Hacker News Reader

Comment by gonehome | Hacker News Reader

I thought I didn't care about music discovery either, but for me that turned out to just be because all the discovery I'd seen previously was bad. Spotify Discovery weekly playlists are really good and getting a new one each week is a really good model.

I generally agree with you on the UI, Spotify's is also bad. You can add songs to 'liked songs' which is functionally the library (used to be called library, before that was 'starred songs') and then sort by artist that way.

I have no idea what they're doing over there though changing that stuff every couple of months. They have no idea how their UI should work, no design consistency - it's generally bad.

Is the Apple stuff pretty good now?

View on HN

Apple still has the radio station functionality (AI generated playlists on demand, from a seed song you pick) and they also have curated playlists that change on a routine basis as well. I far prefer Apples interface, and they are slowly fixing the major issues with the Music app - it's not nearly as awful as when it first launched and still way better than Spotify's UI for all reasons already outlined.

The seed song approach isn't very good.

I think the way Spotify discovery works is looking at songs you have favorited and compares other human created playlists from users that have your favorite songs, then taking songs from those playlists you haven't heard and putting them in a list for you. I think they also do some modeling after that, but it's secondary.

This works really well since there's a human selection element they're taking advantage of and playlists tend to collect stuff that people who have the same taste will probably like.

Radios based on seed songs I've found to be pretty unimpressive, similarly curated playlists that don't know about your tastes are also uninteresting.

It's the combination that works.

The weekly distribution is also good because you get time to explore new stuff each week (rather than just being overwhelmed) and you can further improve things by liking/disliking new stuff.

Good to know the Apple UI improved though.

The radio playlists also take into account your ratings; I've found them to be quite effective.

Also looking again at my Music app there is a Favorites Mix that isn't a radio station but appears to be what you seem to be describing with Spotify Discovery. I'd be shocked if both services didn't have similar functionality at this point.

EDIT: Actually there is a whole "Made for You" section apparently I never paid attention to before that is full of different automatically generated discovery type playlists. Neat!

EDIT2: There are even more sections I hadn't noticed - yearly recaps, what my friends are listening too (that one is scary; I have some friends with odd tastes apparently) and more.

I think I need to spend less time in youtube and dedicate a bit more back to music. Lots of good stuff I need to catch up on.

Thanks! - Maybe it's time for me to try a migration again.

But songs must be individually liked in order to show up in “liked songs.” If you press the heart icon on an album, that album will only show up under Your Library > Albums. There is, as far as I can tell, absolutely no interface to see all songs that you have added to your library.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com