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Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

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Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#551

Post by yummypaint »

greggman3 wrote: post #534
ytjohn wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't used it in a while, but this was a big advantage of Pandora for me. With pandora, you start a 'station' with a few seed songs and as you like/dislike songs, it keeps refining the station. The downside to Pandora is that you can't choose your music. You can seed a station with a specific song, but that song might not be the first one played. What I really liked with Pandora was that it was really good at pro…

I have good and bad experiences with Pandora. The biggest issue was telling it I didn't like a song and having it recommend another mix of the same song. Dislike that one and get yet another mix of the same song

I have had a great time exploring the entrances to various rabbit roles with pandora, but once I try to actually descend deeper and really narrow the focus I experience the same behavior. It's like it just doesn't have a big enough catalog and is pulling from too small a pool.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#552

Post by jniedrauer »

grvdrm wrote: post #497
3np wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree on the above (though are duplicates really that much of a practical issue? I did discover some Russian rap through that). I'd like to add: 3. Discover Weekly stuck recycling through the same songs over and over again (it's also years since the algorithm found anything new for me, apart from name collisions) 4. Geo-language-locking. My CC will apparently only be accepted with its registered address in Spain. I b…

Curious: how repetitive is your listening history? I also notice that my Discover Weekly and Daily 1-5 playlists are recycling much of the same material. But I also frequently listen to my Liked Songs ( Otherwise, a fun experiment I tried last year: deleted all liked songs, all playlists, etc. to refresh my recommendations. I didn't pay close attention to how new suggestions compared to old, but it was one sort of tr…

I listen to a workout playlist on shuffle frequently while training, while slowly adding new music to it throughout the year.

Like others have mentioned, Spotify has completely stopped recommending new music for years now. Even if I start a song radio from a song I've never listened to before, Spotify immediately just starts playing songs from my current year's workout playlist. That is not the behavior I want. Yes, I listen to that playlist a lot, but when I'm not listening to that playlist, I'm trying to find new music. It seems really obvious that that would be the expected behavior, to me at least.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#553

Post by aeturnum »

skrebbel wrote: post #542

At the risk of pointing out the obvious: Google's Spotify clone, "YouTube Music", has such miracles of UX design as: - a dislike button - a playlist that works like you'd expect - a "play album" button And tons of other similar totally obvious things that Spotify doesn't have¹ for no good reason at all. If you have no qualms about using a Google product that might end any day, then I think it's simply just Spotify, d…

There are plenty of features on spotify I think could be improved but I have always been pretty happy with their playlists. What are the things that google does better?

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#554

Post by rapnie »

skrebbel wrote: post #542

At the risk of pointing out the obvious: Google's Spotify clone, "YouTube Music", has such miracles of UX design as: - a dislike button - a playlist that works like you'd expect - a "play album" button And tons of other similar totally obvious things that Spotify doesn't have¹ for no good reason at all. If you have no qualms about using a Google product that might end any day, then I think it's simply just Spotify, d…

I don't know about YouTube Music, but YouTube's recommender is doing such bad job for me, that I stand little chance to become 'engaged' (like eternally recommending the same video that I'm uninterested in but Google thinks I must see). I watch videos found by search queries, mostly via DDG too and not YT search.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#555

Post by _puk »

HeavyStorm wrote: post #526
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an opening for this. I would switch streaming service for a better shuffle algorithm.

I tried every service available in my region trying to find the best "shuffle" out suggestion service. Deezer was quite good for a while, but right now I am sticking with yt music. IMO Spotify is the worst.

Deezer flow is my go to for this, and they've recently added moods, which really helps.

I find I often start flow, get a few songs in and jump onto an album based on the currently playing song. Really great for discovery of music I've not heard (before or for a while).

Spotify seems to always end up merging back to some generic tracks that I've heard so many times before.

That said, I've been training Deezer (they have both like and dislike, as well as never recommend song / artist) for over 10 years, so they better get it right!

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#556

Post by Slow_Hand »

greggman3 wrote: post #534
ytjohn wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't used it in a while, but this was a big advantage of Pandora for me. With pandora, you start a 'station' with a few seed songs and as you like/dislike songs, it keeps refining the station. The downside to Pandora is that you can't choose your music. You can seed a station with a specific song, but that song might not be the first one played. What I really liked with Pandora was that it was really good at pro…

I have good and bad experiences with Pandora. The biggest issue was telling it I didn't like a song and having it recommend another mix of the same song. Dislike that one and get yet another mix of the same song

I worked in a shop where 8 employees were constantly voting amongst ourselves to up-vote/down-vote each song as it appeared on a given Pandora station/playlist that was broadcast throughout the shop. This made for a great sense of consensus and discussion amongst a group of music nerds.

However, one issue with Pandora was that no-matter the genre it would inevitably throw in a song by Morrissey, which would be met by a round of groans and calls by everyone in the shop to aggressively down-vote the song. The joke became that all roads eventually lead to Morrissey.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#557

Post by CamperBob2 »

siva7 wrote: post #362
CamperBob2 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dislike button seems to come and go at random. Sometimes it's available in the desktop app, sometimes not. Sometimes I have the option to dislike songs in CarPlay, sometimes not. It's as if they hired B. F. Skinner as an engineering consultant.

Not only that, sometimes the dislike button doesn’t seem to do anything

Exactly, hence the Skinner analogy (the power of intermittent rewards being a key observation in behaviorist psychology.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Schedules_of_rei...

The real hackers understand this sort of thing intuitively, and companies like Spotify pay big bucks for their insight. We nerds are just their tools.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#558

Post by joe_the_user »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #441
joe_the_user wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely confused by people who complain about Spotify's recommendation algorithm. I have eclectic, often obscure tastes, and I've found it to be an incredible way to discover new music. I too have "eclectic, obscure" tastes and I couldn't get anything from the recommendation algorithm and canceled after a month. I don't remember the thing recommending anything that seemed more obscure than what I searched for.…

To be fair, the recommendations are based on what you listened to lately in addition to what you've listened to in the past. A month probably wasn't long enough - it isn't really an immediate satisfaction thing when you have off-center tastes in music. If 70% of folks like popular music, that's the easiest thing to recommend. They might want a bit more control, I don't know, but I very highly doubt fewer customers is…

To be fair, the recommendations are based on what you listened to lately in addition to what you've listened to in the past

So each day when my mood changes, I'm suppose start searching for a bunch of tunes and after an hour, I get what I want?

If 70% of folks like popular music, that's the easiest thing to recommend.

"Brilliant AI" ... turns into just top40 radio and victory is proclaimed.

They might want a bit more control, I don't know, but I very highly doubt fewer customers is the goal

This is what I said with a slightly different spin - they're willing to trade control for customers. Whenever companies engage in annoying or abusive policies that drive away customers, it's not that they don't want customers in the abstract, it's that they prefer control and profit margins over customers.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#559

Post by emodendroket »

iggldiggl wrote: post #547
emodendroket wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, so did the Amazon one.

Oh interesting – somehow in my mind I've mainly associated this phenomenon with Apple, but of course in a way this make sense and saving storage space that way is a tempting target for that kind of service I guess. It makes me curious though how the accuracy vs. deduplication efficiency trade-off looks like in practice: How much storage is Apple saving with their current settings, and how much deduplication would the…

I used iTunes Match for years and never noticed anything off, to be honest.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#560

Post by costcofries »

another-dave wrote: post #465

Would be great if Spotify had * "good fit"/"bad fit" button — I like a wide variety of music, but it needs to be appropriate to context. If I start a radio from a song, I'd like to teach it to tailor the suggested songs better but that doesn't mean I dislike the songs it _is_ suggesting. * Ability to give the social context — a band playing at a music festival will lean more towards hits in their back catalogue. At t…

I have found song, artist and playlist radio to be extremely effective at discovering new music. For example, Monday rolls around and I hit my discover weekly, say I like a song, I hit the song radio and go down a discovery rabbit hole, try it.
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