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Comment by dj_mc_merlin | Hacker News Reader

> How on earth can Spotify distinguish real Fanny from fake Fanny?

I can't tell if the post is serious or just a setup now.

Wasn’t the whole point of Brexit to have less regulation on things like region of origin? British Fanny is just as good as continental Fanny, even if it isn’t as popular. It’s not “fake Fanny”, it just gets less exposure.

This ends up being quite a hairy conversation, normally.

To be fair, Spotify often conflates lesser-known artists that have the same name, particularly if they both inhabit some kind of "alt" genre, even if the two genres are totally different alt genres. Are they two different artists, or did they just change their sound?

Sometimes it's obvious (e.g. techno DJ and death metal band with same name), but sometimes it's not even easy for a human to decide (two unrelated indie bands from the early '10s with the same name).

So it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that it can be exploited for money laundering and/or algorithm revenue farming.

The person you replied to was suggesting that the previous post was a setup to be able to use that last line. Fanny is a slang term.

Probably serious enough, since the album they describe exists. Spotify is smart enough to know that it isn't "the" Fanny Mendelssohn though - at least in the artist database. It could well be that Release Radar is dumber and is fooled by the matching name.

Or enough other people were fooled and listen to the "fake" Fanny, creating a listener correlation between the real and fake Fannys.

Release Radar by its nature will try to recommend tracks with very few plays (if any). It is supposed to solve the "bootstrap" problem in recommendation systems.

In retrospect, I think it's more likely that Fake Fanny Mendlelssohn did NOT inform Spotify that they were a different person, and Spotify only split it out after a lot of Felix/Fanny fans clicked "I did NOT like this" when the track was put in their Release Radar.

The Release Radar playlist is supposed to contain new releases from artists you already listen to. I think you might be right about the release radar being a method they use to separate out bands with the same name. I've definitely noticed bands with the same name in my Release Radar. It would be useful if Spotify exposed a method to report different bands under the same name. The do not recommend is a different signal since maybe I also like the new band. I probably mess up Spotify's recommendation algorithm for me since I use the heart button to flag albums as listened to regardless of my enjoyment since there isn't a another way to mark albums as "listened" like there is for podcasts.

There is a tool, but it's for the artists only. Probably kept as a carrot to encourage artists to register with Spotify.

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