The reason I'm cancelling...

[rickcr]

Spotify is fine if all you want to do is create playlists from music you want to look up and add.

However, I'm one of those users that wants to start building my playlist and my likes based on picking an artist and then finding related music. This is where Spotify has been absolutely horrible for me, compared to other services such as Slacker and Pandora, and I've been working with a family Spotify membership giving it an honest whirl.

Here was my test... I like 3rd wave ska stuff and some related melodious punk type of stuff.  I start a radio station with Reel Big Fish figuring that would be a good start. With Spotify I end up with basically the same 5 artists over and over again. I don't dislike the artists since I want them to play, but it rarely plays anything from other artists. Yet, if I start the same station with Slacker or Amazon Music I'm immediately provided with music from a much broader range.   

On a recent trip my wife tried the same thing, seeding a station with a poular artist Adele, and again it was the same few artists over and over again.

I went with spotify since I know they have a huge library of artists, but unless I want to spend the time picking them all, it's just not that great for my needs. Has anyone else noticed a similar thing when wanting to use Spotify primarily as a way to find similar artists starting off with a station?

[Leo]

Hey @rickcr,

Welcome to the Community!

Thanks for the constructive feedback - we appreciate it and will make sure it reaches the right folks. Have you taken a look at the Discover section? Just head to Browse > Discover. Here you'll find your Discover Weekly playlist, Top Recommendations, and loads more music based on your listening behaviour.

Let us know what you think 🙂

All the best,

Leo

[rickcr]

@Leo Thanks Leo for your response but unfortunately that doesn't help.. since it's a chicken and the egg problem: How do I get "listening behavior" if I can't get a station based on an artist to start playing some different music for me to "select" in order to start establishing some songs within a genre?

    On top of this, the disocvery seems to work acorss ALL my music, which isn't what I'd want. Sometimes I'm in the mood for mellow/chill music, other times I have my 'gym music' (faster/harder stuff.) I basically want to start liking more music within those individual genres when I'm trying to listen to a station based on that type of music.

    My suggestion would be to allow it work like Slacker or Pandora in the sense that you can seed the concept of "discovery" based on any initial artist that you want.  Currently, you only have the concept of radio stations based on certain artists, and on top of that, as I pointed out using the band Reel Big Fish as an example, the algorithm doesn't branch out far enough in disocvery from the initial artist.

    I do understand that for starting out picking music up front, Spotify is great, it's just weaker than I'd like when starting from a 'station based on an artist' concept. Hopefully that'll change and get better and I'll come back and revisit Spotify.

[Leo]

@rickcr That's no problem. You should be able to kick-start your recommendations by manually listening around the areas you're looking to discover - although you're right; the recommendations will be influenced by the different genres, but not categorized in to them. It's a great idea, you should add it here in the Community. We'll make sure this reaches the right eyes and ears. Thanks for all the info 🙂 

All the best,

Leo