Frustration with Years of Inadequate Recommendations and Music Discovery on Spotify

[okcorral404]

Dear Spotify Team,

I'm reaching out to express my long-standing frustration with the current state of recommendations, playlists, and music discovery on your platform. As a loyal user for years, I've come to rely on Spotify to discover new music and curate playlists that match my tastes. However, despite my continued usage and feedback, I've found the recommendations to be consistently lacking, the playlists uninspired, and music discovery incredibly challenging.

It's disheartening to realize that, even after years of using the platform and providing feedback, the algorithms still fail to understand my listening preferences. Despite my efforts to engage with the platform and provide input on the music I enjoy, the recommendations often miss the mark, leaving me feeling disconnected from the music discovery process.

It feels like Spotify is playing it safe and focusing too much on pleasing me rather than taking risks or introducing me to new and innovative music experiences. The balance between innovation and safe pleasing is off, resulting in a stagnant music discovery journey.

Furthermore, I find it incredibly challenging to discover good new music on the platform. While there are curated playlists available, there's not enough emphasis on playlists created by people with similar tastes to mine. Instead, there's an overwhelming emphasis on Spotify's own playlists. While these playlists can sometimes introduce me to new music, they often miss the mark in capturing the essence of what I truly enjoy.

To improve this, Spotify could explore partnerships with music magazines, websites, or other platforms known for their expertise in curating playlists. By collaborating with entities that have a finger on the pulse of various music scenes and genres, Spotify could diversify its playlist offerings and ensure a broader range of musical tastes are represented. Additionally, it would be beneficial to review the curation process for playlists on the platform. While there are certainly some good curated playlists available, it often feels like a small group of individuals with vastly different tastes than mine are responsible for the thousands of playlists on offer.

I understand that refining recommendation algorithms, playlist curation, and enhancing music discovery is a complex task, and that it's impossible to please every user. Your team must be working tirelessly to improve the platform, and I want to acknowledge and appreciate those efforts.

Thank you for taking the time to consider my feedback. I understand the complexities involved in enhancing the music discovery experience on Spotify, and I appreciate your dedication to improving the platform. I look forward to seeing how Spotify evolves to better serve the diverse music tastes of its users.

[Mitre226644]

Hey-o,

First I want to echo your sentiment that the curated discovery lists aren’t revelatory and I tend not to use them much. Secondly I’m appreciative of your thoughtful and respectful way of communicating- it’s refreshing. 

Here’s my approach to it: Since Spotify’s algorithms are invisible to us, range in impact, and are evolving consistently, the most power you have in influencing what it delivers in terms of suggestions is to diversify the genres you listen to, and intentionally stream as much as you can so it can learn to expand. The reason I think playing a variety of genres is important is because they provide an “ecosystem”’of Spotify’s interpretation of music categorization that can be grouped in bulk. 

For instance, I like Sam Cooke, but as a multifaceted artist I would consider him to be placed in the soul and R&B genres, and I take into consideration that he was a protest artist, and his music was created in the early 60’s primarily. So if I can get some of each of those categories into the algorithm it helps diversify the recommendations. It’s more work, but it gives the algorithms more to work with. Decades I find to be crucial. 

I like your ideas about collaborations, and pairing your listening habits with other users, but who knows how that would influence the end result. The only thing we users know is that it remembers our listening history, and the more info and variety it has the better. 

If you’ve already traveled down these paths, sorry for the long post. 

Let me know if you want to bounce ideas- it’s a work in progress always.

Regards,