Spotify Recommendations are Broken

[Eclipse_31]

Lately in my mixes (READ: The only music I can only play on my phone for FREE) Spotify thinks I listen to garbage. At least it knows I like classical music, folk, classic rock, soundtracks, and new age/jazz/blues.

The Daily Drive is supposed to be full of some of your favorite songs to motivate you through the day. Luckily I am able to omit podcasts, but I guess Spotify thinks polluting a little more than half my feed with unlistenable garbage is a-okay.

Not even the Favorites Playlist is safe! See that heart down there, Spotify? See it?! See how it’s not green?! That means I have not hearted the song!!! So why is it playing?! Guess ‘Swift’ starts with the same letter as ‘Shostakovitch’ and ‘Sibelius’, I suppose. This problem also crops up in a few other playlists and mixes as well.

So what is going on here? Why is Spotify playing popular music that I absolutely hate? It should be recommending me music I would LIKE to listen to, not what would be POPULAR.

I have a few theories:

• Spotify is astroturfing artists by making their songs play no matter what you listen to, making them look more ‘popular’ than in reality.
• Spotify believes that ‘getting out of your comfort zone’ and ‘deliberately making yourself feel uncomfortable’ are somehow one and the same.
• Playing irrelevant artists on free accounts will likely make the listener skip them. Give them enough songs in one sitting, then they will have no more skips. This will then prompt them to get Premium.

But does anyone really know of any ways I can stop this madness? I would like some good answers!