Prevent algorithm echo-chambers with generated playlists

[Anntie]

Playlists like the automatically generated "discover weekly" are meant to help users discover new songs based on their data-profile: something old, something new, and some wild guesses to spice it up - i guess. I used to love the combination, and have been auto-downloading it for years. The playlists were usually spot on and great to have on your phone when you need something to listen to on the way to work but can't decide what to pick. Now, I'm not sure what happened - a reset of the cache on my part, or that the new library-feature was introduced later on (that means after the weekly playlists have been running smooth for a while), but here's what happened: For some reason, there was one Bollywood song in my discover weekly. Idk if I listened to it, I had a rough time and didn't check in to spotify that often for a while. But the algorithm registered the automatic download of this specific song as a "like". I guess there were some more Bollywood-songs in the next playlist, which my digital self also eagerly downloaded. Fast forward to today, where all my weekly playlists consist of Bollywood songs when I never even consciously listened to any of them. I miss my old discover weekly playlists! So my recommendation to prevent this from happening is that downloads of auto-generated playlists don't factor in on their own algorithm. Maybe downloads in general should not have an influence on the dataset: I often download new albums to check out later on the go, and since the update (idk when, some time ago lol) I was super annoyed to find them added to my library even when i removed the download. Same with audiobooks - They get treated as a music-genre and we end up with random chapters in our weekly playlists because we dowloaded some stories.

I could be wrong and there might be another reason for this issue, but since logging out on all devices, resetting my pw and deleting the cache didn't help and none of the friendly people in tech support were able to help me, there must be something to it.

[Joan]

Updated on 2024-03-18

Hey @Anntie,

We’re closing this idea since it doesn’t meet one of our Idea Exchange guidelines, namely point 5:“Making sure your idea is clear”.

At this point, we don’t have enough information regarding what you'd like to see implemented. Your description is not focused and specific enough for the feature you want implemented. Please focus only on what feature you'd like to see and how this should be implemented, describing that in a short but clear and concise manner.

Feel free to submit a new idea - just make sure to familiarize yourself with the above guidelines.

Thanks for understanding.