Spotify - anyone heard of it?

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I didn't have anything to do with Tastebreakers, but one of my other things we briefly contemplated using as the second playlist in Wrapped is one that tries to generate the opposite of the music you usually like. It's pretty effective. When I tried it for an internal audience, almost everybody either hated the music it gave them, felt personally insulted by the implication that this was the opposite of their tastes, or both.

― glenn mcdonald, Friday, December 7, 2018 2:14 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Isn't this what the playlist claims to do though? The description for the playlist says "we've made you a playlist from genres and artists you don't normally explore" (even though the playlist is actually full of artists and genres I do normally explore.)

As it is the Tastebreakers playlist seems no different to Discover Weekly on one of it's more broken weeks.

yeah, my Tastebreakers is full of artists I've listened to on Spotify, but not all that much

Yeah, within the first 12 tracks in my Tastebreakers playlist are: 7 things that have previously appeared on DW, 2 things I own on vinyl/CD (can't expect Spotify to know that, but it could be inferred) and nothing I'd not heard of at least. Still, that Yukihiro Takahashi live track was nice and I'm never going to say no to hearing A Rainbow In Curved Air on a slow bus through Beckenham.

almost everybody either hated the music it gave them, felt personally insulted by the implication that this was the opposite of their tastes, or both.

this is amazing, what would the opposite of my "art pop" be?

Dennis Wilson is on my Tastebreakers list too (twice), as is Momus. I've also got three track from Meredith Monk.

I am enjoying "Oh Slime" by Fishmans (an apparently Japanese artist I have never heard of) thanks to this playlist

I've got Dennis Wilson and Fishmans too.

same here, no momus though - wonder what dimension of the ilx hive mind listening profile i'm missing out on.

I would have loved an antimirror / opposites playlist tbh

no momus, probably because I only managed to listen to two microgenres somehow. this honestly surprises me

I got Fishmans, one of the very few artists that I hadn't heard of on it.

So far I am the only person i talked to who was angered by tastebreakers’ (in my view) scolding demand that I “expand (my) horizons” in 2019, after spying on my listening throughout 2018.

What if i want to narrow my horizons?

I can’t tell if this hellscape nexus of Dennis Wilson ans Momus says something about Spotify or about the people who populate this message board. Either way lol.

believe me you are not the only person angered by this rollout (I'm not, but at times my feed seems to be suggesting that just opening the link is one step away from personally fire-bombing a recording studio)

You can see genre opposites in the reverse-image inset map at the bottoms of the genre pages on everynoise, like here: http://everynoise.com/engenremap-artpop.html

Making a composite opposite of a person's varied tastes is a fun challenge, because in some cases you probably like both a thing and its opposite.

But Tastebreakers was meant to be stuff in genres you already listen to a little bit, just artists you haven't specifically played recently. Mine did nothing at all for me, but at least I didn't get Momus. Anybody heard of this guy Sergei Prokofiev?

After all these years posting/lurking here, I am finally listening to a Momus track for the first time.

xp to glenn

heh well I do hate blues bands, thanks

Wait momus wasn’t an inside joke?

Millions of people were recommended momus?

But Tastebreakers was meant to be stuff in genres you already listen to a little bit, just artists you haven't specifically played recently.

― glenn mcdonald, Friday, December 7, 2018 12:36 PM (thirty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that would explain the Prince, at least

I am enjoying "Oh Slime" by Fishmans (an apparently Japanese artist I have never heard of) thanks to this playlist
their debut album is solid, dubby late 90s alternative vibes
https://open.spotify.com/album/7GOdEIOvr41lvxDK7bvPrI?si=WhLH46sZRr6LptuAy2K-xw

i had prince on mine too!*

i had "when you were mine" on there... which last year was one of my top 20 or so most played songs.

*I lied when I said I hated everything on my Tastebreakers

i don't think AI will ever take the place of humans

This level of complaining is too intense for AI to simulate

Millions of people were recommended momus?

^ gotta be the title of his next best-of

haha including the question mark

I've been listening to it for the last couple of hours and am now really enjoying this playlist. This is actually much better than a typical Discover Weekly for me.

lots of 10+ minute songs on this though, this is gonna take all day

Nice to see Fishmans on Spotify. No tastebreaker for me. Y'all should take half an hour and check out Long Season

Long season was on my playlist. It was good!

I got a Momus that wasn't Hippopotamomus in my tastebreakers.

As mentioned, my tastebreakers gave me Momus (I am a kitten) - and Brian Wilson, and Prince. There were also 2 Cornelius songs, and an outright obsession with 'Gimme Shelter', with 2 cover versions (Cal Tjader and Ruth Copeland) and a Merry Clayton song.

But I do like the playlist a lot, so a good AI result.

No Momus here (two by "Mocky" however). But I see Dennis Wilson, and I raise yall two Helado Negros. And two "Swamp Dogg" and Ryuichi Sakamotos. Even-numbered years are Hosono years in my household.

Anyway thanks computers (and Glenn!). I'll check all this out...

My 2018 thing is quite indicative of the fact that I quit Spotify halfway thru the year and got Apple Music, and also I pretty much only listen to stuff the algorithms pick for me. Many of the tracks on my “top songs” I have no memory of ever having heard in my life. It still told me I am “adventurous” lol

No Momus here (two by "Mocky" however). But I see Dennis Wilson, and I raise yall two Helado Negros. And two "Swamp Dogg" and Ryuichi Sakamotos. Even-numbered years are Hosono years in my household.

I enjoy this implication that Dominic Salole and Jerry Williams are big lying fakers, but Momus and Helado Negro are pure, honest artistes representing their true selves

just indicating my unfamiliarity, which is the goal of the thing. Mocky is another five-letter name that starts with "Mo", what a larf. Didn't get to them yet but Swamp Dogg is quite nice and I see there's a thread here!

Adding to the chorus: my tastebreakers starts off Dennis Wilson - Momus - Momus - Swamp Dogg.

I'm very keen on my Tastebreakers, but it seems to consist almost exclusively of cover versions, five of them Lennon-McCartney songs.

weird. do you listen to a lot of Beatles? Computer thinks covers in other styles are gonna blow your mind! Whatever the algorithm is, this is a lot better than a typical Discover Weekly for me.

I had a bit of a Beatles binge recently with the release of the remixed White Album, yeah.

Maybe I also listen to more cover versions than other people, I dunno. I doubt Spotify metadata records whether something is a cover but I guess if people tend to make playlists of covers it learns from that. Here is my Tastebreakers in case anyone wants to hear it. Enjoying the Meters' version of Witchita Lineman right now:

https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/37i9dQZF1EiZ6FMrDqu7UW?si=8_QKBX59QfqTZ-U5ZNmV9w

Wichita!

I'd be shocked if it didn't have metadata indicating it's a cover. There's a lot more metadata than what we see in the client.

Does anyone know how generated playlists are sequenced? They seem to flow well enough to me, and I suspect it's not just randomized. Anyone who's used the integration with "djay"* can see that there's good BPM metadata.

*Quotation marks to help lowercase-stylized software name stand out. Program is very legit.

Oh, I WISH we had metadata indicating covers. Currently, no.

I love djay's Spotify integration and wish I had more time to play with it. Just having the BPM and musical key information is great in itself (does djay generate this itself or does it come from the API?)

In principle, there's no such thing as a "cover", though, is there? Or rather, every recording is a "cover" of the abstract song which is a separate entity, at least legally? Maybe not a discussion for this thread.

I would hope that the djay/spotify integration is good enough that a track only needs to be analysed for bpm/key once by any client and then synced back to spotify?

I always enjoy hearing the covers after one of my cover binges.

Also have been impressed with having the source tracks pop up after I've heard them sampled elsewhere.

Finally got the new Roku app. It's pretty disappointing. It looks a bit better than the old one, but the functionality is meager. The one thing I want to do, play my playlists is hampered by the fact that it seems to only be able to handle smaller lists. The main list I play has 800 tracks, but shuffle mode only plays like the first 200 on the list. It's very frustrating. You can clearly see it queues up a much wider variety of tracks on my phone and PC, but when I switch to roku, most of the songs drop out of the queue.