Hacker News Reader

Comment by digikata | Hacker News Reader

I still feel like Pandora does the best job of finding similar new music to an initial set of tracks, but other than that I like most aspects of spotify better.

View on HN

I stumbled across a great Spotify feature the other day. If you right click on a playlist, there is an option called "Create similar playlist". I did this with a playlist I had created from a bunch of random tracks. It basically went through track by track and found similar songs. It was a bit hit or miss on some songs, but a neat feature. I think Spotify does a great job because they give you so many options for finding new music, but sometimes you have to dig into the UI to find them.

It's very subjective, but I've been comparing the "create a station" from a spotify playlist to Pandora for a while, and just find more music that I both like and have never heard of from Pandora than spotify. Then I generally add the tracks I like best to a spotify playlist.

On the other hand, Pandora, it feels like has recently been making picks that somewhat mush your likes and seeds from all your stations together.

> I think Spotify does a great job because they give you so many options for finding new music, but sometimes you have to dig into the UI to find them.

While this is true it's ridiculous how often, at least for me, Spotify creates a playlist with songs that I've listened to hundreds of times already.

At least 70% of my discovery weekly playlist is a song I've already heard. If I create a "Similar playlist" it stuffs it with songs that I listen to regularly. It's deeply disappointing.

Discovery playlists filled with songs I've already 'liked' or added to my library. Discovery playlists with duplicates. And in other playlists, having to 'do not play' songs I don't actually mind because they are generally popular and the algorithm thinks I want to hear it three times a day, every day. A great way to kill your love of a song.

While I love the concept of Spotify, I'm certainly not going to pay for it and eagerly waiting for competitors to be available in my regions.

It should be a real ease to create good music discovery/curation for spotify since they acquired the echonest. It it really simple to add similar music to what you are currently listening to, too a rolling playlist. Unfortunately, the way they fo it feels like promotion instead of individual curation.

It was easy when I created trushuffle some 8 yrs ago (before Spotify aquired echonest) and it should be even easier for a multi billion company.

I'm the other way, I can't stand Pandora. I suppose it's probably good for finding the popular songs of the genre, but I feel it always ends up playing the same small set of songs pretty quickly regardless of what I put in. Spotify gives me much more variety and of people that would be much harder to discover myself.

Spotify is great if I want to hear a specific song, but I've managed to curate Pandora over many years that I almost never hit the down thumb. I haven't tried the Spotify equivalent. But SoundHound and Spotify is a pretty great experience.

Agreed. With Spotify I find the songs are far too similar to be enjoyable.

That's surprising, my Spotify Discover Weekly playlist is usually super eclectic. I guess you're talking about the Radio, though?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com