Spotify - anyone heard of it?

Oh cool!

I don't think I have the suggested-songs-by-playlist feature yet but discover weekly did tell me that Corrina Repp had a new album out, so good job, outsourced-ersatz-brain

(I don't know what it says about me that most people I read imagine discover weekly as a "music-loving friend/boyfriend" and my imagination is a disembodied version of my brain. nothing flattering, probably.)

i'm generally distrustful/resentful of and occasionally pleased by my discover weekly, so i guess it basically is my boyfriend.

This makes me happy: http://www.factmag.com/2016/05/26/spotify-dubset-streaming-dj-mixes-deal/

if they can add that to Discover Weekly, plus their quasi-radio shows, they will essentially be an actual radio station tailored to you

House music in particular is much more fun to listen to as mixed sets, rather than having to hear 2 minutes of intro/outro for every track. I wonder if Traktor or other DJ software) will enable a "publish to Spotify" feature. Also, I guess this incentivizes DJs to only use tracks that are on Spotify, which is lame, but at least musicians will get paid something.

Interesting article on why Spotify can't seem to figure out why I love both Lisa Suckdog and Styx. I dropped my subscription a week ago, but seriously Spotify robot masters: I don't want to hear anything from Bob Mould's solo albums, and anyone with a brain could figure that out in about ten seconds, and that's a large part of why I dropped your service (the other part is that Tidal sounds about a thousand times better).

https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer

It's weird to me that that article has been spread around so much recently, because it's such obvious bullshit. I don't know what you're saying it has to do with Spotify, but "Your brain does not process information"--what!? The guy uses the old bad-faith technique of building an argument by disingenuously redefining all the terms so as to be different from how they're commonly understood. Fuck that dumb shit

xpost Nobody forced you to listen to your Discovery playlist!

That article seems like one of many written by psychologists who have a very basic understanding of computer science (or really any science outside of their field). And, it didn't mention Spotify at all. Maybe move this to the AI thread?

And Dan I otm.

I suspect that nobody on this board is in a place to really judge that article in any competent way, as anyone with the knowledge to deal with it is busy doing more important things. It's always nice to see pushback against CW that leads to promotion of Bob Mould solo albums.

Nobody here is defending Bob Mould solo albums.

glenn's algorithms appear to be doing so irl. I'd kind of like to start a thread where the algorithms talk to us about their love of Bob Mould. Like an Algorthm S/D thread.

We're competent enough to comfortably call out bullshit like that.

Discover weekly does have very off weeks sometimes. I wonder if it happens when they're trying out algorithmic variations. Last week I got such a lame set of tracks that I was shaking my head like "Oh Spotify, is your opinion of my musical taste really so low?", but this week it was back on point.

"Nobody here has a complex enough understanding of computer science principles and cognitive psychology to talk about either."

"dude... what if The Algorithms could, like... *talk*"

― dnftt9001 (Drugs A. Money),

Ha, I don't see anything wrong with talking about algorithms as if they have desires, motivations, or preferences, though. I don't think it's incorrect to say, for example that linear regression "wants" to find a straight line that minimizes the residuals

I'm sort of curious, so here's the experiment. Open a new Spotify account. Alternate playing a randomly selected Killing Joke track and a randomly selected Smiths track for one month and a total of 100 songs. Then post your Discover Playlist. I'll bet Bob Mould is on it.

Just to be clear, I don't personally work on Discover Weekly. But I know how it works. It has no aesthetic agenda. It doesn't care about Bob Mould one way or another. But people who make playlists that include things you listen to? They care. DW calculates how much.

That sounds like damage control to me! I closed my Spotify account when I switched to Tidal, but we do all sorts of crazy stuff in the name of science...

[28 days later "Hoover Dam" inexplicably tops the charts in the US.]

discover weekly was trying to make me listen to Bob Mould this week as well! this has never happened before as far as I can remember

I mean, it fucked up in the sense that it didn't play what you wanted to hear, since its purpose is basically to play the kinds of things the listener wants to hear, but that doesn't mean it didn't have a good reason for putting that stuff on there. For example look at the related artists pages for Bob Mould and Husker Du--have you listened to or do you have playlists that include any of the artists on those pages? I mean, I don't know if DW specifically pulls from the same source that the related artists are pulled from, but it's probably a safe bet that you usually listen to sad boring 45 year old white guy music--thus the Bob Mould.

(Xpost although I'm also open to the idea that Spotify is pulling some shady "sponsored artist" type shit, too)

Also woah dlp9001 you post all the time on ilx about how often you listen to zen arcade, and then you're surprised that they gave you bob mould? What the fuck did you think was going to happen when you stuck zen arcade on repeat for a week?

"Not playing what you wanted to hear, but having a good reason for doing it." That could probably be a corporate slogan for Echo Nest. A little longer than "We know music..." but I've always wondered what came after those ellipses, and it makes me kind of nervous.

And actually, I think I posted about playing the crap out of side 2 of Zen Arcade, and anyone who connects that with Bob Mould's solo career is drinking from the robot juice.

I'm honestly very curious about the kinds of suggestions you're going to get from tidal. In what sane world would any recommendation service NOT recommend bob mould to a husker du obsessive?

I ain't trying to stalk a dude, but your name comes up on literally every husker du thread

You mess with the Beatles, you get the Wings

Ok, taking a question straight: If someone said they liked Zen Arcade, there are about a million things I'd recommend before Bob Mould's solo career. Along similar lines, if someone said they liked the Pixies I'd send them to Mclusky in a heartbeat, Nemo's first album in a heartbeat, Frank Black not so much. Ditto Replacements "Stink"/Paul Westerberg. And so on.

You can stop posting on this thread about the service you don't use or like now.

If someone said they liked Zen Arcade, there are about a million things I'd recommend before Bob Mould's solo career. Along similar lines, if someone said they liked the Pixies I'd send them to Mclusky in a heartbeat, Nemo's first album in a heartbeat, Frank Black not so much. Ditto Replacements "Stink"/Paul Westerberg. And so on.

But if most people who like the band also listen to the solo artist, then that's going to be more likely to be what pushes the algorithm, not the outliers.

I have never been recommended bob mould, for the record.

I have; somehow it didn't cause me to have an aneurysm.

when I play discover weekly it's mostly awesome tracks, I think because I spend a lot of time listening to awesome tracks. I don't listen to all of that mould-adjacent stuff drp9001 loves so much tho.

I don't understand why DW has even become a talking point to the extent it is tbh; thinking of an automatically generated playlist as a friend or boyfriend or whatever seems crazytown to me. I used to use the "track radio based on" feature like 5 years ago when I was feeling lazy, and skip the tracks I didn't like

like the first time a computer recommended me music i hated i got really mad too, but i got over it. they're just computers. they don't know any better. even if 90% of what a computer recommends to me is crap, i'm grateful for that 10% i wouldn't have heard otherwise!

But if most people who like the band also listen to the solo artist, then that's going to be more likely to be what pushes the algorithm, not the outliers.

I have never been recommended bob mould, for the record.

― 🐸a hairy howling toad torments a man whose wife is deathly ill (James Morrison), Sunday, May 29, 2016 1:33 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm -- think of all the solo albums that *don't* get recommended because they never got press or fan traction

("get recommended" here is a catchall, incidentally -- it could just as easily mean "brought up in conversation" as "returned by recommendation software," because as always there is something of a feedback loop)

Im a huge husker du fan and hadn't heard bob's solo album but a week or so after it came out DW had a track from it and I really liked it and checked out the album and I thought it was good.

Essentially what we're saying is that if you like Bob Mould solo, DW is the greatest thing since sliced bread with truffle fries prepared by Greg Norton.

I will inform Attila that most people who like a solo artist also love the bands they were in.

imo dlp you are being super weird about this. afaict it's your basic 'people who liked x also liked y' algorithm, souped up with some kind of playlist-scouring thing that gives extra weight to things that get playlisted together. do you also take offense when amazon proposes a book you have no interest in reading? or is it that bob mould specifically has done something unforgivable to you or those you love?

like i have all kinds of complaints with spotify, petty and less petty, but if discover weekly's selections really bother you then... don't use discover weekly?

Yeah I never use mine they always stink.

xp -- I'm not sure why Bob Mould is the hill we have collectively decided to die on. (I heard one of his solo albums. It was pretty OK! Also, the idea of whatever sponsored-artist machinations record labels are undoubtedly doing centering around BOB MOULD is perhaps the funniest thing in this overgrown amoeba of a thread.)

Well, I mean, I kind of did that when I dropped Spotify and switched to Tidal. The Bob Mould thing is something I noticed a while back and has always struck me as odd/interesting.

Amazon doesn't seem to have any employees posting regularly about Amazon on ILM, so I've never given that much thought.

too busy being mercilessly exploited by the standards of merciless exploitation to shitpost on an internet message board?

shitposting - now i have a name for what i do

thanks 4chan

I don't understand why DW has even become a talking point to the extent it is tbh; thinking of an automatically generated playlist as a friend or boyfriend or whatever seems crazytown to me.

It's like getting mad that Youtube's "other related videos" sidebar doesn't represent "who I really am"

I believe this is how Echo Nest would explain why DW is important, though I could be wrong:

With Taste Profiles for every user on your service, you can enhance the complete discovery experience in new ways. For example, you can build social discovery features to connect fans who share common music taste, giving them a fun new way to discover music through each other. Meanwhile, personalized recommendations in your app and marketing campaigns will keep fans coming back and spending more time with your service.

So essentially it's about making things fun for us, which seems like a laudable goal and only a real ass would object. I didn't understand the sentence after that, so I'll pretend it isn't there.

as has been noted previously, glenn's cred as an ILMer/internet music nerd goes wayyyyy back before spotify was a gleam in some algorithm's eye. i may not agree with everything he says in this thread but trying to pigeonhole him as a company shill is unfair, and anyway irrelevant to the question of whether spotify's any good.