
Why Spotify’s Discover Weekly is getting really boring? - J0rdanVa1dez
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2016/10/25/spotify-discover-boring/
======
JasonSage
I definitely disagree with the premise of the article. I have a playlist where
I pull in my favorites from Discover Weekly, and it just turned one year old.
I still consistently get great new songs to add to the playlist.

I've also gleaned some insight into my general disposition over the least year
from the playlist. I can tell exactly when I was in a "mood" or a rut... When
I was listening to lots of angry music, that was reflected in my suggestions
and my picks. And when I was opening up and relaxing—that also shows through
the playlist.

I'd say that if your taste in music has a wider range and not specific to a
single genre, your Discover Weekly will be a lot more rewarding. And also, if
you rotate through musical moods like seasons where some tastes come and go
over the course of a month or two, your Discover Weekly will support that and
help you indulge in the mood of the month.

~~~
fecklessyouth
>I have a playlist where I pull in my favorites from Discover Weekly

Do you do this manually, or use the API?

~~~
JasonSage
I do this manually. Usually after several listens to the entire Discover
Weekly I'll already have a couple in mind I want to hear more, and I'll pull
these into my collection playlist.

On the other end though, some Monday mornings I pull up Discover Weekly and
there's this soul-crushing moment when I realize there's a brand new playlist
and I forgot to add some treasure I'd been listening to all the last week.
I've lost one or two songs in this manner. But if they're still relevant to me
in the future, I trust Spotify to eventually lead me back to them somehow.
That's how crazy good Spotify is to me. :P

I once saw a service that automatically saves your Discover Weekly to a new
playlist each week. I've done this manually to "snapshot" a few great Discover
Weekly sets, but if I was a little smarter I'd use automated service to save
me from those occasional regretful Mondays.

------
runj__
Having talked with people that have close insight into Discover Weekly it
actually only checks your last few thousand songs though (weighting them
accordingly) and checks if those songs are on other peoples playlists, then
choosing the songs on their playlists that are not on yours. This means that
you have a pretty big pool of songs to start with (people with similar taste)
that is getting smaller and smaller. The fact that those people also use
discover weekly could lead to a bit of a feedback loop.

I found a friend who during a party came up and said "I listen to this song
all the time, it's amazing!" and then the next and the next and the next song
the same happened. We had been listening to the same (semi-obscure) music for
the majority of the past year. It was only later that we discovered that we
had both found the songs from discover weekly and were not at all as obscure
and knowledgable about music, but hey: we had the same taste in music.

~~~
gcr
Please don't reveal intellectual property secrets on HN. It sounds like you
got that information from a privileged source.

(EDIT: I was wrong; this algorithm is public knowledge.)

~~~
karim
Ha, those algorithms are far from trade secrets! Here's one of the Discover
Weekly developers talking about how they implemented this feature:
[https://atscaleconference.com/videos/creating-and-scaling-
sp...](https://atscaleconference.com/videos/creating-and-scaling-spotifys-
discover-weekly-playlist/). If you're interested, here's a deeper technical
explanation of the algorithm used:
[http://www.columbia.edu/~jwp2128/Teaching/W4721/papers/ieeec...](http://www.columbia.edu/~jwp2128/Teaching/W4721/papers/ieeecomputer.pdf)

~~~
gcr
I see. Pardon, my mistake.

------
simonswords82
I use Spotify's discover weekly and I'm consistently impressed by the new
music that the app shares with me. Bands I've never heard of before that all
fit beautifully within the type of music I enjoy. I totally disagree with the
author's point.

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
I am always looking for Mondays because of that playlist. So definitely
disagreeing with the author.

~~~
ikeyany
By the time Monday rolls around, I've barely had enough time to explore all
the bands from the previous week!

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ivraatiems
Discover Weekly in this article is a microcosm of the problems with Spotify
generally.

Spotify (especially on desktop) has a LOT of issues. From poorly implemented
shuffle play to random removal of features (notifications to ctrl-f to
playlist organization), and a complicated by a total lack of dev communication
on any platform.

I think the issue with Spotify is not that their core is bad, it's that they
never manage to improve and while they act like they're listening, they're not
_really_ listening. If there was any worthy competition, I'd switch.

~~~
alvion
Regarding their desktop client; totally true. I recently discovered that
keeping the Spotify App idle over 2 days, it had written 50 GB to my SSD. Not
worth killing my disk over this service.

Recommend this thread, where I became aware of the problem
[https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/56auoi/huge_amount_o...](https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/56auoi/huge_amount_of_data_written_to_disk_by_spotify/)

~~~
ivraatiems
Ugh, there's so many things like this. My Spotify is also constantly adding
data to my local app directory even though I told it through advanced settings
to store all music on a different drive.

For an app that's just a web backend in a wrapper, it is horrifically
inefficient.

~~~
gcr
[http://play.spotify.com/](http://play.spotify.com/)

Skip the app!

~~~
ivraatiems
I would, but I honestly find the web experience to be worse, especially when
it comes to playlists.

------
delegate
Here's my current discover weekly playlist:
[http://imgur.com/a/6l5bN](http://imgur.com/a/6l5bN)

The songs with a checkmark are the ones I've liked and added to my collection.
I haven't finished listening to the playlist yet, but I like almost every song
that it recommends. The songs I didn't save aren't bad either and I've never
had a recommended song which I totally disliked.

It's incredible how it can suggest songs of various genres and still hit my
sweet spot.

So I don't agree with tfa.

I _would love_ to be able to re-generate the playlist on demand and also
suggest the 'direction' in which it should go - like 'mellower', 'harder',
'sweeter', etc.

But all in all, Spotify is doing a really great job.

~~~
oarsinsync
How long have you been using the Discover Weekly function? After almost a
year, I find my current discover weekly playlist looks very similar to yours.
I have a similarly large number of check marks against songs in the list, but
not because I've recently added them. Or recently discovered them.

I've since switched to the Daily Mixes, which also seem to have the same stuff
most days, and then Release Radar, which finally now gives me something fresh.

So +1 for Release Radar, but everywhere else I feel is lacking, and
ultimately, I do agree with tfa.

~~~
delegate
I've been using Discover Weekly for less than a year I think. But I'm a
Spotify user since 2008, so it has my whole listening history for the last 8
years.

I haven't noticed repeated songs in my Discover Weekly so far, so I can't
complain..

------
willbw
Despite Spotify's vastly superior user interface and a much quicker Android
app, I've found myself switching to Apple music for the singular reason that
their curated playlists are much, much better than Spotify's.

I don't have the hours and hours to spend online on music blogs downloading
obscure MP3s like I did while I was at university, trawling through to find
stuff I like. So now finding new music is more of a challenge.

I've found the curated approach of Apple to be much better than the
algorithmic approach of Spotify (and Spotify's curated playlists are also
worse).

~~~
skray
If you used to like finding new music through blogs, Hype machine does a
pretty awesome job of taking the pain out of trawling for new stuff. They
aggregate everything for you on their site so you just see and stream a
playlist of music from all of the blogs you follow.

~~~
chrismbarr
Good tip, thanks! i just found the Hype Machine "profile" on spotify and now
I'm following their playlists.

------
ricardobeat
I have a similar feeling, but the "daily mix" playlists are even worse. Why is
it called daily if I get the same songs over and over every day?

I miss the infinite streams of Rdio with the adventurous -> familiar slider a
lot. You could stay on the same station for months at a time ;(

~~~
thirdsun
I miss Rdio in general. When I had to look for an alternative I was really
surprised how far behind everyone else, including Spotify, was and still is in
terms of overall user experience. Especially if you actually enjoy looking for
music and labels instead of being served a weekly playlist that isn't
completely irrelevant, yet still rather underwhelming.

------
NumberCruncher
Spotify’s Discover Weekly is crap. It schows me the same crap songs over and
over again. A simple mix of albums similar to albums I downloaded on my phone
would give a way much better selection. Or simply a

IF song have been seen at least 3 times in DW and skipped after 10 sec THAN do
not show song again

would be a high improvement.

[edit] Spotify seems to spend more time curating this forum than curating
Discover Weekly.

~~~
1337biz
> IF song have been seen at least 3 times in DW and skipped after 10 sec THAN
> do not show song again

I am still amazed about the same thing. Why are they not understanding such
obvious behavior with all the sophistication the app otherwise has (eg the
match-running speed to music-beat).

------
mikehollinger
I've had the same thing happen with book recommendations. While I was
traveling for work more frequently, I picked my next books from the Hugo and
Nebula award winning websites. I happen to enjoy space operas more than
alternate history or fantasy books. After reading and rating a couple, Amazon
/ GoodReads' recommendations started recommending only stories that involve
humanity venturing out into the void and (eventually) saving the galaxy. I
happened to like the first recommendations. It saved me the trouble of looking
up the next book to be devoured!

However, after six months of this, I noticed that I was stuck in a literary
(can I say "literal?") reading rut that became increasingly obvious. Humanity
discovers X. X becomes increasingly useful, but there's a hidden price. Y
reveals the cost, and that humanity is now an underdog. Human Z, with side
kicks, ventures out, and little did he know, plays an important role on the
galactic stage.

Customization is nice in software. However - recommendation engines (today)
seem particularly dim-witted, and result in the creation of a single-person
echo chamber that becomes increasingly lonely the longer you spend interacting
with it.

------
sanswork
Every Friday I quickly scan through the Spotify new songs/discover and top
lists and add the new stuff I like to my main playlist since I don't listen to
the radio anymore so it is really the main way I get exposed to new music now.
Discover I am lucky to find maybe 1 song a week on that I like and is new. It
has just never worked well for me. The new releases by artists you like list
is a goldmine though. But none of them are great to listen through on their
own in my experience.

------
cyrillevincey
My guess: take jazz fans on one hand, and Justin Bieber groupies on the other
hand. The jazz fans would in general appreciate way more the DW service than
the Justin Bieber ones. Why so? Because the 'vector' that describes a jazz
fan's playlist is probably much more specific and 'unique' than the vector of
an heavily standardised MTV-based playlist. Everyone gets the recommendations
they deserve...

~~~
gcr
I mean there are artists that I like as an exception because they're
sentimentally meaningful to me. I don't want to hear other music, even in that
genre. Bieber fans might only be fans of Bieber's music and not other pop.

I wonder if anyone's studied this. Maybe it's not a common sentiment...

------
whatok
For the people who like Discover Weekly, what was your previous music
discovery process?

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parr0t
Discover weekly is hit and miss for me. Some weeks I find plenty of great
material, and others I find a lot of junk - that being said I can understand
it would be hard to match music you'd like all the time.

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purplelobster
The fact that we're even talking about "Discover Weekly" means it's a huge
success. That it doesn't work for everybody is another matter.

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dEnigma
Minor nitpick: There shouldn't be a question mark in the title, because it
makes no sense. There is none in the title of the linked article either.

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arekkas
Agreed, is mostly the same sounding stuff over and over since weeek 8

