topic Re: Sorting hat gone, any alternative around? in Content Questions

Sorting hat gone, any alternative around?

muumel — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 15:59:17 GMT

Hello all,

I'm sucker for last friday (or week) releases, of which all used to be somewhat satisfyingly grouped to genres here http://everynoise.com/spotify_new_releases.html. Anything the app seems to deliver, or anything that is left on everynoise.com is not enough for me.

Is there any viable or even better alternative around?

Genres I used to check from sorting hat were:

hard alternative
heavy alternative
gymcore
hardcore
screamo
hard rock
~~retro electro~~
~~irish~~
~~celtic~~
~~southern rock~~
~~rockism~~
metal
~~modern rock~~
~~americana~~
~~industrial~~
~~ebm~~
~~country~~

Anything overwritten I cannot find anymore, and it takes a lot more time to explore those left.

What sorting hat was lacking was option to artist to select the genre their music is on (from a checkbox list), and really, an algorithm...well, algorithm would use samples from unknown music and somewhat successfully to group it into correct genre, to be a real algorithm.

Re: Sorting hat gone, any alternative around?

mosohodPeti — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 16:25:08 GMT

Hey there @muumel!
I think posting this in Playlist Exchange would get you more useful responses!
You can find that board here: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Playlist-Exchange/bd-p/moodplaylists

Re: Sorting hat gone, any alternative around?

dmclovin32 — Thu, 28 Mar 2019 01:35:27 GMT

Super angry about this that I'm now considering canceling my Premium subscription.

It was one of the best ways to actually discover new artists outside of the mainstream playlists and the algorithms - and Spotify, as usual, decides to kill a killer feature for no good reason whatsoever.

Is there ANY way at this point to see all new releases in a week? We pay for access to the library, and Sorting Hat was the only way to see what was actually added to that library each week.

Re: Sorting hat gone, any alternative around?

glenn_mcdonald — Thu, 28 Mar 2019 05:45:14 GMT

Hey, hang in there and bear with me a bit, I may have more news...

glenn (maker of the Sorting Hat)

Re: Sorting hat gone, any alternative around?

kikajon — Thu, 28 Mar 2019 15:09:50 GMT

Hi there

I discovered also today that the "sorting hat" is gone

It was very useful to find fresh music every week

So far I didn't found any other way to discover new music than this tool since pansentient.com gone in 2016

Will follow this thread to see what's happening next

Re: Sorting hat gone, any alternative around?

RenegadeParty — Fri, 29 Mar 2019 05:29:38 GMT

Big fan of the sorting hat. Been using it for a couple months now. Keep us posted ❤️

Re: Sorting hat gone, any alternative around?

jackory — Fri, 29 Mar 2019 13:29:57 GMT

The Sorting Hat is not Spotify's to kill, as it was created and maintained by Glenn McDonald.

Re: Sorting hat gone, any alternative around?

Kurtek — Fri, 29 Mar 2019 13:57:54 GMT

Hi there,

I panicked myself this morning as I'm using it every Friday to track all the noteworthy new releases the Spotify algorithms decided to hide from me. It would be a great shame for this tool to disappear and it's my only window out of the bubble.

Thank you, Glenn for bringing it to us! Looking forward to the new beginning!

Cheers,

Kurtek

Re: Sorting hat gone, any alternative around?

glenn_mcdonald — Fri, 29 Mar 2019 18:32:33 GMT

There's a new incarnation of this, now, at:

http://everynoise.com/new_releases_by_genre.cgi

(refresh the old link for a little big of explanation)

Re: Sorting hat gone, any alternative around?

dmclovin32 — Fri, 29 Mar 2019 20:54:19 GMT

It's back! And better than ever. Thanks Glenn. Spotify is lucky to have you.

Re: Sorting hat gone, any alternative around?

kikajon — Sat, 30 Mar 2019 06:51:25 GMT

Great !!!

Re: Sorting hat gone, any alternative around?

muumel — Sun, 31 Mar 2019 12:04:57 GMT

Hello, thanks Glenn for the new version, it's almost perfect. You truely are a legend.

To understand:I search for certain genre, add a song link to spotify app, and use app back-button to listen every added song, or at least some bits of it, rather than clicking the image (sorting hat was fine until maybe 2016, but then it started to be too slow), or the artist (which now seems to do something that interferes the systematic browsing of the site)

What are different font color meanings now? Orange/blue?

While the sorting hat grouped releases under several genres, this one repeats the release under every genre the artists musical style is.

To be better:

clicked ("greyed out") spotify song links could have more distinctive colours.
clicked links state could be saved to a cookie, so when visiting the site later after e.g rebooting the computer, the clicked and hopefully listened songs state could be seen again.

I'm not sure yet but it seems that "greyed out" spotify links are randomly selected.

Country dropdown menu; I quess this is related copyrights, e.g. publisher has limited certain releses/artist only to be listened in USA, Is this correct?

Re: Sorting hat gone, any alternative around?

glenn_mcdonald — Sun, 31 Mar 2019 14:06:15 GMT

Right, the country chooser is to match up availability with your Spotify account. The old one was US centric, which is bad when things come out in different places on different dates, or not at all.

And yes, the genre clustering approach is different in this one. It's trying to be more accurate, and better support targeted desires. If you look at a specific genre, the orange ones in the "similar genres" are the ones that aren't in the root genre.

Gray means the artist's relationship to the genre is more peripheral or questionable.

Clicking an artist shows you all the genres they appear in.

Re: Sorting hat gone, any alternative around?

muumel — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 15:34:36 GMT

Could we have the old sorting hat back as an option?

With same font colors as this one

I find this one too heavy to explore

Re: Sorting hat gone, any alternative around?

glenn_mcdonald — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 16:33:01 GMT

Forward, not back!

What do you mean by "too heavy"?

Re: Sorting hat gone, any alternative around?

Soundofus — Fri, 12 Apr 2019 18:29:19 GMT

@glenn_mcdonald

The new one is perfect. Don't change anything. That's my record store now 🙂

twitter.com/soundofus

www.soundofus.com

Re: Sorting hat gone, any alternative around?

muumel — Thu, 18 Apr 2019 17:44:19 GMT

Heavy, because there are swedish/canadian/uk americana

Hey, what about an option to remove country prefix

I found a way for that initial heavy by "hide duplicates" but it applies only to selected genre and similar genres.

a cookie for each friday releases that saves all the clicked releases, and reads it after revisit and hides duplicates, if it is clicked, how about that?