
Spotify and the Art of the Playlist - walterbell
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-21/spotify-is-perfecting-the-art-of-the-playlist
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StringyBob
I wish there was some way to feedback that discover weekly has gone off at a
tangent. Can I 'reset' it?

After Bowie died I listened to quite a lot of his back catalogue over the next
month, I then found my discover weekly had been taken over by 70's prog.

I've heard similar things from people who have let friends or family use their
account, or made a 'bad' playlist for a one-off event.

Really I want to 'delete my history' for a couple of weeks - private browsing
requires foresight. Maybe it's not possible given how the 'musical taste' data
gets hashed? In that case I'd take a full reset!

~~~
lobster_johnson
I've been there. You can't reset it, but Spotify now has a function in the
right-click menu named "Create Similar Playlist"; it replaces the current
playlist with one that contains the same number of songs, only different,
similar songs. As far as I can tell, it uses the same logic that Discovery
Weekly does.

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b1daly
For me the Discover Weeky playlist is probably the biggest innovation in
recorded music distribution since the beginning of commercial music
distribution. I've found a couple of artist that have become all time
favorites that I very well might never have heard of (Anekdoten from Sweden
and Motorpsycho from Norway, the Scandinavians seem to be the only non-English
cultural family that get rock)

It completely bypasses the music distribution industry's gatekeeper behavior.
This is previously unheard of, because the labels have a lot at stake,
wherever there is a natural interface where music can be presented, they
quickly move in and start to use money to control the playlists. I'm pretty
sure Spotify's charts are heavily influenced by music industry shenanigans at
this point.

~~~
tukum
back in the days last.fm had similar functionality, at least I discovered many
artists that are my favourites now there.

But I'm struggling with Spotify Discover: \- Discover Weekly includes tracks
that I have listened to before on Spotify. At first I thought it is a bug, but
then I read somewhere else that it is a feature as somebody thought that
people like hearing something familiar among new songs. Well, not me, but, OK,
let it be. \- there is no option to ban tracks or artists for life in Spotify
\- there are many independent and not so independent artists on Spotify with
questionable quality (to my taste)

Combining all 3 above, in my Discovery Weekly I get tracks that I absolutely
hate and I have to skip them. And they come up again and again as there is no
way to tell Spotify - please stop delivering this track/artist to me. In
last.fm I encountered cases where it suggested me artists that I absolutely
hated. I could see how it was similar to my other favourites, but apparently
the algorithms did not see why I should hate this. At least last.fm allowed to
ban those tracks forever. It still did not allow to ban artist so I had to ban
all tracks for that artist (as the algorithm still suggested other tracks by
the artists whose tracks I had ban before). In addition, it is true that
distribution industry is/was gatekeeper to many artists, but at the same time
it saved me from all the low quality music that I am exposed to in Spotify.
Instead now I have to spend my own time to filter that out (which generally
applies to all information in this age).

Overall I would have better experience in Spotify if there was this ban
feature. Although there are feature requests about banning songs, Spotify is
not rushing implementing this. Then I'm left thinking if Spotify is worth it
and should I cancel my subscription.

~~~
joshuakcockrell
The way you tune Discover Weekly is by saving the songs you like, and skipping
the ones you don't. If you save a track to your library or into a playlist
you've made it won't appear in future Discover Weekly playlists.

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madethemcry
I'm a huge fan of the Discover Weekly playlist. Most of the time it is so good
that you can get in touch at least with 2-3 new songs. Sometimes I also have a
lucky day where nearly every single song matches my taste but was unknown to
me. This is a really great example of what algorithms can do. But it also
proves that more is not better. If I imagine the playlist would be refreshed
every day as planned or a list of 100 songs instead of 30- I wouldn't use it
anymore. It simply would be to much to progress each week. The current amount
is perfect to start a working week and I do so since that playlist started.

~~~
haraball
Same here! Monday morning and a fresh playlist waiting, that's a good start of
a new week. Friends that I know have music taste not too far from mine share
their Discover Weekly playlists as well, so I can switch between them
throughout the week.

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pimeys
I recently cancelled my streaming service subscription for music and shifted
back to my vinyl collection (which I've been digitalizing for office
listening) and buying cds. Yes, it takes me more time to get the music I want
to listen, but I spend more time and effort listening and exploring what is
going on in the music scene. This actually made me more connected to the music
I'm currently listening, because every purchase is worth something and before
buying I tend to read reviews and articles about the artists who produced the
music.

For me, the best playlists are the ones written by the long-standing
institutions, like Hardwax[0], Berghain[1] and Resident Advisor[2].

[0] [https://hardwax.com/](https://hardwax.com/) [1]
[http://berghain.de/](http://berghain.de/) [2]
[https://www.residentadvisor.net/](https://www.residentadvisor.net/)

~~~
sotojuan
I'm currently thinking about transitioning back to good-old MP3s. I'm not a
digital hoarder but I like the idea of small, local collection of music and
films I like.

Unfortunately I'm on a laptop with a small amount of storage, so maybe a NAS
type of thing?

~~~
pimeys
We have a NAS at home with two big spinning disks in a RAID array and I store
all my stuff there in a flac format, which is easily packed to mp3 if needed.
Also I'd give a big recommendation for
[http://stylejukebox.com/](http://stylejukebox.com/) as a cloud backup and a
way to stream the music you own.

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drakonka
For some reason Spotify playlists, even those supposedly tailored to my
tastes, never quite played music I actually enjoyed. When I tested out the
Apple Music trial a whole new world was suddenly opened up, of playlists that
actually played stuff I liked. That's the only reason I have stuck with Apple
Music and its lack of Linux support and buggy Android app.

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oDot
Discover Weekly is great. I have a playlist with 800+ songs thanks to it.
Unfortunately, though, Spotify fails to shuffle play them correctly. I always
get the same 100 songs :(

~~~
oridecon
Same thing happens on all the streaming services I've used. It's infuriating,
they always promote certain artists even if you have a playlist with 10k+
songs. I can't think of any other reason (besides saving a few bucks in the
distribution, caching side).

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aiw1nt3rs
While Spotify does a great job in marketing, I think that in reality, YouTube
and SoundCloud recommendations are by far superior to 'Discover Weekly'.

~~~
fluxic
Hardly. YouTube always recommends me the same stable of 50 or so videos.

~~~
carld
YouTube Music is a separate offering and with its own music recommendation
algorithm

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anotheryou
At work I listen to a lot of OK music that doesn't bother, but I'm really
interested in things too difficult to hear in the background.

Spotify weekly went downhill at some point and I wonder if it just feeds back
in to itself when I listen to it at work.

~~~
krisdol
I used to archive each weeks playlist for later listening, and I think that
started making weekly feed into itself. Still, even though I've encountered
bumps like this along the way, it eventually self corrected and got better

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shostack
How does this compare to Google Play Music? I'm considering starting a music
subscription and Spotify doesn't seem to offer as much for the money.

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denzell
I don't understand how this would work? Does the algorithm detect similar
sounding beats?

~~~
taspeotis
> At a certain point, Spotify contacted Perry’s music manager to explain how
> the service had transformed his client from autoworker to house music
> luminary in months. It was simple: It had a lot to do with Spotify’s music-
> recommendation technology. The company keeps track of what you listen to.
> Then it uses algorithms to see which other playlists contain the same
> songs—and other songs that are on those lists but not on yours.

~~~
rahoulb
Although Release Radar apparently does analyse sounds as it doesn't have the
playlist history to access.

