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One problem I've run into with the music services is with older styles. For example, I'm specifically into black musicians from the 1930s-1950s who played swing
by Thegn 2y ago
One problem I've run into with the music services is with older styles. For example, I'm specifically into black musicians from the 1930s-1950s who played swing style music. I have yet to find a service that actually will play more than 2-3 songs in that style before deciding that what I really want to hear is rat pack or swing by white musicians. No matter how much I thumbs down it, I get Glenn Miller/Frank Sinatra/Benny Goodman instead of Count Basie/Duke Ellington/Slim Gaillard. The services have that music (I can find the songs and seed stations from it) but for whatever reason all of the ones I've tried (Spotify/Apple/Amazon/Pandora, and I have a feeling I've tried others and forgotten) just don't want me to listen to the style I'm looking for.
- totetsu 2y agoLast FM and music neighbors could have solved this.
- ahartmetz 2y agoIt is also my experience that Spotify reverts to what's popular and last.fm doesn't.
- nullify88 2y agoI haven't used last.fm for a long time and it seems like a shadow of its former self, pre acquisition. I've discovered so much music on there, and I'm getting really disappointed by spotifys repetitiveness. Is last.fm still good to discover new music or is it just harvesting scrobbles?
- _DeadFred_ 2y agoLast FM was so good for this.
- ImaCake 2y agoThe technical reason for this is just that the algorithm fails to distinguish between these two groups. Probably its just a hard problem to solve from a sample of what people listen to. I suspect a significant fraction of people that like black swing also like white swing and that results in the algorithm being unable to resolve that there are two features there and not one. You really need a level of manual curation that a big data statistical model just can't provided at scale.
- Thegn 2y agoWhat I find curious about it though is that it's obviously recognizing the style - it plays 1-2 musicians from the "black" group, then circles into only playing Miller/Goodman/Rat pack and never comes back around to playing the music that I originally was trying to play. If it was behaving the way you are thinking, I'd expect it to mix the two styles.
- artichokeheart 2y agoI think the problem is that the algorithms are based on statistical probabilities from other users. I.e users who listen to X also like to listen to Y. So we’ll add Y to the queue. Then Y becomes the new reference point. I mean that is a gross simplification but essentially if your musical taste is outside of 2 standard deviations of the norm all the algorithms are gonna suck. For me they do.
- QuiDortDine 2y agoSo what you're saying is it's badly designed?
- rajamaka 2y agoIt's badly designed for your particular taste, but it probably works for most people which is why it's used.
- hedora 2y agoI’ve definitely trained tidal that I prefer some pretty whacky sub genres (this Northern European country, but only metal with strong brass sections, or contemporary accordion, hurdy gurdy, and a dozen other clusters like that). I’d guess if you created a profile and loaded it up with just black swing bands from the 30-50’s, it’d do OK. If not, and I understand their algorithm correctly, it would not only be because no current listeners make that distinction (as discussed up thread). It would also be because the metadata doesn’t give any signal for it. They seem to use information such as record labels, song writers, producers, guest musicians, etc. If that metadata has no signal, then my guess is that you’re trying to get it to racially segregate music that was produced before the big interracial marriage scare. People were worried that if their kids listened to the same musicians, then whites and blacks (or worse!) might marry, so they created white radio stations and black radio stations. Before that, I imagine there was a lot more interracial collaboration, and the metadata wouldn’t find clean clusters along race boundaries. It could also be that the old metadata was never digitized.
- _a_a_a_ 2y agoI'm a little puzzled as you're describing a music stylist on skin colour, black vs white. I presume you don't really mean that, so what distinguishes the two musical styles, black swing vs white swing? Serious question.
- VelesDude 2y agoNot OP but I would assume that because they where still somewhat isolated groups in terms of directly lived culture, this would have influenced their works differently. Like how the Blues didn't come out of a comfortable lifestyle.
- acdha 2y agoAlso isolated by force in many cases: even in states which didn’t have official segregation laws, things like redlining and police enforcement meant you had very distinct communities. This especially went for anything where alcohol is consumed (being drunk leads to deadly mistakes and could lead to crimes being ignored or minimized) or, especially, sexual contexts - if you’re a young black man, you’re probably not going to find it relaxing to be at a club where various white guys are stopping by to mention what’ll happen if you look at a white woman. Looking of that period is a very sobering reminder of a very dark stain in our national history - and I’ve read too many stories about even well known performers being told they can’t play at certain venues or have to leave immediately afterwards to think everyone wasn’t aware of the stakes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_racial_violence_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_racial_violence_in_the_Un... As an example of how widespread this was, it took Marilyn Monroe at the height of her fame intervening for _Ella Fitzgerald_ to be able to play at a club in Los Angeles! Not the Deep South, not 1917, but very modern California. > In October 1957 Monroe made a call to the Mocambo nightclub in Los Angeles, on behalf of Fitzgerald. Monroe used her social status and popularity to make a deal with them. If they allowed Fitzgerald to perform, Monroe promised that she would take a front-row seat every night https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/stories/ella-fitzgerald-breaking-down-racial-barriers-her-voice https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/stories/ella-fitzgera... The closest I can come to a silver lining for this is that it allowed more artists to find a niche where they weren’t competing with the major national artists but that’s nowhere close to compensation for so much tragedy.
- bongodongobob 2y agoI'm sorry, but wanting your music algorithm to key in on the composer's skin color is a ridiculous expectation. Listen to albums or make a playlist.
- KETHERCORTEX 2y agoIn this case it's not that ridiculous because "black" here isn't just a skin color, but primarily a subculture/subgenre with some distinct musical attributes. Nobody finds separating French electronic music into its own subgenre ridiculous. Same with Italian Disco. Such distinct movements are quite usual, so dissatisfaction about Black Swing on streaming services is understandable.
- crooked-v 2y agoAlso, the subculture exists in the US because of hundreds of years of intentional effort by the majority to destroy any preexisting cultures among black people and prevent any integration with the mainstream.
- _DeadFred_ 2y agoThat's funny, because a lot of 'black' music in that period came from irish musical influences and totally did not come from what you are claiming.
- goosejuice 2y agoI think many here are missing the point being made. Of course there are stylistic differences between some groups of artists. The thing is that they probably aren't coded by skin color let alone period location etc, so of course it will bleed. Playing some swing and expecting it to continue to stay within very blurry racial lines is unrealistic, silly, and maybe irresponsible for a recommendation algorithm. As it's been said, there are better methods of discovery for this purpose. In your example, I'm sure there are Spotify playlists for Italian disco that have been curated.
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- makeitdouble 2y agoYou're probably wishing for a community playlist with people pitching in songs as they discover them ? Would be great to have options to add stuff but keep it private while keeping in sync etc. Could be done with a meta layer on top of the Spotify player for instance ?
- RhysU 2y agoReminds me of the old webring concept from long ago.
- 082349872349872 2y agoOr of the old mailing list concept from even longer ago.
- anukin 2y agoWhich swing tracks do you recommend to a noob who just got introduced to the swing music and dance?
- Thegn 2y agoI'm personally a fan of the old stuff (Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Chick Webb, Jimmie Lunceford, Slim Gaillard, Ella Fitzgerald to name a few) but the best thing you can do is go to dances and lessons, and when you hear a song you like, go up to the DJ and ask them what it was. The best music is the music you like and that makes you want to dance, regardless of who made it.
- prepend 2y agoI’d guess it’s just because the algorithm is not smart enough and is just looking at the category as a whole and then playing the most played. So Glenn Miller and Count Basie are in the same category, but more Spotify people who listen to that category listen to Glenn Miller. Maybe one day, they’ll get smaller clusters and lump you in with other listeners who favor black musicians within that category. This is my problem with these services in that they are very generic and smooth out the outliers. So it’s good for pleasing the 80%, but people with specific tastes are out of luck. Big time regression to the mean.
- Pannoniae 2y agoHey! I have a quite similar music taste. (my favs definitely include Slim Gaillard and Fats Waller, that kind of stuff) If you have Discord, I've been curating a musicbot with a similar music rotation since I've also been completely fed up with streaming services pushing more Glenn Miller/similar straight bands, not the hip ones :) If you are interested, join my server, the bot is running 24/7: https://discord.gg/wjsC2TUZPK https://discord.gg/wjsC2TUZPK
- Thegn 2y agoThanks, I'll check it out.
- chadcmulligan 2y agoI recently discovered everynoise.com, it can make a playlist of a genre for you, it has a lot of black* Edit: spelling
- ugh123 2y agoeverynoise.com
- dotnet00 2y agoThe other replies are interpreting this as the algorithm failing, but I have interpreted these sorts of things as intentional design choices, wherein they want the recommender to keep trying to diversify your interests so it's harder for you to just quit the service and move to another one which might not have the same variety (or where you'd have to try to "teach" the recommender again). They've determined that the potential benefit is much better than somewhat annoying you. This interpretation of their behavior is why I've stuck to buying my music (fortunately that's still common for the genres I'm into).
- Tagbert 2y agoI’ve found that most algorithms tend to reinforce a taste by trying to provide more of the same. They rarely try to bring in something that diverges from the pattern. Of course, the libraries have limits and the algorithms will often match against characteristics that you do not consider relevant.
- mellosouls 2y agotrying to diversify your interests In this instance - and others in my experience listening to the recommendations on this and similar services - "diversify" is used when "dilute" would be more appropriate.
- jahewson 2y agoIt’s not really though - if it was known in advance that you did not like a track then there would be no reason to recommend it. It’s the classic precision vs recall trade off: I can create a recommendation algorithm that only recommends your favourite song, forever, and that will have perfect precision but miserable recall. To increase recall we have to accept a drop in precision.
- mellosouls 2y agoIt's entirely possible to retain soul and widen reference. Offering up bland imitations of authentic artists is hardly simply a drop in precision.
- Galxeagle 2y agoI encounter similar behaviour as you in an entirely different genre - I've long since suspected that Spotify keeps redirecting me back to songs that are either less royalties for them to play, or located closer to me on the CDN to save serving costs.
- hedora 2y agoThere are services like this that explain the behavior: https://artistpush.me/collections/spotify-promotion https://artistpush.me/collections/spotify-promotion No idea if they work though. Artists can also pay Spotify to promote their music: https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/promoting-music-on-spotify/ https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/promoting-mus... I imagine that boosts “organic” engagement, leading to the same symptoms.
- c22 2y agoOn pandora I find every channel I make eventually slides into the nearest "standard" repetive theme (often abandoning the seed content entirely). I always assumed it was nudging me towards the content with the lowest licensing costs.