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Comment by madeofpalk | Hacker News Reader

I feel like both of you are correct. It feels to me that Spotify's recommendations easily gets stuck in a 'local maxima' where it just keeps recommending the same music over again with little variation. I found much more variation from other music streaming services where the playlists are supposedly actually human curated. Music just ends up feeling a lot more bland with Spotify, in my experience.

I don't even know what the Discover Weekly playlist is supposed to be. It frequently puts in not-new songs from not-new artists Spotify know I've been listening to.

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I've had the same exact experience. I had to stop relying on Spotify-generated playlists because they just kept giving me the same familiar songs over and over again.

The "local maxima" thing is interesting, because while with Spotify it is noticeable sometimes, it was a lot worse of a problem with Google Play Music which I previously used. By the time they shut that down, I almost felt trapped into listening to nothing but Tycho.

> I found much more variation from other music streaming services where the playlists are supposedly actually human curated.

Like which ones? I tried Tidal and music discovery sucks just as badly there too. I'm really craving a music discovery experience that brings back the humanity. Even when an algorithm suggests a good song, it still feels hollow and divorced from any cultural context.

I think Apple Music's playlists and algorithmic recommendations are much better and have more variation. Unfortuantely, Apple Music is terrible at playing music. OP can rightfully complain all they want about homepage customisation, but Apple Music, even on iOS, will just regularly refuse to play music files. Even worse with their embarrasing web or Windows clients.

I think Spotify's problem may stem from their quest from incresingly precise taxonomy for music https://pudding.cool/2023/10/genre/

But spotify has human curated playlists for different genres, does it not?

Same experience for me.

I think the parent might be a new user. It was good for me for a few years but now it’s just stale as shit.

> I think the parent might be a new user.

I've been using Spotify since 2015.

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