I've also gleaned some insight into my general disposition over the least year from the playlist. I can tell exactly when I was in a "mood" or a rut... When I was listening to lots of angry music, that was reflected in my suggestions and my picks. And when I was opening up and relaxing—that also shows through the playlist.
I'd say that if your taste in music has a wider range and not specific to a single genre, your Discover Weekly will be a lot more rewarding. And also, if you rotate through musical moods like seasons where some tastes come and go over the course of a month or two, your Discover Weekly will support that and help you indulge in the mood of the month.
Do you do this manually, or use the API?
On the other end though, some Monday mornings I pull up Discover Weekly and there's this soul-crushing moment when I realize there's a brand new playlist and I forgot to add some treasure I'd been listening to all the last week. I've lost one or two songs in this manner. But if they're still relevant to me in the future, I trust Spotify to eventually lead me back to them somehow. That's how crazy good Spotify is to me. :P
I once saw a service that automatically saves your Discover Weekly to a new playlist each week. I've done this manually to "snapshot" a few great Discover Weekly sets, but if I was a little smarter I'd use automated service to save me from those occasional regretful Mondays.
I found a friend who during a party came up and said "I listen to this song all the time, it's amazing!" and then the next and the next and the next song the same happened. We had been listening to the same (semi-obscure) music for the majority of the past year. It was only later that we discovered that we had both found the songs from discover weekly and were not at all as obscure and knowledgable about music, but hey: we had the same taste in music.
(EDIT: I was wrong; this algorithm is public knowledge.)
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0. http://qz.com/571007/the-magic-that-makes-spotifys-discover-...
Good experience so far for me.
The only real caveat I have with spotify is the awfully buggy applications.
Spotify (especially on desktop) has a LOT of issues. From poorly implemented shuffle play to random removal of features (notifications to ctrl-f to playlist organization), and a complicated by a total lack of dev communication on any platform.
I think the issue with Spotify is not that their core is bad, it's that they never manage to improve and while they act like they're listening, they're not really listening. If there was any worthy competition, I'd switch.
Recommend this thread, where I became aware of the problem https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/56auoi/huge_amount_o...
For an app that's just a web backend in a wrapper, it is horrifically inefficient.
Making Google listen to change-requests (in one of their not-so-prioritized) products will of course not be likely either.
I think in our software ecosystem it's just a game of "who is doing the most like what I want at the moment." Communication with customers is largely dead.
The songs with a checkmark are the ones I've liked and added to my collection. I haven't finished listening to the playlist yet, but I like almost every song that it recommends. The songs I didn't save aren't bad either and I've never had a recommended song which I totally disliked.
It's incredible how it can suggest songs of various genres and still hit my sweet spot.
So I don't agree with tfa.
I would love to be able to re-generate the playlist on demand and also suggest the 'direction' in which it should go - like 'mellower', 'harder', 'sweeter', etc.
But all in all, Spotify is doing a really great job.
I've since switched to the Daily Mixes, which also seem to have the same stuff most days, and then Release Radar, which finally now gives me something fresh.
So +1 for Release Radar, but everywhere else I feel is lacking, and ultimately, I do agree with tfa.
I haven't noticed repeated songs in my Discover Weekly so far, so I can't complain..
I don't have the hours and hours to spend online on music blogs downloading obscure MP3s like I did while I was at university, trawling through to find stuff I like. So now finding new music is more of a challenge.
I've found the curated approach of Apple to be much better than the algorithmic approach of Spotify (and Spotify's curated playlists are also worse).
I miss the infinite streams of Rdio with the adventurous -> familiar slider a lot. You could stay on the same station for months at a time ;(
IF song have been seen at least 3 times in DW and skipped after 10 sec THAN do not show song again
would be a high improvement.
[edit] Spotify seems to spend more time curating this forum than curating Discover Weekly.
I am still amazed about the same thing. Why are they not understanding such obvious behavior with all the sophistication the app otherwise has (eg the match-running speed to music-beat).
However, after six months of this, I noticed that I was stuck in a literary (can I say "literal?") reading rut that became increasingly obvious. Humanity discovers X. X becomes increasingly useful, but there's a hidden price. Y reveals the cost, and that humanity is now an underdog. Human Z, with side kicks, ventures out, and little did he know, plays an important role on the galactic stage.
Customization is nice in software. However - recommendation engines (today) seem particularly dim-witted, and result in the creation of a single-person echo chamber that becomes increasingly lonely the longer you spend interacting with it.
I wonder if anyone's studied this. Maybe it's not a common sentiment...
