Study Confirms That Major Labels Control Spotify Playlists | Hacker News Reader

Study Confirms That Major Labels Control Spotify Playlists

digitalmusicnews.com

45 pointskvee16 comments

I love how this site loads and then covers it all up with a “your ad blocker has broken the site. If you want to enjoy our copyrighted works, you must fix that.”

But please, complain about major labels controlling Spotify playlists while you seek to control consumer attention and data in another way.

not to mention hijacked scroll

My "NoScript" extension doesnt even allow the popup to load. My "uBlock origin" extension blocks the window too. I actually had to disable adblocker AND enable javascript to get "you have adblocker, turn it off!" And even then my "Behind the Overlay" extension provides me with one-click manual way of getting rid of it.

Seriously people, do yourself a favour and use those tools when navigating todays hostile internet.

dang, can you change the link to:

https://www.music-tomorrow.com/blog/is-spotify-editorial-pla...

The linked article is a nearly content-free and extremely weak summary of what appears to be the actual content.

Yes, please do. Digital Music News is full-on crazy pointy hair ranting click bait.

The Music Tomorrow analysis is very flimsy (tiny number of playlists over a very short period) but at least it’s the source.

Given the history of the music industry, surely this isn't a surprise to anyone.

This seems like a very lazy analysis. If the major labels simply signed better artists you’d end up with the same result. If they have slightly better judgment about what is likely to be popular than average you would expect that result.

The title is absolute clickbait as it hints that labels would have a direct control (as in, decision power) in the playlists, which is not the case.

All this "study" showed is that major labels have major artists, which are unsurprisingly over-represented over nobodies or smaller artists in playlists curated by a company trying to please the most people possible.

Shocking indeed.

I don't know exactly what is wrong with Spotify, but years ago, I subscribed to Pandora, and it made all sorts of suggestions based on what I liked that revealed great music to me.

But when I wanted something specific, it often didn't have it, so I switched to Spotify because it seemed to have a much larger catalog.

Unfortunately, the recommendations were no good, so I just listened to the same stuff I had played on Pandora, plus specific things that I found elsewhere.

Then I quit paying for it because I didn't feel like I was getting a lot of value.

I have no idea whether either is any good these days, but I would firmly classify Pandora's recommendation engine as highly useful back in the day, and Spotify's as...not.

I also noticed that regularly, my YouTube playlist has songs that disappear, and it's hard to know which song it was.

Sort of related: I could swear that Spotify's weekly recommendation playlist serves me better music on the preceding week whenever the subscription is about to renew. As in, they intentionally do this to keep me on the platform. Am I going crazy?

Look at the incentives. Spotify pays more for more popular artists. If you assume popularity is roughly "better", they want to keep costs low by playing cheaper (worse) music, except they are willing to spend more near renewal to keep you paying.

Maybe a bit of stretch? But it wouldn't surprise me if actually happens.

Switched to YouTube music a few months ago and I'm really happy with it. The playlists it generates seem to be better than Spotify's

Lol, this is obvious if you mostly listen to folk/wailing/classical music. The "recommendations" for pop are obviously forced.

Wailing?

The only playlists I regularly play are my own or Discover Weekly and Daily Mix #1 thru #6.

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