YouTube autoplay gave a lost Japanese classic new life (2017) | Hacker News Reader

YouTube autoplay gave a lost Japanese classic new life (2017)

dazeddigital.com

99 pointsrwnspace64 comments

The problem with Youtube autoplay is that at some point it just keeps recommending the same 3-5 songs you've already listened to over and over again. I was listening to music on Youtube just now and they just auto-played the previous playing song. Because of this you can't rely on Youtube to play music at say a party unless you make a playlist in advance (which Youtube doesn't allow you to do while you're listening to music on desktop, which is just negligently awful UX).

Why can't they fix this? It'd be extremely simple to implement basic logic to prevent recommending you the same songs you've already listened to over and over again - or even perhaps give you the option to prevent recommending you songs you've already listened to altogether. But as it is right now, there is no way to customize your recommendations other than selecting "not interested" on individual videos/channels.

How is Youtube's recommendation engine this awful? How come you still can't search for and queue up your next video while you're playing a video? It's not exactly rocket science to fix these. Isn't Google supposed to have the "best" engineers?

I’ve removed my YouTube history just to avoid getting the same video suggestions over and over again. So it has to take guesses from other people’s history instead of mine.

For now, it seems better.

And don't recommend shit I've already watched or rejected (Netflix, Amazon).

It's maddening.

I was briefly on the recommendations team of a fashion retailer.

Embarrassingly, it took me way too long to figure out the whole exercise is a sham. There's just so much wishful thinking and hectares of crap data to sift thru. And after chewing thru layer after layer of data and algos, it's somewhat hard to accept there's nothing there. Fool's gold.

The org kinda had a sense that something wasn't working, without really knowing how or why. So the pointed haired bosses were doing the kabuki dance from "relevant" to "personalized" results.

Meanwhile, I remain desperate to have a recommender tell me which shirt to buy. I hate shopping. (Yes, I've both studied and tried StitchFix and others.)

The algorithm is just astonishing. A while back I (and many others) got recommended https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLmuF-0P4tk (climatic scene of Falling Down) with the category "Music". It seems everyone expected some mashup of the movie with Billie Eilish, but we got trolled by the algorithm instead.

> How come you still can't search for and queue up your next video while you're playing a video?

I have actually gotten this feature about a week ago. I suppose it's slowly and quietly rolling out.

But without that, you can add to the end of a playlist that's currently playing, as long as there's a buffer after the current video. The tab that's playing the playlist reloads the queue when proceeding to the next video.

As in you’re working on a YouTube team? Sounds like great forward progress! Can you give any comment on the repeated autoplays? Seems like that would indeed be a relatively simple feature that would add a lot of value.

google's apps literally compete with themselves.

They now have Youtube 'premium' and youtube 'music' subscriptions which i assume are what eat up the good features like the music algorithm.

> Why can't they fix this?

I suspect this is intentional way to promote YouTube Music, just like all these "Are you still here? Thanks for confirming!" popups that pause the playback.

And the fact that the android app stops playing when the screen turns off (but the paid one won't, it helpfully says).

I use the mobile site + Firefox + this add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-backgro...

And have one google application less to install on my phone.

Somewhat related: The Youtube algorithm also recently lead me to this Japanese musician I wasn't familiar with: (Ryo Fukui - A letter from slowboat) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVV_z1lBNLo

Sounds like it would go really well with winter.

Ryo Fukui has been very popular for a long time with the /mu/ sort of crowd. There's a group of artists (ryo fukui, animal collective, neutral milk hotel, the antlers, mount eerie, destroyer, the avalanches, gsybe, etc) which are basically a clique in the music recommendations graph. Although they aren't very close to each other genre wise, they are safe bets as a recommendation for anyone who listens to any music in the /mu/core 'genre'.

What's /mu/? Is it something related to 4chan?

Yeah. It's a board on 4chan.

Yeah I came on to leave a comment about Ryo Fukui. He unexpectedly popped up in my feed a few years ago. I have no idea why they suggested it, but I enjoyed him. (Jazz trio). When I read the comments everyone was saying, “dunno why I landed here but this is good”.

Have had similar things with topics like billiards, lock picking lawyers, and now ex-convicts. (Shout out to OG Badger and Wes Watson — CHICKEN ON THE BONE)

It goes even deeper - the Youtube algorithm recommending the likes of Ryu Fukui, Taeko Ohnuki and others has led online music aficionados, who knew about these artists before their decades old music gained renewed popularity with millions of views, to term them "YouTube-core". For example, I had a physical copy of one of Ryo Fukui's album around 2014, before it took off (or perhaps even before it was uploaded) on YouTube. The music is, of course, excellent, but it's funny how these things come around.

oh im glad I'm not the only one that was lead to Ryo Fukui by the recommendation algorithms, his music is just sublime

Then there was the strange period where a stuck anode somewhere in the Youtube recommendation engine seemed to be offering up Mariya Takeuchi's "Plastic Love" to everyone...

In general, whatever model Youtube uses seems to get really obsessed with certain concepts every once in awhile.

A few years ago, for about a month it was obsessed with videos of red-hot knives cutting through things. It was ridiculous. To the point where "professional Youtubers" with no previous history of videos like that needed to ride that wave just to be relevant.

Think about it: some person in their house heating up a kitchen knife over the stove so they can cut through a bar of soap, simply because an algorithm decided that's what people on some video site want to see.

Then it was Family Guy clips, which is still happening.

And "relaxing low-fi music to study/relax to", which I'm pretty sure at least a billion people on planet Earth have seen recommended to them at some point.

I'm sure there are many other examples, those are the ones I remember.

YouTube kept offering me videos of lockpickinglawyer for months and months despite having no interest in lockpicking or lawyers then one day I finally gave in and watched a half dozen of them and now it’s my entire recommendation feed.

Oh you too? Youtube been shoving his videos at me for the last month or two. The only thing I could think of is that Youtube started data mining a back log of old google searches and got to the mild interest I had in lock picking from like 10 years ago.

I don't think it's that specific... I got them and so did loads of my friends. I think the algorithm just decided that everyone with vaguely nerdy interests will now see lockpickinglawyer.

Makes three of us.

In all fairness, his videos are good and I usually watch them till the end.

I have no interest in picking locks.

The "1000 degree red hot knife" fad was reasonably organic. It combined a couple of viral factors -- a visually arresting thumbnail (bright red knife), a short video demonstrating something unusual and somewhat violent (objects melting or catching fire), and a formula which can easily be iterated upon (substituting in new victims for the knife).

It is hilarious, but is it really that different from the fads that have swept through society for all of recorded history? I remember Pogs coming and going within a few months when I was growing up. I don't see it as all that different.

I think the implication is that it's not an organic fad, it's one that's been at least partially manufactured by YouTube's algorithm. For whatever the difference may be.

I'm not so sure this is a meaningful distinction in the modern era of big advertising and big corporations. Pogs weren't an organic fad either, were they? Certainly the toy manufacturer that made them stood a lot to gain from their success, and pushed them as much as possible. By this metric Pogs were less of an organic fad than "hot knives cutting through things", because with the knives YouTube doesn't care anything about the particulars of it so long as there is a fad full stop, whereas the manufacturer of Pogs definitely pushed one particular fad that benefited them greatly.

Some other similar fads that have come around on YouTube including unboxing, slime, and bizarre mash-ups of superheroes and cartoon characters. I doubt that YouTube specifically pushed these exact concepts over any other random thing that could have been a fad, but wasn't.

Youtube's model is just obsessive in general. It much prefers to show people 50 videos about swords rather than cater to people who want to watch like 2 videos about 25 different mildly interesting topics.

> In general, whatever model Youtube uses seems to get really obsessed with certain concepts every once in awhile.

There's probably a "new and unique" engine running somewhere.

Most of YouTube content is 99% "same shit, different day" if not "outright copy and ripoff".

So, anything genuinely new and good is actually going to generate more engagement and that probably self-reinforces until it spreads to everyone interested and which point it burns out.

I just wish it stopped recommending me years old videos from my subscribed channels that I've already watched. -_-

Similar thing happens to me on Instagram, which I seldom open. Most of my stream is Indian memes. I've never been to India, nor can speak any of the Indian languages.

Asking the application not to show them doesn't seem to work.

I think that was in part from Future Funk DJs frequently using that track. [1]

[1] https://www.whosampled.com/Mariya-Takeuchi/Plastic-Love/samp...

have gotten some non popular recommendations as well, and they made me happy. and the recommendation engine seems to be nice now.

what messes up the recommendations for me is the mobile app which seems to believe i am watching those videos that autoplay when i am just scrolling by. so annoying to have to remove them from my history in order to get relevant recommendations.

other than that, it's all now. i seldom go to trending nowadays.

I saw this come up in a playlist of clips about programming. I was so confused, especially because I had thought I was watching a user curated list, until I saw that.

I just wished YouTube's algorithm stuck thar anode more often. That's a fantastic song

Still does for me...

Radicalization by Youtube recommendations is real, and I'm living proof. My music library is nothing but Japanese jazz fusion and city pop now.

I mean, I would have gotten to city pop eventually, since I have long liked the Kimagure Orange Road soundtrack, so not to big of a jump, but youtube heavily pushed it.

Youtube is honestly more impressive to me than any other recommendation algorithm. I used to like last.fm, which was pretty good, but didn't have the immediacy of just playing a song. Youtube carefully analyzes your consumption and then gives the recommendation that best fits: Plastic Love, An Insatiable High, or Casiopea.

hmm, can you share a good starting place for Japanese jazz fusion?

YouTube led me to this. Was never a big jazz fan but was listening to some lofi Hip-Hop and this played. https://youtu.be/BFmH7moCL2c Hitoshi Suzuki - romance. After that I listened to the rest of his one and only album great stuff.

The short answer: click any of the links below and let the algorithm guide you.

The long answer:

Casiopea (https://youtu.be/vKOekWuzk3o) and T-Square (https://youtu.be/3p9L7CV-HcI) are the standard bearers of the genre.

Masayoshi Takanaka's An Insatiable High (https://youtu.be/9cuxrkZeai8) is one of those albums that the algorithm pushes on everyone, and for good reason. Extremely funky. The Rainbow Goblins (https://youtu.be/MzYD56hKF-8) is also impressive - a concept album based on a children's book. I'd recommend anything 1985 or earlier from Takanaka - after that, he starts to get a little cheesy.

Another personal favorite is Naoya Matsuoka. Everything that comes up when you search his name is great, so here's a live video that won't (unless you search the kanji): https://youtu.be/-yQv7_tK3X8

Other favorites:

Piper: https://youtu.be/sopcI4vTsuU https://youtu.be/x8NgdjffLIY

Makoto Matsushita: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP6GoSnDKGw&list=OLAK5uy_mS3...

AB's: https://youtu.be/bDaQw8Tw8Jg

Noriki: https://youtu.be/HdG-Xg2n108

Himiko Kikuchi: https://youtu.be/l_4WcHNjjV0

And some channels that post a lot of various j-fusion and city pop:

Xerf Xpec: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkfmbKrdAH3_NHkbAZhWqIw

Marcel the Drunkard: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqMLGyzBt5zkPqCLrF5l10Q

I'm surprised you didn't shoehorn Tatsuro Yamashita in despite your username, haha.

finally someone noticed! but they asked for fusion.

1. Musical taste is very highly subjective. There is arguably "bad" music, but there's a great deal of "good" music which fails to break through into popularity. Or which, having once been popular, falls from grace. Johann Sebastian Bach is a notable instance of this -- he'd languished into near complete obscurity until "rediscovered" (IIRC by Mendelsohn). One consequence is that a large portion of the Bach opus has been lost.

More recently there've been experiments in which multiple groups are exposed to non-mainstream music, separately. Each group picks "hits", but what's popular among one group isn't generally shared with others.

2. The music industry itself acts as a gatekeeper to the genre, both in selecting hits and in blocking access to alternative productions (or of alternative acts' and songwriters' access to the hit-making machine). Barry Kerner has covered one response to this in his book Pop Song Piracy: Disobedient Music Distribution Since 1929, covering among other elements, fakebooks, songsheets, cassettes, and MP3s:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/popular-music/articl...

The "New Books Network" podcast series has an extended interview:

https://newbooksnetwork.com/barry-kernfeld-pop-song-piracy-d...

3. The YouTube channel responsible for promoting the works in question ... has seen them taken down due to copyright claims. Ironic irony is ironically ironic.

> Johann Sebastian Bach is a notable instance of this -- he'd languished into near complete obscurity until "rediscovered" (IIRC by Mendelsohn).

I believe that was Beethoven, not JS Bach.

Not according to my sources.

As an example of the lost Bach works, he composed a full five liturgical years of works: a cantata for each Sunday, and for each Holy Day (ten or fifteen per year), a Passion for each of Christmas and Easter. Of the five years, we have two and a fraction -- that's well over 100 works that are lost to all time.

By contrast, Beethoven never lost popularity or awareness. So far as we're aware, none of his works are lost, and there are in fact numerous "juvenalia" -- immature works, not included in the standard opus catalog, which survive.

Never would have expected this to make it to the front of HN, but I'm glad it did. This album is well worth listening to, especially the closing track Catastrophe Σ. Even though it's something of an ambient classic today there's not a lot of music that sounds like it outside of the Steve Reich school of minimalism. It captures a little of the explosion of creativity that took place in Japanese culture in the 80s and 90s, and it's great to see that it's managed to break through to Western audiences.

For the record I also discovered this album through YouTube. Through discussions with my colleagues I get the feeling that a lot of what gets recommended to me on YouTube isn't unique to me. Millions of hours of content uploaded a day and somehow we all end up watching the same stuff. Funny how that works.

An article that sheds more light on the Japanese reissue scene: https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/3446.

Ironically, for all the discussion of YouTube in the article, it links to the music on SoundCloud.

And if you follow the YouTube link in the article, you'll find that the "video" was taken down due to a copyright claim.

Since that YouTube buzz, the album as been remastered and re-released. (And the artist went on tour after years of inactivity!!)

not bad but also not quite as good as Hiroshi Yoshimura Green is just amazing for this kind of ambient sounds https://youtu.be/D7aYjRl_6Zw

This is hilarious, because this is the exact album I'm listening to right now (I've probably listened to it over 100 times...). Youtube's algorithm, for all the evils it does radicalizing people, has led me down a deep music rabbit hole and completely transformed my taste in music. I suspect that there are a lot of other listeners out there like me that have had the same experience.

Wow, thought it was just me who found that Youtube recommendation cluster. It does seem to pivot around Hiroshi Yoshimura. “Green” was the portal into that world for me as well, but there’s plenty of other nice ambient discs of his in there (Air in Resort, Wet Land, Surround).

On the periphery of that group, if you want something genius, check out Motohiko Hamase (especially “Notes of Forestry”). Squarepusher-like electric bass skill over minimalist classical loops. Never heard anything like it.

I went on a big Terry Riley kick and ended up in the cluster. How’d you get there?

Came here to post exactly this.

Music For Nine Post Cards is also a real gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyY7NU4cbtY.

Much respect to the uploaders giving these albums a digital rebirth.

It is a true gem.

However Yoshimura has been a legend among collectors and in ambient circles long before Youtube was around and I think we should give greater credit to the countless labels that work on re-issuing these long lost gems and making them widely available. In this particular case it's Empire of Signs and Light In The Attic: https://lightintheattic.net/releases/3538-music-for-nine-pos...

Nine Post Cards is pure bliss

Youtube used to be excellent for discovering new music. A while ago I was really into Baroque music and kept finding new and interesting composers I've never heard of.

This seems to have completely dried up by now. These days autoplay seems to always end in a rather short loop of the same songs and the breadth of obscure stuff, especially for classical music seems to have gone in general.

I find that Spotify is way better for discovery these days, even though it's quite useless for classical music for various reasons(mainly because there's no single 'artist' with classical music).

If you enjoy this or want to venture further go look for An Insatiable High Lp and Casipea (Mint Jams). Suuuuper smooth fusion.

Funnily enough both of those were recommended to me by the YouTube algorithm.

And I'm learning to make my own Micro Turbine Engine. Few months ago my feed was full of Synthwave Music. Youtube sometimes work s in mysterious ways.

By the way check this crazy russian's channel. He made a turbo shaft BMW. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb9_Bhv37NXN1m8Bmrm9x9w/vid...

The first track is very reminiscent of Geoff Knorr's work on the Civilization V soundtrack. Maybe they have a common inspiration somewhere.

Obligatory plastic love link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bNITQR4Uso

a japanese funk classic i'm very glad i was introduced to via autoplay

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