Spotify needs to adjust their playlist radio algorithm in order to better suit what users want out of their radio.
So I've generated quite a few different playlist radios during my time on Spotify, and they all have one massive problem: the algorithm suggests songs based on the artists in the playlist i'm drawing upon, as well as the "other people have this song in their playlist" process. This is a problem because most of the playlists I'm turning into radio are being turned into a playlist radio, as I'm trying to find music that sounds similar to what's in the playlist.
This is not what happens. Instead of getting similar-sounding music, or even music remotely of the same feel and emotion, I get music that might be from similar artists or similar general genres, but music that sounds way off. It's jarring to be listening to a chill electronic song and all of the playlist radio is just hard trap.
On the flipside, the "recommended songs" feature for each playlist has the opposite problem. It recommends songs that sound too similar, to the point of that they'll fall completely out of the genre of music I'm going for.
My example is this: I have a playlist. It's rather small, but I'm trying to find more songs in the same vein as it. The songs are all chill electronic songs (think of Haywyre, WRLD, or Grant Bowtie). The Playlist radio that was generated was basically all trap and breakbeat (lots of Snavs, Urbanstep, and Au5), which is nowhere near the kind of music I had in the original playlist. The "Recommended Songs" is mostly slow, chill, indie acoustic pop (from artists I've never listened to and a general genre I don't want in my playlist), which matches the pace and feel of the music I want, but misses on the type of music.
TL;DR
Spotify should adjust their algorithms for recommending music in their playlist radio feature (or add a new algorithm) that recommends music based on the musical quality, sound, feel, and style, as opposed to algorithms that generate music based off of fascially similar artists and disrupt the auditory aesthetic I'm trying to get out of my playlists.
