm, Apple Music… Nothing beats that one friend who used to DJ and still obsessively digs crates.

i’ll echo this.

that dj friend or like i said in a different comment, your local record store employees.

college radio stations.

and just other people. it really is that simple.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#55

Post by resource_waste » Tue, Jul 30, 2024, 3:04 PM UTC

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #29

Even though the idea of recommendations is anything but new, literally nothing and nowhere works as expected. The only thing that comes close is based on the concept of neighbours, as implemented at Last.fm or RateYourMusic. I don't understand why is it so hard to offer something along these lines: 1. Define dominant user preferences by clustering and segmenting the field of listened genres. 2. Build a list of releva…

I think the financial incentives to promote specific artists (or songs with ads in them "GUCCI!") become the focus pretty quickly.

The cost to play a song is expensive, so if you can actually profit by putting a new artist instead of paying, why wouldn't you?

Sure your customer gets 3 minutes of potential garbage, but they don't realize that they generated revenue for the company just by sitting through that song.

If you give your customers a great experience, they are going to listen to more music, which is bad for the bottom line.

There doesnt seem to be any competition due to IP laws, so there is no incentive to be good.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#56

Post by Retric » Tue, Jul 30, 2024, 3:04 PM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #44

Retric wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube’s algorithm isn’t very good for users because it doesn’t really separate mildly interesting videos that you finish from awesome content you loved. YouTube of course doesn’t care because they don’t make more money when you see something awesome.

How would you distinguish one from the other given the data youtube has?

The algorithm is limited by their choices not the current system as they can update the UI.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#57

Post by diob » Tue, Jul 30, 2024, 3:07 PM UTC

aljgz wrote: post #17

In the age of internet, engagement optimization and recommendation algorithms create a new way that we are affected by the behaviour of others. That annoying dark pattern on a piece of software you use? Because there are people who fall to it, clicking on an ad or "engaging" more. That stupid show that keeps being recommended to you? Because a lot of people just sit on the couch, watching something on the list that d…

I'm not sure how the Spotify recommendation algorithm works at all, but for some reason I imagined them doing fancier things than looking at my liked songs and finding similar ones. I would've thought they'd build a profile of you, and then find similar user profiles and show you songs those folks liked that you hadn't found yet.

That's gotta be how they do it, right? I'm probably wrong.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#58

Post by corytheboyd » Tue, Jul 30, 2024, 3:11 PM UTC

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 this itch, but it would be amazing if they were constantly updated.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#59

Post by quest88 » Tue, Jul 30, 2024, 3:11 PM UTC

aljgz wrote: post #17

In the age of internet, engagement optimization and recommendation algorithms create a new way that we are affected by the behaviour of others. That annoying dark pattern on a piece of software you use? Because there are people who fall to it, clicking on an ad or "engaging" more. That stupid show that keeps being recommended to you? Because a lot of people just sit on the couch, watching something on the list that d…

You do belong to a minority! Most people prefer the same music. All roads lead back to Katy Perry for the majority.

Re: The lie of music discovery algorithms

#60

Post by iamacyborg » Tue, Jul 30, 2024, 3:15 PM UTC

I don’t know if it’s the case anymore but I used to use last.fm’s radio service 8 or so years ago and it was absolutely great at finding and recommending me genuinely new stuff.