Spotify Sucks
Hello Heathens,
I’m sure none of you saw my tweet this week about how badly Spotify does with recommending music to me. The gist of it is that despite years of data on my music preferences, years of playlists, constantly liking new tracks, updating megaplaylists like my 2500 song long metal playlist, Spotify STILL can’t do a “Metal for you” playlist for me that is unique tracks. I’ve loosely kept track of the playlist for the last two weeks and everyday the first 10 tracks have included:
- Break Stuff by Limp Bizkit
- Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden
- Symphony of Destruction by Megadeth
- Painkiller by Judas Priest
- Freak on a Leash by Korn
- Cemetery Gates by Pantera
None of these songs are bad, but it feels a little insane that despite all the data this company has about the wide array of metal I enjoy, it constantly recommends a few tracks for me. At this point I’m convinced that most software companies have no idea what they are doing with your data, or that the average Spotify listener has the same IQ as a clapping seal.
As much as I want to be misanthropic and choose option 2, the pattern recognition part of my brain tells me it’s really option 1. Tech companies have a massive store of data on all of us, but seem to barely understand how to use it to make our lives better, or at least sell us products better.
Another great example of this lack of accurate targeting is google ad sense. Despite YouTube being background noise for my ADHD brain at work, using Chrome, and doing almost all my searches in Google I still get ads for products I’ve never searched, used, or expressed even the inkling of desire that I’d be interested in. Meanwhile things I probably would be interested in clicking on are presented to be best on instagram…. An app I spend less than 20 minutes a day on.
I think what pisses me off the most about all of this is that I enjoy the schizophrenic mix that the humble foobar random album or random track gives me compared to Spotify. Foobar isn’t doing anything special, just randomly picking a song from my library and it seems like the humble pseudo-random feature from my music library does a better job of creating a unique listening experience for me than Spotify does. If we had more options with “smart” playlists (something the radio figured out 20 years ago) it could be better, but Spotify is obsessed with having a new slicker UI versus improving the actual features for users.
I just don’t understand what exactly I’m getting for paying the fee these days on these apps. I’m not getting better audio quality, better smart “for me” content (the AI DJ is dogshit), customizable user experience, or anything that we had in the early 2000’s with Winamp. There is no community feature where artists can interact with fans via the platform, I can’t have massive album art as a background while I’m listening, I can’t turn off podcast/audiobooks on my home page, and the AI DJ doesn’t let me give simple commands like, “Make a 00’s nu metal playlist for me and make sure to include songs from these 5 bands.” I’m tired of our tech overlords using our data in the laziest pay possible, and you should be too.
Keep Heavy the Sabbath Day