Spotify & "Song Radio" is Essentially Just an Echo Chamber & Doesn't Breed Discovery

[cawul]

This hasn't always been the case, and I don't know if this has to do with the amount of time I've had my Spotify account or if something about the algorithm has drastically changed - but whenever I start a radio based off a song or artist (which is with the intention to find a NEW artist or NEW music that is related to the song/artist I'm starting the radio off of) it just creates essentially a playlist of music I've been listening to - and not even within the same genre off the song.

I've realized that I haven't found any new artists or any new music, and just continuously listen to the same things over and over again which is quite depressing. The point of the song radio or at least how I use it is to discover new artists that are in the same realm of the artist I'm listening to, and I think you all at Spotify are putting everyone - artist AND listener - at a huge detrimental disadvantage by having it go that way because then there is no discovery for new artists and there is no way for listeners to get into new music without scouring the platform instead of giving good recommendations based off your algorithm. More than anything I want to be able to discover new artists based off song radio, not just hear the same songs I've been listening to. If I wanted to listen to those songs, I would just continue to listen to them. Especially since maybe when I start a song radio off something that is midwest-emo/indie, it'll still play hyperpop/rap in the same playlist which are two completely different genre's and moods.

[cawul]

.

[CxNNAMON]

Oh my god, this. It drives me insane. The Go to Radio feature has such great potential, but as of now it's mostly useless and I find myself barely ever using it. Half of the playlist are songs I already know/saved to My Library, and I'd have nothing against that if they would sound remotely similar or at least be of the same genre. I am BEGGING; please fix this! It's making searching for music similar to an individual track/album super inconvenient.

[mphoa]

I’ve noticed this issue with the Spotify Stations app as well. The radios in the Spotify and Spotify Stations app do not breed discovery. They don’t show me similar but unfamiliar songs. Instead they play the same set of songs over and over that I have already heard before. None of them seem similar to the artist that the radio is made for, at all. Pandora plays the user music that is similar to the artist but is unfamiliar to the user. Please Spotify, do something about this!

[cody2000]

Solid recommendations was one of the main reasons I moved to Spotify. I've used that to convince quite a few other people to switch to Spotify. Not sure when this changed or why, but it's definitely made the listening experience worse.

[AntiCliche]

Let's clarify the issues, which overlap:

1. genre-jumping
2. too many current user's liked songs
3. can't block songs (skip not effective enough, and doesn't necessarily mean dislike)
4. songs from related artists too globally popular
5. repeat plays

Radio as continuous discovery is ruined. If I have to scramble to skip Braxton Cook's "When You Hold Me" one more time...

[NameNotAvailable]

This partly has to do with the Spotify recommendation system, which isn't good at all. It has very strange ideas to which genre(s) an artist should be counted and who might be a similar artist.

And there's something else to the latter one: Spotify distinguishes artists by name which becomes a HUGE problem when there's multiple artists with identical names in vastly different genres and you try to build a recommendation playlist/radio from it. I guess people start to complain about recommendations they get and so the algorithm is program to not really give these at all...

I've had an idea on here to create artist IDs instead of going by name which imho would help a lot with recommendations and would also better the problem discussed here.

[ANiceGuy]

Wait so are the people I'm following on Spotify actually listening to the song radio showing up in their status? Because I'm gonna assume that the song that is playing as part of their song radio status is not actually what they're listening to because somehow it has the same song as in my own playlist... And I'm not convinced they are really listening to that particular song radio playlist...

[lsdc]

This could be some form of "spooky action at a distance" ?
Our listening states have become entangled....
😉

[FlyingSwitz]

Are we still getting support for this issue? It's been almost a year since this was brought up. I started a radio today and of the 30 or so songs that show up, over half of them were songs I've already "liked". I don't want to hear the songs I've already liked when I start up a radio station. I can't find any new music due to this.

[AzaruMintos]

I'm so tired of this as well. This used to be my favorite feature some years ago but now it's just annoying. It makes me hate the songs I actually liked 'cause Spotify is overplaying them, and it's sad. I don't remember when was the last time I actually discovered something from 'Radios' or 'Discover' playlists, and back in 2019 it was the main way for me to find new music which was the reason I loved Spotify so much. Now I use other music platforms just for better discover algorithms and that's so weird... I hope this issue will be solved 'cause today I turned off the autoplay feature and not gonna use radios anymore.

[shaig16]

я буду жаловаться!