Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnnyworker | Hacker News Reader

I think all these comments discussing white noise miss the point, which isn't white noise but "if people would listen to what is more profitable to us, instead of what they enjoy listening to, we would make X more profit".

They couldn't even have gotten to the point of confusing white noise and leaves rustling with podcasts and other "content" to make a buck off, if it wasn't for that first step. And that view of users as a resource, as people who need to be told what they want, permeates so much of tech... like a giant elephant shitting all over an otherwise quite elegantly made couch.

View on HN

> "if people would listen to what is more profitable to us, instead of what they enjoy listening to, we would make X more profit".

I was ranting, immaturely, to my ML educated friend recently about how terrible modern discovery algorithms are ("if ML is so powerful why does Spotify exclusively serve up the steamiest of dog sh$t?") when he explained this to me.

His response was "they aren't optimizing their discovery algorithms for your enjoyment, they optimize them for profit."

> "they aren't optimizing their discovery algorithms for your enjoyment, they optimize them for profit."

Still in 2016, I could start with a song in genre X and then let Spotify autoplay for hours staying in genre X. I discovered some new bands I liked. Then circa 2017 or 2018 something changed. After a couple of songs, Spotify would switch to genre Y, and break my flow.

I stopped paying for Spotify, and switched to Youtube, then Youtube Music. Youtube Music still does the good old thing, plays random songs staying within the genre I started with.

Maybe Spotify is optimizing for profit, but my money they lost.

If you listen to some songs off track it will ruin the recommendation engine for a long time with Spotify. E.g. child music is the most obvious one. Having a party with people choosing songs ruins it.

So in practice it is not very user friendly since you can't pause it.

There’s incognito mode for Spotify to avoid ruining your recommendations.

I'm not sure this is a good solution; it violates multiple UX principles around the ability to undo, to see what a program is doing. It's also bundling a lot of stuff together in an unintuitive way: "Incognito" (or as Spotify seems to call it, "private") listening doesn't signal that it has anything to do with recommendations, and if you turn it on I believe it also does things like block social features.

I don't think "private mode" in applications is a good alternative most of the time to more direct controls like:

- An opt-in mode for training the algorithm.

- An ability to after leaving a phone on overnight to clear a bunch of songs out of your recommendations.

- An ability to mark a song that you like as irrelevant without blocking it.

- An ability to import and export recommendation lists and then to "pause" or "freeze" your recommendation training.

- An ability to freeze/fork/revert your recommendation profile.

- The ability to have multiple recommendation profiles.

- etc...

Going into a special mode to preemptively avoid a program from acting unpredictably and doing unpredictable things is bad UX, we should just call it bad UX. One of the big reasons that bad UX exists is because companies aren't using recommendation algorithms to benefit the user, and so they don't want users to be in control of them or to be able to easily turn them off or tune them. The recommendation engines are there to push Spotify's interests even when those interests don't align with the user. Bad UX and bad recommendation controls are in some ways a feature for the company, not a bug.

If the recommendation engine was presented in a way that consumers could easily control and if the majority of even casual users felt confident interacting with it and regularly turned it off, then that would be treated as a software defect to be fixed. Modern recommendation UX has more in common with advertisements or the popups websites put in front of content to force you to make an account, in the sense that you're not really supposed to take advantage of any opt-outs that the companies begrudgingly supply.

The problems you describe are why anything "algorithmic" is hated in some circles, despite there (IMO) being value in it in theory. People just can't imagine it ever being good because in reality it almost never is.

Also you can right-click a playlist and select "Exclude this from musical profiling" (translated from my native language). I did that for many older playlists I'm no longer into, and this seemed to cause a significant steer in weekly recommendations which have since turned to be much more in line with my current tastes.

Don't ruin my rant ;)

Spotify should still be able to realise when something completely outside of the normal is played. Maybe as a different listening mode, eg "Kids party" - and keep them separate.

Sometimes breaking the flow with something else the user enjoyed, for variety, keeps the user more engaged.

But this behavior should be controllable by the user.

Yep. I think this is something that they could seriously improve on - not blending all usage scenarios into just one.

I had no idea this existed, nor would I know how to turn it on from Google Home / Alexa, which is my primary consumption method (particularly in "party" circumstances).

> I stopped paying for Spotify, and switched to Youtube, then Youtube Music. Youtube Music still does the good old thing, plays random songs staying within the genre I started with.

Perhaps only until they get the market position they desire...

Another good example of this is Apple’s “radio station” concept. It plays deep cuts unrelated to the originally chosen music about 3 songs into your list to spread the wealth (play songs with the smallest possible royalty costs).

https://artists.apple.com/support/1124-apple-music-insights-...

Apple pays the same rate to everyone and for all music, and for what it's worth it is well known that Apple pays much more than Spotify does to artists.

It is incredibly difficult to guess what related music people will like, and some people will like the selections, others won't. Apple recently added a "Discovery" station that tries to guess music you might like but don't listen to and I am a big fan of it, while many others absolutely hate it. Eh.

Things like this are super annoying to me, especially when Apple is engaging in it as well. Just like deduplication on cloud services, this "feature" is literally only beneficial for the company so they can reduce your file storage use and make your data less secure and have an excuse to get to know more about your data they can use for other purposes.

> this "feature" is literally only beneficial for the company

Is this actually true? I don't know. I don't think consumer file hosting services would be viable at their present price points if they were storing every single file byte-for-byte.

Certainly some of the value capture belongs to the company, but if you're not particularly concerned about security it seems like a win-win.

If you are concerned about security, encrypt your files and everyone else with deduplicated files will subsidize the cost of your service.

It's not that they were simply smart and didn't de-duplicate identical songs; at some point they simply replaced instances of various recordings of songs with a single one. I could not be further from being an audiophile, yet I still understand the anger this could cause. Even at a basic level, there can be relatively major differences.

I don't think this has anything to do with de-duplication.

It's likely referring to iTunes Match which is a paid service that allowed you to upload your own MP3 files to Apple who would then serve it to you alongside any purchased/streamed music.

I believe that by default (but able to be disabled) your songs would be "upgraded" to the master-quality equivalent in Apple Music if they were identical. But then over time artists have been replacing those song with different versions/mixes.

> Just like deduplication on cloud services, this "feature" is literally only beneficial for the company so they can reduce your file storage use and make your data less secure

Every distributed object store I've ever seen takes your data, chunks it into a fixed size, hashes it and then distributes copies on multiple nodes.

So deduplication is intrinsic to the architecture and not some business decision layered on top.

is it what dropbox did back in the days eh? ))

I imagine they mostly all do it, with the exception of maybe Tresorit, possibly ProtonDrive but I am not super familiar with them. Its actually a "feature" of convergent encryption which Apple uses in lieu of true zero-knowledge e2ee like Tresorit.

All the big players also take kickbacks from record labels for pushing selected artists. Essentially hit song astroturfing

This is called Payola.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola

It’s illegal, but only for radio stations. Spotify et al are free to do ”product placement” deals all day

> if ML is so powerful why does Spotify exclusively serve up the steamiest of dog sh$t?"

Has popular sentiment turned against Spotify’s algorithms? I thought their recommendation system was their most-respected feature – in my own experience at least, Discover Weekly continues to be Spotify’s moat.

I have pretty diverse music taste, and Spotify's discover weekly is nearly universally bad for me. My wife's taste is less broad, and hers is much better.

I listen to a wide range of music and Spotify's recommendations had been really good for me. But more recently they have gotten terrible. It's really annoying and has made the service much less useful.

I recently switched to Tidal, and decent recommendations are what I miss the most. While I prefer getting music recommendations from an actual person with similar taste, Spotify was generally good enough.

That's more than can be said for Tidal. My recommendation playlists generally contain tracks and artists I already listen to (sometimes from completely unrelated genres), sprinkled with what seems to be random tracks from the "more like this" section of said artists.

Still not enough to compensate for the shit stream quality and ever increasing price of Spotify though...

Ever increasing price? In the US and much of Europe, one price change since launch.

My range is pretty broad as well, and over all I'm extremely happy with Discover Weekly. It's probably my primary vehicle for finding new music today, honestly. But it does seem to be pretty hit or miss for other people, for some reason.

Lol what. Spotify has always been subpar on recommendations. Their moat is their brand, catalog and users. Discover Weekly is not even remotely a moat, it's trivial for anyone to make something similar or better. For me, discover weekly gives me less songs that I like than just turning on a good old radio channel

It's far too hidden to be their main feature. For a completely new user, it's not promoted as such. It's at best one of the many colourful "tiles" you can click on.

I've never noticed Spotify's recommendation engine is very good, but I came from Pandora.

What drives me absolutely bonkers is the number of foreign language songs in Spotify's recommendation engine for me. No matter how many times I say "never play this song again" to every foreign language song, give it about 5-10 more songs and it'll play another one.

I've never knowingly listened to a foreign language song

Cool story, but your friend knowing the answer has nothing to do with his ML education, I suspect, but with his business savvy. I say this because I used to work for a company in the online ads space; they were all knuckleheads but all of them would've told you the same thing.

People always like to figure a conspiracy. It is very unlikely Spotify is optimizing their discovery for profit. Their algorithm is one of their primary selling tools and while it isn't unheard of for brands to fuck their goodwill to increase profit, I just don't see it happening here.

They should then just have a “gold” version which does an optimal job for the end user.

https://Last.fm connects to Spotify and can give you a bit more of an independent set of suggestions

Inevitably what ends up happening in these situations is that some product manager thinks, "wait, what if we had a 'gold' version that people payed for and that version also pushed whatever content we wanted at them?"

FWIW, that's why I left.

"prohibiting future uploads while redirecting the audience towards comparable programming that was more economical for Spotify" — this sounds like Spotify generating the white noise on device or partnering with an app that does so, which seems like a much better use of resources then letting users upload thousands of GB of machine generated audio per week streamed to hundreds of thousands of viewers. I don't think there's much indication at all that the goal is stopping people from listening to white noise and forcing them to listen to other podcasts. And i don't necessarily think they'd be wrong in assessing that this is a very poor use of bandwidth costs, or wrong in thinking that it's one that significantly changed the marginal economics of the platform (auto generated white noise can be uploaded in bulk by computers with no human involvement compared to the time it takes to create even the most bare bones podcast episode, and one "episode" of white noise is indistinguishable from a another for most users, leaving Spotify holding the bag for thousands of hours of back catalog that may never get listened to)

Something that stuck out to me during my time in college business courses is the fact that many teachers are pushing the idea of a manager, director, or other executive roles, into how to understand and allocate resources. One of the resources is humans, either as employees or, in other moments, the users. While clients and investors are more or less seen as another team or "entity"(eg, partner company) that facilitates the use or funding of the project. Just my two cents on what I have seen being thought to the next generation. I don't know how to feel about this. I am interested in others' opinions on this.

A previous article about management styles kinda goes in the direction you're describing:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37159338

Reception wasn't great to say the least.

This is what enshittification looks like. It's gotten to the point where I only play specific albums I like now. Spotify hates that, as evidenced by how difficult the UI makes it to do.

How is that difficult? I'm wondering if you have a different UI to me, because I can both search an album and then play it, click on the album art from a playing song, or if I want just pin an album and then it behaves like a playlist

I use it on the Tesla screen which to be fair is widely reputed to be a terrible Spotify UI.

But what’s driving people listening to white noise sometimes isn’t enjoyment, right? There have been cases of clear abuse [0] that Spotify is correct to crack down on.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2014/5/7/5690590/spotify-removes-si...

why does a white noise podcast need more than one episode? that's no different than uploading the same episode hundreds of times. it's an attack. except worse because noise is incompressible

In short, white noise is not just one pitch of "TV static". There can be many pitches in white noise, and also many other types exist: brown noise, pink noise etc. It also can be mixed in to provide an audio experience. Human mind is excellent in recognising patterns so if one is using it for sleep/anxiety reduction purposes, it needs variety. This is why a noise generator producing nature sounds never work, but a fan does.

> as people who need to be told what they want, permeates so much of tech

all under the disguise of 'objective and smart algorithm analysing data' even though it seems that they will always use data to fit their own need, it feels like a digital feudal system

> it feels like a digital feudal system

it surely does.

and quite an interesting take on the declaration of independence of cyberspace.

I'm a bit shocked in a way.. there's a principle about large central structures that apply the same no matter where. Any central service will be biased toward his own belief and enforcing absurd pain on smaller users ?

not entirely sure what you are saying?

nevermind i'm not sure what i'm saying either

like a giant elephant shitting all over an otherwise quite elegantly made couch.

This is a weird reference! Do you, mayhap, have large, boisterous, disliked relatives?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com