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The best ”algorithm” for discovering new music was digging through profiles on last.fm back when the social functions of the site were still active. Sure, it wa

by sthuck 9mo ago

The best ”algorithm” for discovering new music was digging through profiles on last.fm back when the social functions of the site were still active. Sure, it was a lot of manual work, but the results were amazing. It wasn't completely blind, I found that people I had high similarity with, it was more likely I'll like what they like, even across different genres. Sometimes people were nice and took the effort to recommend based on my profile. I got introduced to varied music, different genres and even a bit from different countries. The worst was Pandora, which did recommendations based on breakdown of musical instruments and elements in the song. It did what it aimed to do pretty well, only it was a bad idea. It gave you a lot of uninspiring music that sounded like a bland copy of something you actually liked. Spotify's recommendations are not super awful, but definitely feel closer to Pandora's style. I wonder why is the result like that even though I'm sure they train their model based on listening history.

ldayley 9mo ago
My favorite manual discovery/social was Napster, for that moment that you could view other user’s entire shared music folder and use the chat function to talk to them about their tastes!
- pogue 9mo ago
  I was just talking about this in r/piracy but I remember there was a chat function on Kazaa where you could message people you were downloading music from and ask for recommendations. Simpler times...
pogue 9mo ago
I used to pay for their radio service, it was a bit like Pandora. I found it when they added it to Xbox 360 as an app. I really liked their original profile pages that had sort of a MySpace style customization & vibe. You could have your favorite musicians and tracks analyzed through their API by these 3rd party services that would create very cool graphics & charts to show off to friends and visitors what you were into. But, then I guess they ran out of money and were really trying to get scooped up by Spotify. They turned off their music player, disabled all the profile customization, alternative services quit having built in scrobbling to it. I remember I had to download an app that would constantly have my microphone open and it would ID the song I was listening to via some kind of Shazam service and send it to last.fm. I never considered what a security risk that was because I was more interested in keeping my last.fm music tracked.
ivape 9mo ago
So, all I’m hearing is that, when we actually took the humans out of the loop and replaced them with algorithms, all the humanity disappeared? ”If take human out … why human there no more???” It’s shocking this species is able to come up with such advanced technologies when the above is the existential question that plagues them in the macro.
hammock 9mo ago
I found so much indie electronic music I loved to listen to back then, via last fm. I don’t listen to any of it any more. Or have any interest to
- mwillis 9mo ago
  say more?
quirino 9mo ago
The best way to discover music nowadays is RateYourMusic. I go to an album I like, read a couple reviews to find like-minded people and check out their profiles. They often have lists with their favorite albums. The album chart queries are also incredible. The site has a very detailed system of genres and descriptors so you can find exactly what you want.
- smileson2 9mo ago
  my method is just internet/local radio stations ( there are many ) and browsing the lineups at venues near me simple, very little time investment required and avoids most modern fuckery
  - PNewling 9mo ago
    Shout out to KEXP!
    - smileson2 9mo ago
      looks cool I'll check them out, FWIW lately for me it's mostly chirpradio.org and somafm
  - smrq 9mo ago
    Audiotree has turned me on to several of my favorite bands as of late. Low hit rate (I probably only care for 5% of the music they feature at most) but those couple bands have been worth sifting through the rest.
- timonofathens 9mo ago
  [dead]
- bossyTeacher 9mo ago
  > The site has a very detailed system of genres and descriptors My problem with this is that it makes certain assumptions about the consistency of applying genres and about the very concept of genre which (imo) is more of a social construct than an empirical concept. It falls in the same category as religion-sect, language-dialect.
postalcoder 9mo ago
what.cd was the world's greatest music discovery mechanism. You could always ask for recommendations in the forums or in the comment thread of the albums pages. The community always delivered. I miss that type of camaraderie. I also spent more on music as a member of that community than since it has been disbanded.
- msy 9mo ago
  What.cd was the Library of Alexandria for recorded music, the depth of what was collated and properly labelled there was far beyond anything that has ever existed on any other service, paid for or not. Every permutation of every release, endless live recordings, often multiple of the same event, absolutely incredible.
  - stuxnet79 9mo ago
    Private trackers as I understand it, are still a thing in the mid 2020s. Did a replacement that matches (or surpasses) What.cd not pop up in the meantime? I'm just wondering how a strong community like that was struck a deathblow. It's not like all of its content disappeared.
    - kungp 9mo ago
      It did, took only a few weeks iirc.
    - doublepg23 9mo ago
      Orpheus and Redacted existed but it's kind of hard to beat the convenience of streaming for the low price in 2025. Granted you can set up automated *arr systems with PLEXAMP to get a pretty seamless "personal Spotify" setup IME getting true usefulness out of trackers of What's quality always required spending real money - to obtain rare records/CDs on marketplaces - or at least large amounts of time if you went the "rent CDs from the library" route. I personally haven't ran into much RYM releases lacking on Apple Music and what is lacking I can find on Bandcamp or YouTube.
    - jmb99 9mo ago
soheilpro 9mo ago
Shameless plug: I'm building volt.fm for Spotify (3M users) which like last.fm lets you find people with similar taste. You can even save their top songs as an auto-updating playlist. It's a great way to find new music that is not controlled by algorithms. Here's my profile if anyone wants to have a look: https://volt.fm/soheilpro https://volt.fm/soheilpro
- cuu508 9mo ago
  I've signed in and see my profile – how do I find people with similar taste?
minikomi 9mo ago
Fond memories of browsing my downloaders on soulseek
xvedejas 9mo ago
In my experience Spotify's song/playlist recommendations are not great, but the album recommendations have a pretty high hit rate. I'm not sure why this would be.
- AlecSchueler 9mo ago
  Did they get a lot better recently? For years I rarely even looked at them because they were so banal and repetitive, but about six months ago they suddenly became something to stay on top of.
  - xvedejas 9mo ago
    I started using spotify about 5 years ago, if you're a long time user I don't really know what it was like before then.
eleventen 9mo ago
You can still do exactly this on bandcamp!
gonlad_x 9mo ago
Aren't these social features still active?
bossyTeacher 9mo ago
> I found that people I had high similarity with, it was more likely I'll like what they like, even across different genres. This has been until very recently the modus operandi of most recommendation engine algorithms. If an algorithm is essentially doing what you do, would you not like that?

by sthuck 9mo ago

ldayley 9mo ago

My favorite manual discovery/social was Napster, for that moment that you could view other user’s entire shared music folder and use the chat function to talk to them about their tastes!

pogue 9mo ago
I was just talking about this in r/piracy but I remember there was a chat function on Kazaa where you could message people you were downloading music from and ask for recommendations. Simpler times...

pogue 9mo ago

I used to pay for their radio service, it was a bit like Pandora. I found it when they added it to Xbox 360 as an app. I really liked their original profile pages that had sort of a MySpace style customization & vibe. You could have your favorite musicians and tracks analyzed through their API by these 3rd party services that would create very cool graphics & charts to show off to friends and visitors what you were into. But, then I guess they ran out of money and were really trying to get scooped up by Spotify. They turned off their music player, disabled all the profile customization, alternative services quit having built in scrobbling to it. I remember I had to download an app that would constantly have my microphone open and it would ID the song I was listening to via some kind of Shazam service and send it to last.fm. I never considered what a security risk that was because I was more interested in keeping my last.fm music tracked.

ivape 9mo ago

So, all I’m hearing is that, when we actually took the humans out of the loop and replaced them with algorithms, all the humanity disappeared? ”If take human out … why human there no more???” It’s shocking this species is able to come up with such advanced technologies when the above is the existential question that plagues them in the macro.

hammock 9mo ago

I found so much indie electronic music I loved to listen to back then, via last fm. I don’t listen to any of it any more. Or have any interest to

mwillis 9mo ago
say more?

quirino 9mo ago

The best way to discover music nowadays is RateYourMusic. I go to an album I like, read a couple reviews to find like-minded people and check out their profiles. They often have lists with their favorite albums. The album chart queries are also incredible. The site has a very detailed system of genres and descriptors so you can find exactly what you want.

smileson2 9mo ago
my method is just internet/local radio stations ( there are many ) and browsing the lineups at venues near me simple, very little time investment required and avoids most modern fuckery
- PNewling 9mo ago
  Shout out to KEXP!
  - smileson2 9mo ago
    looks cool I'll check them out, FWIW lately for me it's mostly chirpradio.org and somafm
- smrq 9mo ago
  Audiotree has turned me on to several of my favorite bands as of late. Low hit rate (I probably only care for 5% of the music they feature at most) but those couple bands have been worth sifting through the rest.
timonofathens 9mo ago
[dead]
bossyTeacher 9mo ago
> The site has a very detailed system of genres and descriptors My problem with this is that it makes certain assumptions about the consistency of applying genres and about the very concept of genre which (imo) is more of a social construct than an empirical concept. It falls in the same category as religion-sect, language-dialect.

postalcoder 9mo ago

what.cd was the world's greatest music discovery mechanism. You could always ask for recommendations in the forums or in the comment thread of the albums pages. The community always delivered. I miss that type of camaraderie. I also spent more on music as a member of that community than since it has been disbanded.

msy 9mo ago
What.cd was the Library of Alexandria for recorded music, the depth of what was collated and properly labelled there was far beyond anything that has ever existed on any other service, paid for or not. Every permutation of every release, endless live recordings, often multiple of the same event, absolutely incredible.
- stuxnet79 9mo ago
  Private trackers as I understand it, are still a thing in the mid 2020s. Did a replacement that matches (or surpasses) What.cd not pop up in the meantime? I'm just wondering how a strong community like that was struck a deathblow. It's not like all of its content disappeared.
  - kungp 9mo ago
    It did, took only a few weeks iirc.
  - doublepg23 9mo ago
    Orpheus and Redacted existed but it's kind of hard to beat the convenience of streaming for the low price in 2025. Granted you can set up automated *arr systems with PLEXAMP to get a pretty seamless "personal Spotify" setup IME getting true usefulness out of trackers of What's quality always required spending real money - to obtain rare records/CDs on marketplaces - or at least large amounts of time if you went the "rent CDs from the library" route. I personally haven't ran into much RYM releases lacking on Apple Music and what is lacking I can find on Bandcamp or YouTube.
  - jmb99 9mo ago

soheilpro 9mo ago

Shameless plug: I'm building volt.fm for Spotify (3M users) which like last.fm lets you find people with similar taste. You can even save their top songs as an auto-updating playlist. It's a great way to find new music that is not controlled by algorithms. Here's my profile if anyone wants to have a look: https://volt.fm/soheilpro https://volt.fm/soheilpro

cuu508 9mo ago
I've signed in and see my profile – how do I find people with similar taste?

minikomi 9mo ago

Fond memories of browsing my downloaders on soulseek

xvedejas 9mo ago

In my experience Spotify's song/playlist recommendations are not great, but the album recommendations have a pretty high hit rate. I'm not sure why this would be.

AlecSchueler 9mo ago
Did they get a lot better recently? For years I rarely even looked at them because they were so banal and repetitive, but about six months ago they suddenly became something to stay on top of.
- xvedejas 9mo ago
  I started using spotify about 5 years ago, if you're a long time user I don't really know what it was like before then.

eleventen 9mo ago

You can still do exactly this on bandcamp!

gonlad_x 9mo ago

Aren't these social features still active?

bossyTeacher 9mo ago

> I found that people I had high similarity with, it was more likely I'll like what they like, even across different genres. This has been until very recently the modus operandi of most recommendation engine algorithms. If an algorithm is essentially doing what you do, would you not like that?