Spotify - anyone heard of it?

And if all that sounds interesting, we're also hiring...

"Pretty solid" is an understatement; I'm pretty sure that level of engineering behind something like playlist generation is completely unparalleled. I'm happy they're so open about how it works.

in particular, i heard the audio analysis stuff had turned out to be a dead end

Then what are all those Echo Nest folks doing now?

I'm doing quite a bit of skipping as I check them out, but the Fresh Finds playlists are pretty cool. I assume they are generated in a manner similar to Discover Weekly playlists, which I also like a lot.

We use audio analysis for a lot of things, but rarely use it by itself. Spotify Running, for one obvious example, makes extensive use of audio analysis to figure out what songs might be good for running, but then also uses non-audio data to help figure out which good-for-running songs are suitable for particular running modes or particular runners.

Fresh Finds and Discover Weekly share the broad goals of exposing listeners to more music and exposing more artists to more listeners, and come from the same NY+Boston part of the company, but they use different techniques. DW is mostly a personalization thing, obviously, and these current FF lists aren't. Fresh Finds is trying to surface mostly-unknown music, so almost by definition it finds stuff that doesn't yet have the kind of collective activity that would result in it showing up in anybody's DW. But things FF elevates out of obscurity might later show up in Discover Weeklies as an indirect result.

(Audio analysis was only one of several things The Echo Nest did, and as part of Spotify we're pretty much doing more of all of the things we did as a smaller independent company.)

can you say in what sense you're using "NLP", which was alluded to in the discover weekly slidedeck briefly?

do you mean you're using dimensionality reduction techniques common in NLP on non-text data, or you're analysing press/reviews, or you're literally doing NLP on song titles and artist names?

We machine-read blog posts and news and reviews. (We also do dimensionality reduction, but that's not what the NLP mention meant.)

This is interesting, though far outside my expertise.

I haven't personally found Discover Weekly to be a useful feature yet. Seems like it could benefit from a little more...chaos? (Possibly I'm delusional that my tastes are more idiosyncratic than they are.)

x-post
You probably already do, but do you pay attention (can you?) to when a user turns a song up (volume-wise)? That's what I do when I REALLY like a track...

it looks like they only use explicit feedback like that in radio (though I don't think they use volume). perhaps this is part of the overall thinking that led to the demise of Jeff's precious stars...

I've been listening almost exclusively to the massive "everything ILX listened to in 2015" playlist, in reverse alphabetical order, so my Discover Weekly is agreeably eclectic!

glenn are you in nyc?

No, I'm in Boston. (Somerville, actually. The old Echo Nest office is now Spotify "Boston".)

This is the most detailed analysis of Spotify Fresh Finds I have seen so far in a news article:

Spotify is using 50,000 anonymous hipsters to find your next favorite song
http://qz.com/628812/spotify-is-using-an-anonymous-army-of-50000-hipsters-to-find-hot-new-songs/

the article explains the process in stages. See the diagram in the article.

For the last few years, Spotify has been gathering data from music blogs and review sites, and culling out the most talked-about new artists. It could just feature those artists in a playlist and call it a day, but there’s a hitch: many of their songs are so new that they’re not on Spotify yet.

To get around this chicken-and-egg problem, Spotify figures out who is listening to those trending artists, and then uses the hippest 50,000 or so users—the people who find about music before it is cool—as a new-music focus group.

Who are these prescient hipsters? Spotify isn’t saying, and the users don’t even know that their bleeding-edge taste is being used to create the playlist. But their favorite new songs—released within the last three weeks, with Beyoncé-level stars filtered out—are the raw material for Fresh Finds.

A group of Spotify employees then sorts the new songs into different genres (hip-hop, electronic, electronic pop, guitar-driven, and experimental), puts them into an appealing order, and voila: a weekly playlist, released every Wednesday, made up of songs that early adopters love and you might, too.

are you cool with spotify making daily playlists of our interests without asking permission?

(my answer there is 'of course'; the applicable old saw about how if you're not paying for the product you are the product makes sense when the cost of the service is so radically low... though i still wish they'd go back to the way emusic did it and hire an editorial staff)

I think that's what Apple Music does...

Who are the editors for Apple Music? Legit music journalists or celebrities who are likely having their assistants and management music select?
Serious question, i dunno.

Who are the editors for Apple Music - they have poached staff from bbc radio 1 and 6 music in the UK.

e.g: APPLE POACHES TOP PRODUCERS FROM BBC RADIO 1 FOR NEW SPOTIFY RIVAL
http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/apple-poaches-top-producers-from-bbc-radio-1/

BBC 6 Music's Camilla Pia heading to Apple - sources
https://media.info/radio/news/bbc-6-musics-camilla-pia-heading-to-apple-sources

re: editorial staff - spotify already have teams of editorial staff throughout their global offices. Their the people who create the playlists. See Spotify Browse / Genres & Moods

did not know that bbc info
what i'm looking for from an editorial presence on a streaming service is more of the kind of writing emusic excelled at (and that many ilxors provided):
http://www.emusic.com/reviews/

Spotify unfortunately don't have a off platform Content Strategy. Considering the importance of content strategy, content marketing and content curation / blogging - I do find this rather baffling.

However, maybe this will change soon

as previously mentioned on this thread, re: George Ergatoudis

BBC RADIO 1’S GEORGE ERGATOUDIS JOINS SPOTIFY
http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/bbc-radio-1s-george-ergatoudis-joins-spotify/

Spotify has confirmed the appointment of George Ergatoudis in the newly-created position of Head of Content Programming for the UK.

In his new role at Spotify, based in London, George Ergatoudis will be responsible for leading Spotify’s in-house music curation strategy and content programming for the UK.

Ergatoudis joins Spotify from the BBC where he was most recently Head of Music for BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra.

He takes up his new position in March.

however does his role extend off platform?

the person in charge of Spotify "Global Head of Curation"

Doug Ford
http://dougfordmusic.com/about-2/
Global Head of Curation/Director of Music Programming North America

Spotify unfortunately don't have a off platform Content Strategy

Well they do though, or at least they are experimenting, i.e. http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/03/facebook-messenger-spotify/

and

https://www.facebook.com/games/get-spotify

and

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/faqs#why_do_i_have_to_export_tracks

and etc

"Seeing movies and listening to music suggested to us by algorithms is relatively harmless, I suppose. But I hope that once in a while the users of those services resist the recommendations; our exposure to art shouldn’t be hemmed in by an algorithm that we merely want to believe predicts our tastes accurately. These algorithms do not represent emotion or meaning, only statistics and correlations."

Lanier, Jaron (2013-05-07). Who Owns the Future? (p. 192). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Algorithms are not an alternative to your friends, they've an alternative to wandering blindly anywhere your friends haven't already been.

Critical question: Why is Depeche Mode's Music for the Masses missing the indispensable first track, Never Let Me Down Again?

It's on the Singles album so the only sensible fix is to create your own playlist of that version + the rest of the album. But yes, these sorts of things is the worst thing about streaming services. Listening to an album you love only to find that it's skipping an essential track? Inexcusable.

The Singles version has different mastering, right?

Normally when an album has a missing track it's visible, just greyed out and unplayable. This one is totally absent.

"Never Let Me Down Again" appears to only be missing from the album in the UK. In all other regions, it's there. This is intentional in the sense that the rights data sent to Spotify from the label (Sony in this case) specifies it explicitly, but if it's intentional in a human sense, I don't know why. I'll see if I can find out, both because I'm curious, and because maybe it was a metadata mistake somewhere along the way. (Although it seems to have been this way since 2013, so I'd have thought somebody would have noticed before now.)

article dated December 11, 2012

Depeche Mode Sign Worldwide Deal With Columbia Records
http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/1483982/depeche-mode-sign-worldwide-deal-with-columbia-records

Depeche Mode has signed a new worldwide deal with Columbia Records and will release a new album in March 2013.

The band, comprised of Dave Gahan, Martin Gore and Andy 'Fletch' Fletcher and managed by Jonathan Kessler, had previously spent its 30-year career with Warner Music labels Sire and Reprise and EMI's Mute and Capitol. Depeche Mode's 12 studio albums have reached the Top 10 in over 20 countries, including the U.S. and U.K.

looks like columbia / sony acquired back catalogue rights

see amazon uk: for label: sony
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Music-Masses-Depeche-Mode/dp/B00DJLOBDE
released (5 Aug. 2013)

I dunno what's going on with Stations/Radio at the moment, but each time I close down and re-open it's a lottery as to whether Stations is going to appear under Your Music or not.

On the plus side my Discover Weekly was ace this week.

My Discover Weekly was so so, but it did make me discover the song Seabird by Alessi Brothers.

haven't listened to discover weekly in ages, for the past two weeks all I've listened to in my spare time are (I'm not proud) MIDIs, which I think is the music-discovery equivalent of giving up and wearing pajamas and leggings out in public

whatever I sporadically listened to seems to have produced a decent doppelganger of the hype machine, or whatever the hype machine's equivalent is in 2016 (I just checked the actual 2016 hype machine and the first track shown is the Chainsmokers so I would guess something has shifted)

MIDIs?

That's what I used to listen to in the days before I had computer that could properly play Mp3s.

that's hysterical katherine.
though i do have the kk slider extension for chrome (before he got the inevitable take down) so maybe i'm there with you
http://www.polygon.com/2015/4/5/8348795/animal-crossing-soundtrack-background-music-free-google-chrome-browser-extension

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E413-Oi_j5A

to be fair "two weeks" was an exaggeration, it's more like five days

Spotify FireTV app updated to full Spotify (not just Connect), and works now!

Discover Weekly keeps handing me Stand On The Word style lo-fi gospel soul stuff like this http://lightintheattic.net/releases/481-like-a-ship-without-a-sail

I love it!

for the past two weeks all I've listened to in my spare time are (I'm not proud) MIDIs

this is awesome

is there still a dedicated community of people making General MIDI versions of current pop songs?

why does Spotify list Meshell Ndegeocello as a collaborating artist on Bauhaus's "Hair of the Dog"???

is there still a dedicated community of people making General MIDI versions of current pop songs?

― micro brewbio (crüt), Tuesday, March 15, 2016 10:48 AM (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

belatedly: idk about "dedicated" or "community" (it's either scattered or for sale as ersatz karaoke backing) but sort of? I have a midi of "Problem." it will surprise no one that a midi synth still outraps iggy

YSI?

The technical answer to the bizarre Bauhaus/Ndegeocello thing is "Because the label sent it to us that way." Looks like they sent it to all streaming services that way. She has a different song by the same title, but I have no idea why that would lead to this error. We will ask them to correct this...

According to the On Tour Near Me feature, Baauer (Philly trap and bass dude) is opening for Jonathan Richman next month. (If only.)

my discover weekly does not suck this week and is in fact great. (apropos of nothing, but I just felt the need to cancel out at least a small portion of complaining)

Mine is full of Flying Nun and related and is thus also great.