Why Spotify’s Discover Weekly is getting really boring?
thenextweb.comI definitely disagree with the premise of the article. I have a playlist where I pull in my favorites from Discover Weekly, and it just turned one year old. I still consistently get great new songs to add to the playlist.
I've also gleaned some insight into my general disposition over the least year from the playlist. I can tell exactly when I was in a "mood" or a rut... When I was listening to lots of angry music, that was reflected in my suggestions and my picks. And when I was opening up and relaxing—that also shows through the playlist.
I'd say that if your taste in music has a wider range and not specific to a single genre, your Discover Weekly will be a lot more rewarding. And also, if you rotate through musical moods like seasons where some tastes come and go over the course of a month or two, your Discover Weekly will support that and help you indulge in the mood of the month.
>I have a playlist where I pull in my favorites from Discover Weekly
Do you do this manually, or use the API?
I do this manually. Usually after several listens to the entire Discover Weekly I'll already have a couple in mind I want to hear more, and I'll pull these into my collection playlist.
On the other end though, some Monday mornings I pull up Discover Weekly and there's this soul-crushing moment when I realize there's a brand new playlist and I forgot to add some treasure I'd been listening to all the last week. I've lost one or two songs in this manner. But if they're still relevant to me in the future, I trust Spotify to eventually lead me back to them somehow. That's how crazy good Spotify is to me. :P
I once saw a service that automatically saves your Discover Weekly to a new playlist each week. I've done this manually to "snapshot" a few great Discover Weekly sets, but if I was a little smarter I'd use automated service to save me from those occasional regretful Mondays.
You can use IFTT to automatically archive the songs from the Discover Weekly playlist to another playlist.
I just drag them in my 'favorites' playlist if I like what I'm hearing.
Having talked with people that have close insight into Discover Weekly it actually only checks your last few thousand songs though (weighting them accordingly) and checks if those songs are on other peoples playlists, then choosing the songs on their playlists that are not on yours. This means that you have a pretty big pool of songs to start with (people with similar taste) that is getting smaller and smaller. The fact that those people also use discover weekly could lead to a bit of a feedback loop.
I found a friend who during a party came up and said "I listen to this song all the time, it's amazing!" and then the next and the next and the next song the same happened. We had been listening to the same (semi-obscure) music for the majority of the past year. It was only later that we discovered that we had both found the songs from discover weekly and were not at all as obscure and knowledgable about music, but hey: we had the same taste in music.
Please don't reveal intellectual property secrets on HN. It sounds like you got that information from a privileged source.
(EDIT: I was wrong; this algorithm is public knowledge.)
Ha, those algorithms are far from trade secrets! Here's one of the Discover Weekly developers talking about how they implemented this feature: https://atscaleconference.com/videos/creating-and-scaling-sp.... If you're interested, here's a deeper technical explanation of the algorithm used: http://www.columbia.edu/~jwp2128/Teaching/W4721/papers/ieeec...
I see. Pardon, my mistake.
If they didn't tell this person not to share the info, then the problem rests with whoever divulged this information in the first place. Once it's out, it's out.
It is common knowledge[0] that Spotify peruses and pilfers songs from users with similar listener profiles and trades them around under "Discover Weekly". There aren't any closely guarded IP secrets in the GP comment here.
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0. http://qz.com/571007/the-magic-that-makes-spotifys-discover-...
I use Spotify's discover weekly and I'm consistently impressed by the new music that the app shares with me. Bands I've never heard of before that all fit beautifully within the type of music I enjoy. I totally disagree with the author's point.
I am always looking for Mondays because of that playlist. So definitely disagreeing with the author.
By the time Monday rolls around, I've barely had enough time to explore all the bands from the previous week!
Same here. Apart from the couple of songs that keep reappearing it's perfect.
Same thing here. One of the highest points of my regular mondays.
Same here, still surprises me the songs that has been listed there.
Good experience so far for me.
The only real caveat I have with spotify is the awfully buggy applications.
I never had the app crash on me. What bugs are you refering to?
Discover Weekly in this article is a microcosm of the problems with Spotify generally.
Spotify (especially on desktop) has a LOT of issues. From poorly implemented shuffle play to random removal of features (notifications to ctrl-f to playlist organization), and a complicated by a total lack of dev communication on any platform.
I think the issue with Spotify is not that their core is bad, it's that they never manage to improve and while they act like they're listening, they're not really listening. If there was any worthy competition, I'd switch.
Regarding their desktop client; totally true. I recently discovered that keeping the Spotify App idle over 2 days, it had written 50 GB to my SSD. Not worth killing my disk over this service.
Recommend this thread, where I became aware of the problem https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/56auoi/huge_amount_o...
Ugh, there's so many things like this. My Spotify is also constantly adding data to my local app directory even though I told it through advanced settings to store all music on a different drive.
For an app that's just a web backend in a wrapper, it is horrifically inefficient.
Skip the app!
I would, but I honestly find the web experience to be worse, especially when it comes to playlists.
How do you check that? (How do I check that?)
That's insane. What's it writing?
holy! on Mac or Windows?
I've switched to Google Music. Although that has its own set of problems, I find it has better (or more dynamic) machine learning implemented for playlists and discovery mechanics. You can even reset the information it has learned from, and start over if you wish.
Making Google listen to change-requests (in one of their not-so-prioritized) products will of course not be likely either.
I'd definitely consider switching. Do you happen to know: Are the libraries similar in size/breadth? How is the mobile app support? Would I be able to move my (many many) playlists across services somehow?
I think in our software ecosystem it's just a game of "who is doing the most like what I want at the moment." Communication with customers is largely dead.
This is purely anecdotal of course, but the libraries are similar or better for what I've been listening to. Especially asian music seems to be easier to find on Google music.
The mobile app for android is good, but I haven't seen it receive many updates this last year. It seems like it is pushed a lot stronger in the US. They even give you Youtube Red (the no-ads/music/support creators-thing) with the same subscription. [1]
I liked that they allow storage of up to 20 000 of your local songs (if you still have those), integrated into your online library.
I used a fan-made application to recreate my playlists from spotify, but it required that I was a premium member on both services at once, and just directly used my credentials. Most playlists were kinda butchered. I don't have a good migration-strategy to recommend, I'm afraid.
EDIT: Downsides: It does not have an official desktop-app, you have to use the browser.
Does not have official support for last.fm
1: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
Spotify is running for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week here and I have no complaints. I love the UI and responsivess, even on my 3Mbit ADSL line. It's everything I ever wished for in a music app.
I guess my response would be: Check your disk usage for hidden evil surprises, and give it time. It'll disappoint you. I've been a user for years and it's in the last year or so that things started going downhill. Since the release of "1.0," the redesign that replaced a ton of features with a sleek design and still hasn't caught up to older versions.
The Spotify desktop client randomly consuming 100% of a CPU core (sending the fan crazy) was what actually pushed me onto Apple Music.
Here's my current discover weekly playlist: http://imgur.com/a/6l5bN
The songs with a checkmark are the ones I've liked and added to my collection. I haven't finished listening to the playlist yet, but I like almost every song that it recommends. The songs I didn't save aren't bad either and I've never had a recommended song which I totally disliked.
It's incredible how it can suggest songs of various genres and still hit my sweet spot.
So I don't agree with tfa.
I would love to be able to re-generate the playlist on demand and also suggest the 'direction' in which it should go - like 'mellower', 'harder', 'sweeter', etc.
But all in all, Spotify is doing a really great job.
How long have you been using the Discover Weekly function? After almost a year, I find my current discover weekly playlist looks very similar to yours. I have a similarly large number of check marks against songs in the list, but not because I've recently added them. Or recently discovered them.
I've since switched to the Daily Mixes, which also seem to have the same stuff most days, and then Release Radar, which finally now gives me something fresh.
So +1 for Release Radar, but everywhere else I feel is lacking, and ultimately, I do agree with tfa.
I've been using Discover Weekly for less than a year I think. But I'm a Spotify user since 2008, so it has my whole listening history for the last 8 years.
I haven't noticed repeated songs in my Discover Weekly so far, so I can't complain..
Despite Spotify's vastly superior user interface and a much quicker Android app, I've found myself switching to Apple music for the singular reason that their curated playlists are much, much better than Spotify's.
I don't have the hours and hours to spend online on music blogs downloading obscure MP3s like I did while I was at university, trawling through to find stuff I like. So now finding new music is more of a challenge.
I've found the curated approach of Apple to be much better than the algorithmic approach of Spotify (and Spotify's curated playlists are also worse).
If you used to like finding new music through blogs, Hype machine does a pretty awesome job of taking the pain out of trawling for new stuff. They aggregate everything for you on their site so you just see and stream a playlist of music from all of the blogs you follow.
Good tip, thanks! i just found the Hype Machine "profile" on spotify and now I'm following their playlists.
I have a similar feeling, but the "daily mix" playlists are even worse. Why is it called daily if I get the same songs over and over every day?
I miss the infinite streams of Rdio with the adventurous -> familiar slider a lot. You could stay on the same station for months at a time ;(
I miss Rdio in general. When I had to look for an alternative I was really surprised how far behind everyone else, including Spotify, was and still is in terms of overall user experience. Especially if you actually enjoy looking for music and labels instead of being served a weekly playlist that isn't completely irrelevant, yet still rather underwhelming.
Spotify’s Discover Weekly is crap. It schows me the same crap songs over and over again. A simple mix of albums similar to albums I downloaded on my phone would give a way much better selection. Or simply a
IF song have been seen at least 3 times in DW and skipped after 10 sec THAN do not show song again
would be a high improvement.
[edit] Spotify seems to spend more time curating this forum than curating Discover Weekly.
> IF song have been seen at least 3 times in DW and skipped after 10 sec THAN do not show song again
I am still amazed about the same thing. Why are they not understanding such obvious behavior with all the sophistication the app otherwise has (eg the match-running speed to music-beat).
I've had the same thing happen with book recommendations. While I was traveling for work more frequently, I picked my next books from the Hugo and Nebula award winning websites. I happen to enjoy space operas more than alternate history or fantasy books. After reading and rating a couple, Amazon / GoodReads' recommendations started recommending only stories that involve humanity venturing out into the void and (eventually) saving the galaxy. I happened to like the first recommendations. It saved me the trouble of looking up the next book to be devoured!
However, after six months of this, I noticed that I was stuck in a literary (can I say "literal?") reading rut that became increasingly obvious. Humanity discovers X. X becomes increasingly useful, but there's a hidden price. Y reveals the cost, and that humanity is now an underdog. Human Z, with side kicks, ventures out, and little did he know, plays an important role on the galactic stage.
Customization is nice in software. However - recommendation engines (today) seem particularly dim-witted, and result in the creation of a single-person echo chamber that becomes increasingly lonely the longer you spend interacting with it.
Every Friday I quickly scan through the Spotify new songs/discover and top lists and add the new stuff I like to my main playlist since I don't listen to the radio anymore so it is really the main way I get exposed to new music now. Discover I am lucky to find maybe 1 song a week on that I like and is new. It has just never worked well for me. The new releases by artists you like list is a goldmine though. But none of them are great to listen through on their own in my experience.
My guess: take jazz fans on one hand, and Justin Bieber groupies on the other hand. The jazz fans would in general appreciate way more the DW service than the Justin Bieber ones. Why so? Because the 'vector' that describes a jazz fan's playlist is probably much more specific and 'unique' than the vector of an heavily standardised MTV-based playlist. Everyone gets the recommendations they deserve...
I mean there are artists that I like as an exception because they're sentimentally meaningful to me. I don't want to hear other music, even in that genre. Bieber fans might only be fans of Bieber's music and not other pop.
I wonder if anyone's studied this. Maybe it's not a common sentiment...
For the people who like Discover Weekly, what was your previous music discovery process?
Discover weekly is hit and miss for me. Some weeks I find plenty of great material, and others I find a lot of junk - that being said I can understand it would be hard to match music you'd like all the time.
The fact that we're even talking about "Discover Weekly" means it's a huge success. That it doesn't work for everybody is another matter.
Minor nitpick: There shouldn't be a question mark in the title, because it makes no sense. There is none in the title of the linked article either.
Agreed, is mostly the same sounding stuff over and over since weeek 8