Can anyone recommend a music discovery service that isn't garbage? I fled to Spotify from Pandora because it kept recommending me the exact same songs, but now Spotify does basically the same thing.
In the age of machine learning, I'm really surprised there aren't superhuman music recommendation algorithms. Or maybe there are, and these algorithms simply don't serve the corporate interests. But then where are the open-source alternatives?
Recommending new material involves risk. Once these companies go big and mature, they hate risk. They hate risk in hiring (taking a chance in people) and they certainly hate risk in algorithms.
I still pay for Spotify, but nowadays 99% of my music consumption are local FM radios, plus mainstream webradios [radioParadise, FIP, BBC6, NTS]. I sometimes Shazam things, but rarely have the time to listen them back on Spotify.
My attention time is limited by other things [:those stupid real-life stuff every normal person was praising in the old times: kids, family, work, burnout, failing cars, gardenning. And sleep!]
And doing that at scale across hundreds of millions of users quickly becomes prohibitively expensive. So companies simplify, and reach for simpler solutions, unfortunately.
In the age of machine learning, I'm really surprised there aren't superhuman music recommendation algorithms. Or maybe there are, and these algorithms simply don't serve the corporate interests. But then where are the open-source alternatives?