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Comment by 3np | Hacker News Reader

Agree on the above (though are duplicates really that much of a practical issue? I did discover some Russian rap through that). I'd like to add:

3. Discover Weekly stuck recycling through the same songs over and over again (it's also years since the algorithm found anything new for me, apart from name collisions)

4. Geo-language-locking. My CC will apparently only be accepted with its registered address in Spain. I barely speak a word of Spanish and don't have interest in the music popular in Spain. Yet it's what they keep pushing me, especially podcasts (including any episode in generated lists). Long-standing issues on all their community forums for this, eg https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Browse-Allow-to-...

I recall a 100+ page forum thread on 4 but can't seem to find it now.

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Curious: how repetitive is your listening history?

I also notice that my Discover Weekly and Daily 1-5 playlists are recycling much of the same material. But I also frequently listen to my Liked Songs (< 40 songs) on shuffle, so I assume Spotify's algorithm is looking at that data and saying "you do actually just want to listen to these songs over and over again"

Otherwise, a fun experiment I tried last year: deleted all liked songs, all playlists, etc. to refresh my recommendations. I didn't pay close attention to how new suggestions compared to old, but it was one sort of trick to find new stuff rather than heading back to existing playlists. My Liked songs definitely aren't those from last year.

Also, this may seem counterintuitive but I regularly listen to playlists that seem like they are out of my interest pool (e.g. will deliberately check out a country playlist) as another way to move away from my own recommendations.

I listen to a workout playlist on shuffle frequently while training, while slowly adding new music to it throughout the year.

Like others have mentioned, Spotify has completely stopped recommending new music for years now. Even if I start a song radio from a song I've never listened to before, Spotify immediately just starts playing songs from my current year's workout playlist. That is not the behavior I want. Yes, I listen to that playlist a lot, but when I'm not listening to that playlist, I'm trying to find new music. It seems really obvious that that would be the expected behavior, to me at least.

This has a lot to do with your present listening habits, unfortunately. 7 years in, I still get new stuff in discover weekly, though there are also a good deal of repeats which are frankly "discoveries" as far as Spotify is concerned, but nothing new from my perspective. Basically, Spotify is also recommending I listen to stuff I used to listen to a lot before I started using it (and could therefore afford to listen to more than just whatever was loaded on my phone at the time)...

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