Spotify - anyone heard of it?

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.

I know him from before Spotify as well, and I think he's a great guy, full stop, no sarcasm. That says nothing about the Spotify threads as they exist on ILM.

Glenn stole my stars and kicked my puppy!

Nah, I like Glenn. He's nice.

I have a private warehouse full of everybody's stars.

dlp - okay but, again, what does glenn working for spotify, and simultaneously posting to ILM, have to do with your bob mould gripes? i'm not following the argument.

it's not an argument. it's rhetorical water torture.

glenn works for The Echo Nest, which is owned by Spotify, before we go any farther. He doesn't work for Spotify directly. It seems reasonable to suggest that we know who is posting on threads on ILM when they have a significant relationship with an involved corporate entity, especially if those threads relate to commercial music services. ILM is generally known as a site for discussing and discovering music. Echo Nest describe themselves thusly:

The Echo Nest is the industry’s leading music intelligence company, providing developers with the deepest understanding of music content and music fans.

Leading music services (Clear Channel’s iHeartradio, MOG, Rdio, SiriusXM, Spotify), editorial, video and social media networks (BBC.com, Foursquare, MTV, Twitter, VEVO, Yahoo!), connected device manufacturers (doubleTwist, Nokia) and big brands (Coca Cola, Intel, Microsoft, Reebok) use our platform and solutions to build smarter music experiences that help fans to better discover, share and interact with the music they love. Our customer base reaches over 100 million music fans every month through more than 400 apps and sites powered by The Echo Nest.

Headquartered in Somerville, MA, The Echo Nest was co-founded by two MIT PhDs. Investors include Commonwealth Capital Ventures, Matrix Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and three co-founders of the MIT Media Lab.

ok............?

you brought up glenn's affiliation(s) in response to my point about amazon (and "people who listened to x listened to y" algorithms generally). i still don't understand how any of it is relevant to your beefs with said algorithms.

*sighs*

The algorithms are just not so great. I think that's the only beef. They benefit from a confirmation bias, in the sense that they recommend 99 Bob Mould albums and one Lovely Eggs album, and all I remember is the latter. Otherwise they're generally useless.

Meanwhile, I'm looking for an iTunes/Tidal/YouTube/Pandora/Record Label/Music Equipment etc. thread where a fairly visible employee from the company administers it and responds directly to questions about the service, on ILM, on a regular and current basis, without some sort of notification in the subject. Maybe there are others. There are all sorts of unexplored depths to ILM. Currently the Spotify threads seem like they belong on Reddit, with appropriate headings.

Someone here said at one point, "Spotify is ILM" and while I have other concerns in my life (like I need to buy asparagus for a barbecue tonight) that struck me as a slope of great slipperiness.

If it is actually true that you have any other concerns in your life, please, go attend to them.

I work for Spotify. "The Echo Nest" might still exist in some corporate accounting sense, but not one that affects me.

Spotify has a lot of different "algorithms". Discover Weekly works very differently from "Related Artists", for example. Neither of those will ever "recommend" 99 Bob Mould albums, so I don't know what you're actually complaining about.

I do not "administer" this thread or anything else on ILM.

Guys please dont listen to new music

What is the percentage of posts on the thread "New and Noteworthy Additions to Spotify" in terms of glenn vs. non-glenn?

I mean, the person who works for Tidal and happens to be mentioned 293 times in a one-year-old thread that just randomly happens to be solely related to his company probably isn't administering anything either. He/She is just a big music fan. I get that.

Ok but more importantly what is Glenn's gender and does (s)he like strip clubs?

I believe it's "glenn" and not "Glenn." Male, and I'm going with no. Nice guy. Spotify thread should be marked as "corporate related" or the like.

Let it go. This thread is 8 years old, and it's about a service you don't use any more. It can take care of itself without your anonymous vigilance.

The thread I referenced is one year old. New and Noteworthy Additions to US Spotify.

I'm pretty sure I have a similar ratio of posts on threads about the Dustdevils, but they haven't cut me a check in a long, long time.

Don't you still need that asparagus to go with your beef?

BOTH those threads are about a service you don't use.

I knew this handkerchief and this chloroform would come in handy some day

"dlp9001, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to Spotify... Let us not assassinate this lad further. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

imo the funniest thing about drp901 is that ppl keep assuming he's some kind of nu-new-vicperry until he points out that he's actually some ilm dork that's been posting for a decade without anybody noticing until he started piping up with rape apologism and pissy wounded warrior pronouncements about "ilx"

2nd funniest thing is that ppl keep responding to him

some of the conversation about algorithms here (they're prejudiced and personal) doesn't make much sense to me. aiui algorithms are basically iterative logical or mathematical rules designed to try and derive meaning from complex, "natural" or human data outputs mechanically.

the taxonomies (audience profile and genre) to which they apply have more capacity to imply or contain prejudice as they're hard to define objectively. from what i can see from the furia blogs and glenn's comments everyone involved seems to take an informed and playful interest in categorisation.

the feedback loop of machine learning can probably emphasise skewed input (ie prejudice) too. but algorithms, although they unintelligently process this sort of information with the recommendation results that we see, are not the main thing I'd point my gun at.

that said always struggled with husker du let alone bob mould so ymmv.

wait did i just respond to dlp? I'm drunk.