That moment when Spotify's Discover Weekly pushed a song I actually hated for the 5th time

It hit me last Tuesday morning during my commute. I kept skipping this one track by an artist I never liked, but the algorithm kept shoving it at me because apparently "people who like X also like Y." Then I realized I'd been training the algorithm wrong for months by letting autoplay run instead of hitting skip immediately. How many other bad recommendations am I accidentally reinforcing by being too lazy to take 2 seconds to thumbs down stuff?

3 comments

3 Comments

piperbailey3d agoMost Upvoted

I mean, I think you might be overthinking it a little. The algorithm doesn't really learn from skipping that much, it's more about what you actually listen to all the way through. You could probably just thumbs down the track once and it'll get the hint.

vera_robinson362d ago

Oh goodness, I have to disagree with you there @piperbailey , I've found skipping definitely trains the algorithm!

vera_johnson93d ago

But doesn't skipping a song over and over send some kind of signal too? @piperbailey , I feel like if you let autoplay run, the algorithm thinks "oh they let this play, they must kinda like it." I've had the same thing happen where a band I can't stand kept popping up because I'd leave it on in the background while doing dishes. Now I'm way more aggressive with the thumbs down and even go into my listening history to delete plays of stuff I hate. It's annoying but it actually helped clean up my recommendations after a week or two.