Maybe it varies dramatically by genre?
For example, take the "Phonk" genre, which I only was introduced to due to the Ukrainian war. To mean these recommendations give me a lot of new music to listen to. But then you have people lamenting that "Phonk" has really been overtaken by "Drift Phonk". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAV7hnCB_ZE&ab_channel=yokai
On the other hand, I personally enjoy albums and songs major artist after they achieve critical success, when they establish their signature sound, like David Bowie(1970-1983), Stevie Wonder (1972-1976), or Peter Gabriel(1986-1992), but if I "like" any of these songs on Spotify, it means I get their entire catalog mixed in my daily mixes, and if they ever release a live album, those tracks show up. This is not what I want.
Music genres change, that's nothing new at all. Just look at the type of trance from the early 2000s and compare it to today's trance. It's a completely different sound. Would the author also complain about "progressive trance" taking over "trance"? It's natural that some sub genres might become more popular, while others lose listeners relative to the newcomers. Same happened in techno, rap etc.
While Spotify might accelerate this process through a positive feedback loop, this video is just another form of gatekeeping and saying "I knew XYZ before it was cool".
Which is neither here nor there. Apple music came later, and Spotify already had a headstart, a good UI, a good selection, and a good free plan.
Spotify, Pandora caught on because they were the first good streaming solutions, at the time bandwidth, mobile phones, etc, were in place and ripe for streaming. Not because of their recommendations...
I prefer to use YT Music s it seems thoroughly confused by having each person in family use from my service account to the point the suggestions are general in nature. They still do not get played though. I refuse to click on suggestions in any product as that reinforces their data on me/us. I’m quite ok if any music engine thinks I’m a polyglot toddler with penchant for death metal, Thai ballads, and ancient Chinese orchestral Music. Such a profile makes me soooo much less likely to get other music or junk marketed to me ;-)
Sure, I've had some good recommendations, but I'd expect any recommendation engine to do that just by chance.
What I can say is that Spotify has never proposed something truly new and interesting to me. If I listen to a lot of metal, it'll recommend me the most bland stuff in the same genre. What's even worse is that it keeps playing the same songs over and over again. It's like the recommendation engine just gives up and starts repeating its suggestions again.
I simply gave up on it. Why have access to everything when I only got the crap. Going back to my personal collection increased my good/bad song ratio considerably.
"It" being reality?
>If Spotify's recommendation engine wasn't as good as it was, it would not have the users it has
Now that's just confirmation bias + circular logic.
A streaming service can have users regardless of how good its recommendation engine is. YouTube has crappy recommendation (and has had worse for most of the time it existed) but tons of users.
For Pandora and Spotify, merely offering a convenient way to stream music, a free tier, and a big catalog, was enough.
You seem convinced of some bizarro idea that a media/streaming service can only succeed based on its recommendation engine.
Where did you get that from?
That's not an argument
Canceled and would not consider a recommendation based service that does not let me explicitly remove something from being recommended.