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Comment by Fogest | Hacker News Reader

I used to love the Discover Weekly, but now that I use Spotify most days when going to the gym any of my auto generated playlists like discover weekly kinda suck. I usually put on random gym playlists like the popular "Beast Mode" one. While I like this music for working out, I definitely don't normally enjoy listening to rap, hip hop, and EDM music however this is what most workout music consists of.

I wish I could have playlists that get ignored from Spotify's recommendation engine. Because I totally get it, Spotify thinks I'm into that kind of stuff so it's what I use Spotify for the majority of the time, however I have such a hard time finding new music to listen to on there :(.

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I've found that the new "made for you" playlists has superseded discover weekly.

I have "work music" (ambient, house, instrumental), "work out music" (hip-hop mostly) and "music I actually listen to". The made for you playlists seem to auto-organize pretty well into those categories.

I've also found that creating custom playlists and using the "recommended songs" that pop up at the bottom works pretty well.

But I agree, it would be nice to have an "ignore this type of [song/genre] when auto creating playlists" option would be nice.

I've tried those out and they still often don't seem to contain music I enjoy. When I start back into a job over the summer where I am listening to Spotify more at work maybe these will start to become better, but currently the majority of what I have been using for Spotify is working out. So in some sense I get why my recommendations are that however that is also the time when I am less concerned about "good music" and stuff that matches my taste, and more just concerned about higher intensity up-beat music.

Sometimes I'll have a couple hour car ride, or be relaxing at home and try and use Spotify to find something and just never seem to find a good way to find something quick. I'm shit when it comes to knowing what I like and what kinds of genres I'm into and that's why a radio style suggestion thing is good for me, it's just been broken by my heavy workout usage.

I've actually as an alternative sometimes been using Google Music instead and been quite happy. I just don't like the selection and do prefer Spotify all around.

It's not conveniently placed but there is a way.

https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/the_basics/how-...

Then there's the Daily Mix playlists that partly addresses this issue. Ideally you would find that there's one Daily Mix with your gym type songs and up to five others with other genres you listen to. But it's as much for discovery of new music so it doesn't fully fix the problem when that's the goal.

Unfortunately there are some issues with this. Here is what that page notes:

> Note: Anything you play privately may still factor into some of the personalized mixes we make for you (but not Discover Weekly).

So it really only would fix the discover weekly partially. But the issue is that they still see that I have workout playlists that I am following and using a lot and still factor that in. And I've found that it can be quite tedious everytime I open Spotify at the gym to have to go in the settings, scroll down a bunch, and then turn it on. It stays on for 6 hours. I'd love if that feature even simply had an option to turn on based on my location.

That would be sometimes 5 times a week everytime I'm at the gym I have to find that option in the settings and turn it on, and then also turn it off if I don't want to have it stay on for the next 6 hours. Not to mention I already have to spend time in Spotify to find the playlist I want to listen to for that day at the gym. So it just feels like a lot of manual work I have to do in the app for a small gain.

There's this weird uncanny valley effect in every music recommendation algorithm I've tried.

Most every song hits a "I 100% understand why you're recommending this. It's superficially similar to some stuff I really like. I hate it though".

Almost like a bad cover band of your favorite artist.

This is the main reason why recommended content just doesn’t work for me. Youtube, spotify, and many other services try to be clever but are just really dumb.

It falls on its face when you are just outside the typical use case. Sometimes I'll throw on an album and listen to it all the way through, or just really listen to one particular artist for a few weeks. Then the recommended content falls on its face as it doesn't know how to handle someone binging Grateful Dead one week and Kendrick Lamar the next.

Yes, that is why I always open up a new private window for YouTube. Then it only picks up on what I'm searching on right now.

100% agree. I disabled YouTube's history just so that it didn't give me weird recommendations. Maybe when browsing reddit I'd watch a weird video or two, or look up something a bit niche or different and suddenly YouTube for the next while thinks that is all I am into.

I have kinda the same problem. Others random playlist are much better then mine. I only get the same old boring stuff, while others get new and exiting music I've never heard... I was an early adopter then paused my subscription for about 6 years because i couldn't find new music. Now when i try again i still cant find any new stuff. I also have the same problem with the Youtube algorithms. Same songs over and over.

Oh yeah, I agree, I am either having to listen to discover weeklys that essential seem like a randomly generated workout playlist, or listen to songs I've heard a million times. Maybe it's also partially a factor of having a reduced library being in Canada, I am not sure :/

I have the same problem. Most of the time I am skipping through >50% of Discover Weekly because the songs are poor recommendations for my tastes or are awfully sequenced in a playlist from separate listening habits (e.g. EDM-AlternativeRock-LoFi).

Finding new music on Spotify could use a lot of improvement, especially for mobile. After a while, it seems like I'm just listening to the same playlists over and over.

Yeah, I am pretty close to stopping my subscription purely because of the poor recommendations.

The mobile app I feel like has only gotten worse. They removed tabs on the bottom and made the search page have more on it, and it just feels even more painful to discover new things. And the homepage is basically just chalked full of "new music" that is based on me apparently being super into hip hop and rap music. Which on the surface may seem true if you look at the workout music I listen to, but in reality is the complete opposite of what I enjoy listening to anywhere else.

I don't know if it could really help in your case, but the "Private session mode" available in Spotify's menu could help. In my limited understanding on how things work, I would expect songs listened in that mode not to be used by their awesome recommendation engine.

It won't factor in songs when making the discover weekly that were listened to in private mode, however the daily ones it doesn't matter for.

It's also a bit annoying to have to everytime I go to the gym not only have to find what I want to listen to, but also remember to go into the settings, scroll down, and turn it on, and make sure to turn it off in case I don't want it to stay private for the next 6 hours.

I wish it turned on based on location. Hell even if there was some intent or way I could trigger that to turn on/off from Tasker I could automate it myself :P.

I'm really bad at finding new music or just music to enjoy in general that I'd like and it's a huge annoyance to have shitty suggestions. Lately I don't even use Spotify much and have been considering just cancelling it.

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