I listen to Spotify a lot, and I mean a lot. I typically rank in the top 5% of listeners each year when my Wrapped results roll in. That’s because I listen to Spotify during my entire eight-hour workday, five days a week, 52 weeks a year.
That’s a heck of a lot of music streamed on my end, and a big reason for that is thanks to Spotify’s playlists, with Discover Weekly and Release Radar bookending each week, filled with the music I love, which is why I’ve yet to leave for greener high-res pastures.
More or less, I listen to a ton of music on Spotify because it has nailed my tastes. Still, this leaves me with one big problem: I want to explore new genres without ruining my playlists.
Current solutions aren’t enough
Spotify needs to refine its recommendations
I’m aware that there is a new Private Session option in the app, designed to address this issue, which is a welcome feature. Still, it doesn’t fully solve my problem when I want new genres recommended in my playlists without bringing in a bunch of junk.
For instance, I love listening to Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash, both renowned country artists. The thing is, I can’t stand modern country music, and absolutely do not want it in my playlists, but it finds its way there when I’m on a Cline and Cash binge.
Ultimately, I feel limited in what I can explore on Spotify because I don’t want to ruin a good thing and muddy up my recommendations
The same goes for hip-hop. There are a lot of underground artists from the 00s that I’m really into, like Hieroglyphics. However, when I listen to Del the Funky Homosapien, all of a sudden, modern rap appears in my playlists, and like modern country, I can’t stand it.
While my musical tastes are rather specific, isn’t this what AI is supposed to help with, refining recommendation systems?
Having played with the AI DJ a bunch in the last few months, I can say this DJ is just another playlist that does little to refine my tastes into a complete package.
It will recommend the music I don’t want to listen to the same as Discover Weekly and Release Radar if I dig too deep into any specific genre.
I feel limited in what I can explore on Spotify because I don’t want to ruin a good thing and muddy up my recommendations.
I feel my playlists are currently tuned to my most listened-to genres, and every time I stray, they suffer.
I feel trapped, in a way, because I’m no longer using Spotify for discovery. I simply rely on weekly recommendations to find new music.
It feels like my musical tastes are in a holding pattern, and I’m unsure what the solution may be.
Spotify isn’t the only game in town
But is anyone actually doing recommendations better?
I suppose I could try competing streaming services to see if their recommendation systems are more forgiving, but I’ve heard similar complaints about them all.
Perhaps this problem is simply a limitation of our current technology, but at the end of the day, just like music streaming services of the past, I’m starting to see the patterns in my recommendations, and they are growing repetitive.
In other words, I’m bored, but it appears Spotify is well aware of the issue, having released a new feature that lets users dial in their genre tastes within their Discover Weekly.
It’s a quick way to chill the wrong recommendations, but I would love to see more work done in this area to match my tastes to my recommendations better.
So, here’s hoping there are more features coming. Otherwise, I may have to explore my options beyond Spotify to satiate my very specific musical tastes.
