Pandora was worthless, though, because of their skip limit (even in the paid version). Even with its effectiveness, it would still feed me junk.
This guy is a classical music guy, though, and all the pickers suck, for that. Classical has been treated badly, forever. I am extremely disappointed that Apple segregated classical into its own app, because I have always enjoyed mixing it in with my regular music.
One thing about classical music, is that every performance is a “cover.” Who performs the piece is just as important as who wrote it. None of the selection services seem to understand that.
MP3 tags are pretty much worthless. They are incredibly limited, and I don’t know why they have never been improved.
You have to classify every title as one type.
How would we classify Zappa, or Secret Chiefs 3? Are they jazz, alternative (a worthless category), rock, pop, heavy metal, comedy? Depending on what you listen to, it could be any one of them. Also, each song could be in multiple categories. Boz Skaggs was known for disco-style pop, but he was an outstanding blues performer, and many of his songs reflect that mix.
This is really a music industry problem, and software just reflects that. The bug is really in the Requirements phase.
In my interactions with distributors, it seems streaming services tend to support up to two genre classifications; though they're pretty outdated and general (even more general and dated than the Winamp genre list). I don't think they use the metadata presented much in the classification; in fact Spotify does its own estimation of 'energy' and other subjective emotions using various classifier algorithms.
It's not wrong, it's just not what I like
I don't really use Spotify so I can't compare but Pandora was awesome. I've found Youtube playlists to be the best replacement so far.
(1930s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHLbaOLWjpc
(2025) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8hPNPInXh0
(2024) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef-c-9G52jU
(2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C1EDbkl2CU
But this is the problem. Before, people where naturally exposed to classical and jazz and OSTs etc.
This is the problem with current society.
You do realize Pandora is still there, right?
(Obviously you could VPN in, but it's a meaningful hassle.)
The coverage I could find suggested that they were available in three total countries: the USA, Australia, and New Zealand.
So there was no point at which they locked out "international audiences". They had a branch in Australia, and they closed it.
In 2007 the copyright lawyers caught up with them and they locked it to US IP addresses: https://mashable.com/archive/pandora-international
Australia-specific operations were 2012-2017.
It's very miss-or-miss; you need to be willing to thumb down 95% of what Pandora thinks you'll like. But with enough care, it's a good discovery channel.
But somehow, probably from a combination of rights owners gaming it and Spotify gaming it, DW is a pale shadow of its former self.
I have a few other experimental features in the pipeline that will expand the music selection, but they are not there yet.
Personally I dropped playlists long ago for YouTube dj sets which are a million times better than Spotify’s AI dj. Some of this is not a tech failing but the DJs have access to unreleased tracks, their own private edits, and are more willing to do more bold things. The AI DJ will never drop a surprise change that makes the crowd scream.