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Comment by simlevesque | Hacker News Reader

I'll never use Spotify again. My account was hacked by a latino and now my recommendations is 100% latin music. They told me there is nothing they can do to fix this. My recommendations are broken and my only option is to create another account, cancel my subscription, buy it again... Not gonna happen.

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I found out you can break your recommendations without losing control of your account.

I listened to one podcast episode and it's been stuck on my home screen for two months. I've tried listening to it, ignoring it, unsubscribing, deleting (you can't!). It's just there forever now.

And of course, that means it's always recommending related podcasts all the time so most of my homepage is now filled with this stuff and I have no way to remove it.

I’ve never listened to a podcast ever on Spotify. Refuse to, given their approach of trying to wall off podcasts in their own app.

I’ve had an entire top-level list of podcasts recommended to me for over a YEAR now. I will never use it, but I have to constantly scroll past it and dodge podcast recommendations in new podcast + music playlists (that aren’t clearly marked) as well.

I used to love Spotify. I got so many friends to sign up, I discovered so much music in my Discover Weekly, I convinced friends to switch from all kinds of other platforms, I built collaborative playlists with friends…

but the recommendations seem stuck in a rut for me, probably because they can’t handle the size of my library (hundreds of artists and thousands of albums that I listen to regularly). The product doesn’t respect me. I’m actively researching ways to host my own music library and use something else for discovery. Recommendations welcome so this frog can escape this slowly boiling pot.

They paid a lot of money to make those podcasts Spotify exclusives. It follows that they'd advertise them as heavily as they can.

Argh, I’ve been having this exact issue too. Worse still, it’s a thumbnail and title I would really rather not be plastered front and centre of my home screen all the time! Absolutely frustrating.

I imagine they’re pushing podcasts because they aren’t paying royalties on most or any of them.

Hmm, I had a similar situation with an ex-partner contaminating my recommendations. I emailed support and it was pretty easy to reset my recs to a blank slate.

I keep getting recommended German music. I'm not German.

Listening to metal gets a lot of recommendations for me in languages I don't understand much of. You would think Spotify would have a way to not change languages between songs at least.

Metal fans who listen to things beyond the mainstream hits tend to listen to a lot of music in languages they don't speak due to how much of the best metal out there isn't in English. If you listen to a lot of bands whose fans listen to music in other languages then I'd expect you to get a lot of recommendations in other languages.

I understand why it happens, but it doesn't mean I want it to happen. Unfortunately, this is a case where a recommender system runs into issues. Outside of these songs, I likely overlap a lot with the people who are okay with non English recommendations.

The algorithm clearly says that you're German. Maybe you should just embrace it.

Look I’m sorry but you love German music. The sooner you accept that the sooner we can all move on.

... is it really that odd that you get suggestions for music from other places in other languages?

It happened to me with someone that loves Simple Plan. I only noticed in those end-of-the-year lists that Spotify prepares. A bunch of Simple Plan stuff on most played tracks.

I changed my password and it took me almost an year of listening to my songs to Spotify stop recommending me Simple Plan and similars.

I once didn't properly unlink Spotify when I returned my car to the leasing company. The driver taking it back played bhangra for about half an hour using my account before I noticed. Changing the password, unlinking devices nothing worked. I eventually got him to stop by constantly switching it to the Barbie Girl by Aqua and then finally Spotify support was able to unlink it. I was then recommended bhangra for months. Four consecutive Discover Weeklies were 100% bhangra. Now I like the odd track every now and then, but playing less than an hour of a genre should not be enough to do that.

Sorry it happened to you, but that's hilarious.

I'm ok now, thanks.

When this happened to me, I just changed my password. Seems to have worked so far, though it doesn't filter out Latin music.

Yeah me too, a couple of years ago. Initially I was in denial that my account might have been compromised, but eventually I changed my password and haven't had that issue since.

the fix is to listen to other music...

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