Spotify - anyone heard of it?

johnny fever it sounds like maybe streaming isn't for you but have you considered the curative curating connoisseurship of #VNYL and their #vibesystem?

One of the reasons I stopped using last.fm was because of their dubious recommendations. No, I do not want to listen to fucking Kajagoogoo, thank you very much.

I would do that with no hesitation at all (or a similar job anywhere else), but it's all who you know and I don't know anybody. (Though I did have a twitter exchange with one of the people at VNYL who does that when I called out their service for selling people Goodwill junk records.)

My auto-generated algorithmic playlist is actually very good - mostly acts I've not heard before, spanning a fairly representative range of the sort of current stuff I'm listen to. There are some misfires, but they're of the "I see why you would have thought that" type.

It's also vastly more on-point than Start Playlist Radio has ever managed to be.

it's not so bad! i also appreciate that it works on v 0.8.5

My Discover Weekly is pretty strongly conditioned by the fact that I use Spotify only to listen to ILX best of year playlists

In case you're wondering what Spotify thinks listeners of ILX best of 2014 playlists want to listen to, it's

DJ Dodger Stadium
Eno . Hyde
Future Brown
Hundred Waters
Wildbirds & Peacedrums
Panda Bear
18+
Tennis

If you've ever suspected that people in other places know about cool music you've never heard, now you can hear how right you were.

https://insights.spotify.com/us/2015/07/13/musical-map-of-the-world/

― glenn mcdonald, Thursday, July 16, 2015 10:18 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hi how do I get these links to open in spotify standalone and not my browser?

When they come up in the browser, just hit "Play on Spotify" and they should start playing in the regular Spotify client.

I bet mine has been curated by Glenn himself in an attempt to get me to listen to his fave girly metal. I know your game pal!

Hmmm, my auto-generated playlist just alternates tracks by Big Country and Juliana Hatfield. What the hell!

I actually don't have mine yet so presumably Glenn is working on it ;)

mine is disconcertingly accurate to my tastes, to the point of including several of my favourite songs and making me worry that spotify actually is keeping track of what artists I bad mouth on the internet.

just pulled mine up: a mix of artists I was aware of already and are lukewarm on (iamwhoiamwhoami, little boots, florrie), artists I was aware of via reviewing them (to be fair, this is the most stupidly niche "complaint" anyone can have and I feel bad for having it), a few genuine lolwuts (task: purge my music library of anything that would prompt the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack, quarantine the track on a flash drive, burn it) and, heartening, some great tracks I would probably not have encountered (this Saâda Bonaire track is great, so is this Jaakko Eino Kalevi which is almost eerily the sort of thing I want to hear right now, this Man Without Country track).

verdict: not bad! actually far better than I was expecting! clearly I need to seed it with more of the latter.

Hi Glenn - Any way to have Spotify ignore collaborative playlists in their algorithms? Maybe they already do? I have a collaborative playlist for work that has a fair amount of stuff in it that I don't love. Maybe I just need to not be the guy playing that playlist?

Right, it's the playing that's causing you trouble, not the playlist itself. Make somebody else play it. Or just make sure you play your own stuff more.

(We're also working on better methods than that for the future...)

[And just to be clear: This great Discover Weekly feature is the work of an excellent team at Spotify NYC, not me.]

Ah, so the algorithm only uses what you've listened to, and not what you have in Your Music? Good deal

I would be surprised if it didn't use all information it can obtain - some signals will be given a heavier weight if they are more reliable though.

Will we ever be able to rate songs?

Or a binary rating system, like starring/unstarring?

I got a ton of bad shit but discovered Ryley Walker so it's even i guess. the problem for me is that it's clearly based on a popularity algorithm so your not really getting any deep cuts from artist you like but haven't fully dug into. there was maybe three artist that i actively listen to out of 30. i mean i guess it's called discovery or whatever but the "here's what's popular that vaguely sounds like what you listen to" vibe is a turn off.

my generated playlist isn't bad but "FRESH MUSIC" is kind of an odd one since it has two dead rappers (ODB and Tupac) and a bunch of '70s/early '80s New York rock (Dolls, Sonic Youth, etc.)

plus something called Diarrhea Planet

okay i also got "long distance love" by little feat so prob worth it.

this update is a 1 out of 10. approximately zero things are now improved.

the circle of dots while the program loads seems to last longer and longer after every update.

^

got recommended Selda in my playlist, I'm happy to sort through the chaff for one or two things like that a week

selda is legit the greatest - i was just listening to the self-titled last night

Just saw my Discover Playlist.

http://i.imgur.com/0PMrAxS.png

I'm not 52 years old, but I am listening to the whole thing.

here's mine:

http://i61.tinypic.com/f2prpx.png

I got a Hop Along track as well. It's good. Then I found a couple more, and they're good as well. But my best Discover find is a recent comeback from St Germain, of all people; the added Malian instrumentation works very well indeed.

Okay, so the one I got probably isn't as bad after all as I'd originally made it out to be (for instance, there isn't actually any Bon Iver on it), but I think I was just unimpressed because I either already know most of what's presented or at least know I don't care to hear it.

http://i.imgur.com/I79MVg6.jpg

that ata kak is great, johnny - don't know if you've already heard it. what's the st germain comeback w/ the malian instrumentation?

Yeah, seandalai turned me on to Ata Kak a few months ago (probably without his knowledge—I just follow his playlist).

my Discover playlist is weirdly biased towards new songs with 4-on-the-floor beats compared to the stuff I usually listen to. what is the logic behind this?

You broke it.

i still dont have it

the algorithm broke for you because it couldn't find a Lindstrøm track that sounds like Barón Rojo

Discover Weekly is rolling out in stages, so if you don't have it in your playlist list yet, hang in there.

I had the same Tanlines and BC Camplight tracks in my playlist.
The St Germain track is called "Real Blues".

i used to like st germain a lot. first album was great

I'll say this: At least I didn't get one of these from Spotify.

http://i.imgur.com/0uri1gj.png

I quite liked the Unkown Mortal Orchestra track on mine. The Mikal Cronin-Ty Segall axis isnt my thing tho

[And just to be clear: This great Discover Weekly feature is the work of an excellent team at Spotify NYC, not me.]

I just like to assume that Glenn McDonald is responsible for all music related algorthms that pop up online, or at least the ones involving listener habits and discovery, and any problems with them are directly his fault. It makes it easier that way.

Glenn - Do you guys ever plan to have smart playlists like in iTunes? Like, I could save a set of search criteria as a "smart playlist" and it would update every time I open it (or in the background would be even better!). I would love this so much.

Oh, it already has tons of kudos in the suggestion forum: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Smart-playlists/idi-p/18549

Yeah, that's a well-supported suggestion.

My discover playlist wasn't bad - I listened to it yesterday and only rarely skipped anything (also rarely checked to see exactly what I was hearing).
It was all indie rock - slightly craggier than your average NPR pick. I like that stuff fine but I also listen to A LOT of ambient and that area of my listening wasn't reflected at all.