Spotify - anyone heard of it?

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.

I have always wanted and still want to follow labels but I guess we're a distance from that implementation-wise.

My Discover Weekly is fine and I'm happy it exists but slightly off-target nonetheless. Like everyone else I have recommendations for Nite Fields (who?), Tala and Sharon Von Etten.

I know there's a way to search labels (mentioned up thread). I got super anal about the labels I really had interest in that are on Spotify - made my own playlists for Kranky, Type, Touch, and Erased Tapes (all public playlists fwiw). I just update them whenever I hear about new releases. But then I've always liked doing that kind of thing manually...

interesting read about the inner workings of spotify re: big data / knowledge organisation related to music listening ad discovery

Inside Spotify’s Hunt for the Perfect Playlist
http://www.wired.com/2015/07/spotify-perfect-playlist/

good systems

I haven't got mine yet

Oops!

http://i.imgur.com/35bCDSN.jpg

Funny enough on its own, but what's even funnier is that the album's title got changed to that by an update from the label in late 2009, and seems to have been that way ever since.

I'll see if I can get it fixed.

oooh just received mine
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1484956/spotify%20discover%20weekly.png

I haven't , im beginning to think I wont get it til next monday

for anyone who's interested, there's a program called Spotiamp that looks like Winamp but is actually a Spotify player that has less stuff to load (no link to facebook) and doesn't force the user to wait through the circle of dots. winamp's "eject" button leads the user to a list of their playlists.