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Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

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Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#591

Post by IanSanders »

brenainn wrote: post #319

A dislike button would be handy. There is that feature on some of the generated playlists, but I don't think they do anything. My two biggest issues with Spotify right now are: 1. Release Radar filled with re-releases and remixes, often from artists who have long since passed away. I want new music as in released for the first time. 2. Name collisions. I'm surprised this is an issue, but I will often get songs from d…

>Name collisions. I'm surprised this is an issue, but I will often get songs from different artists with the same name

This is potentially by design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify#2016%E2%8...

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#592

Post by hybridtupel »

campground wrote: post #200

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 think you do have to prime the engine a bit. I "like" a lot of albums and songs. Every time I hear something new that I like I press the little heart button. Same when I discover music outside of Spotify (I listen to WFMU a lo…

The algorithm often is very strange. My mixtapes most often contain single tracks of audiobooks I listened to. Looks like Spotify treats audiobook tracks like any other song which is obviously very silly. Who doesn‘t want to listen to random audiobook snippets.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#593

Post by mdrzn »

I enjoy Spotify's "Weekly Discovery" which promotes new artists and new songs to new listeners, but I REALLY don't like how they don't have "Don't recommend this podcast" button. I listened to 10 minutes of one podcast ONCE in a long car drive, and now my homepage is filled by podcasts which I NEVER listen to. And there's no way to tell Spotify to remove them.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#595

Post by 1_player »

jacobobryant wrote: post #549
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 spent the latter half of 2019 trying to build this as a startup. Ultimately I pivoted (now I do newsletter recommendations instead), but if I hadn't made some mistakes I think it could've gotten more traction. Mostly I should've simplified the idea to make it easier to build. If anyone's interested in working on this, here's what I would do: (But first some background: The way I saw it, you can split music recommen…

Please make a Show HN post for your project. I'd be interested to see the discussion around it.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#596

Post by bagacrap »

smrq wrote: post #322
rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely they have some context as to what "now" means? I read that YouTube Music recommends different music depending on time of day, whether I'm at work / home / in the car, and even takes the weather into account. I'd be surprised if Spotify didn't have some context awareness as well.

They can't possibly have sufficient context. I recently got super into the band Squid. But I hated them the first time I heard them. It was because I was depressed and looking for more music like Black Midi-- Black Country New Road came up and was perfect. Squid came up and made me want to punch my speakers. If they have enough data to predict my mood to that extent then I would like to hire them as my therapist.

it's not perfect, but ytm does what gp says. "You often listen to X in the morning" can be helpful even if it doesn't know about personal events in your life

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#597

Post by estranhosidade »

I think many services nowadays end up offering a worst user experience in the name of "simplifying their interface" (I imagine this must be the only reason why Spotify wouldn't add this option).

Not only on this case but, for instance, it would be nice if spotify easily allowed someone to import their playlist from other services, or even from some text playlist. But they don't add these options. And I don't understand why.

Like, technically I assume it make sense for them to make as much of a pain in the ass to EXPORT your spotify playlists to other services, but they should make as easy as possible for the user to bring their favorite playlists and yadda yadda to Spotify.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#598

Post by spywaregorilla »

Cederfjard wrote: post #567
spywaregorilla wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really follow. If we're talking about something so specific as "what songs would a band play on their own set list" that should be manually curated, and in a very short amount of time. If it's just general vibes... spotify already does this for you. They have an entire section called "Made for you" which seems to cluster your tastes and generate playlists of them. Perhaps you just want to generate a cluster o…

They’re saying they want even more specific ”made for you” features - not just tailored for a person, but tailored for a person and a certain context (like they mentioned as examples - when they’re on their own, when they’re having dinner with friends, when they’re throwing a party etc). Presumably you would tell the app what your current setting is.

I guess I don't really buy that this isn't served well by genre or artist based playlists. How much more nuanced are you going to get than saying "I want to play some alt pop" for this party.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#599

Post by ccmonnett »

cardanome wrote: post #492
Mehdi2277 wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first point isn’t true because most of the 5 star usage boils down to 1/5 stars and not 2-4. There are some users that use whole range and the info does have value. The main problem though is while that system may be better for certain users, it will be worse for the entire user base as you want a system that works well for both casual and power users. Really you want a system that works better for casual users…

My argument was based on the premise that votes from power users are more valuable as they better at judging the quality of the content. While the quality is partly subjective, it is not entirely so. Meaning power users, having more experience, know better what casual users should watch and would like then the casual users themselves. It is in the interest of the casual users for them to not be able to vote/their vot…

> My argument was based on the premise that votes from power users are more valuable as they better at judging the quality of the content.

As someone responsible for designing and incorporating end-user activity/feedback into ML, I have to tell you this is exceedingly unlikely.

The number of power users, especially on a large consumer app like Spotify, is dwarfed by the broad userbase (I estimate ~1% of Spotify users at most qualify as "power users").

Would I rather have power user-only feedback, or 100x the feedback? Definitely definitely 100x the feedback from all users.

Re: Dislike button would improve Spotify's recommendations

#600

Post by jacobobryant »

1_player wrote: post #595
jacobobryant wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent the latter half of 2019 trying to build this as a startup. Ultimately I pivoted (now I do newsletter recommendations instead), but if I hadn't made some mistakes I think it could've gotten more traction. Mostly I should've simplified the idea to make it easier to build. If anyone's interested in working on this, here's what I would do: (But first some background: The way I saw it, you can split music recommen…

Please make a Show HN post for your project. I'd be interested to see the discussion around it.

I'll be sure to do so if/when I build this, in the mean time here are the Show HNs for the recommendation projects I've done so far:

- Music (defunct): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20584508

- Cross-domain (defunct): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23541840

- Essays (still running with ~100 DAU but not actively developed): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24921127

- Newsletters: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27664020

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