Radio Feature - Recent Algorithm Change?

[ymn83]

Hi,

I listen to Spotify's "Radio based on an Artist" feature everyday and I've noticed within the past few days that only the Artist I select will play on the Radio station, rather than multiple artists similar to whom I've chosen.  For example, I was listening to Black Sabbath yesterday and instead of playing similar artists, it was playing songs only from the Black Sabbath catalog.  It did the same when I tried a Smashing Pumpkins station.  Which is fine, but I can just go to the Artist page and play those songs by turning shuffle on.

The radio was more varied up to a few days ago, so I was wondering if this is a bug or a change that you've made to the algorithm.  If the latter, I think people would prefer to have it as it was before, at least I do, because it allowed me to discover new songs/albums by different artists.

Thanks,

Yaseen

[ellecsor]

I am experiencing the same thing.  I have created a station based on an artist, let's use Justin Timberlake, for example.  The station is playing 99% JT only with some random song here and there by some completely unrelated artist.  Radio was not like this previously.  I definitely feel like my Spotify Premium is going to a waste...going back to using Pandora in the mean time..

[ckugo]

It appears that mine is now working properly. Thank you very much @SpotifyCares.  I hope all of the others on this thread are taken care of now as well.  

[Jdb]

I'm also getting the random unrelated artists mixed in with all of my artist based stations. Mostly unrelated classical music, mostly foreign language stuff as well. No more Spotify until fixed.

[flyonthewall]

What happened to the radio algorhythm? It wasn't great, but it was good enough until about a month ago.

My radio stations now don't play random songs at all, they play a crappy unrelated playlist.

Jamiroquai radio station always starts out with: 

 - Virtual Insanity by Jamiroquai

 - Kiss From a Rosa by Seal

 - Superstition by Stevie Wonder

 - Holding Back The Years by Simply Red

 - In The Waiting Line by Zero 7

 - September by Earth, Wind & Fire

 - Canned Heat by Jamiroquai

Half of those aren't even what I'd call related!

Same thing with every one of my stations, they're just crappy playlists. It used to be that when I wanted music like Hyper, I'd get random songs in the same style and genre. Now I just get the same old songs every single time. 

The radio station was one of the best features of Spotify! Now it's just really annoying.

[Joe]

I'm wondering if they've been tinkering behind the scenes following the acquisition of echonest. Hopefully things will settle down eventually but it might be worth trying to create a new playlist radio station to see if it works any better.

[dinomight]

Interestingly enough, my artist stations are generally better at the moment, although I still get the occasional totally unrelated artist thrown in. Playlist based stations are more reliable for sure. I agree this probably is related to EchoNest experimentation. I hope in the end it will lead to radio being better than ever.

[ckugo]

I was having this issue for about a week. Then worked with @SpotifyCares and now mine is better than it ever has been. Playing excellent genre based and related music. Not sure what they did, but it worked.

[Twinkie]

My radio is doing weird stuff.

Started a radio at "Pariah" from Dredg, which is roughly soft/alternative rock and after a few songs it started playing all kinds of rock and even metal or death metal songs that I do listen to in other playlists but I don't want to hear stuff like Alter Bridge, Devil Driver or Mudvayne when I intented to create a radio for way softer alternative rock.

I feel like whatever the algorithm does deviates too far from the starting song. Sometimes it's not that bad but I now have the before mentioned radio that started at Pariah by Dredg and went into Death Metal in less than an hour and I have another radio which I started with the song Don't Know Why by Norah Jones and sometimes it just randomly mixes in stuff like "I'm sexy and I know it" which is nowhere close to anything Norah Jones has ever produced.

Also radios started with songs that to me are very distinctly different like "White Knuckles" by Alter Bridge and "Age of Rage" by Corroded at some point become like 50%+ the same or have too much stuff in there that also deviates too far from the original song/genre.

[andyj]

The radio part of spotify is broken. I have an eclectic mix of jazz, hip hop, electo and the odd rock and when I start a radio station based on this playlist I get the same electro artists as I would if I was to start a radio station based on one of the electro artists in the list. Even after I have thumbs downed music I absolutely hate, it keeps getting repeated in the radio station!!!??$$&*^

[wahoo650]

I've been noticing strange stuff happening with radio as well. For example, "Alison" by Slowdive always comes up 2nd or 3rd on my My Bloody Valentine, Drop Nineteens, and Ride radio stations (It's a great song, but still), "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is always first played on my Dinosaur Jr. station, and "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards" by Tame Impala seems to find its way into a lot of my radio stations. Before, I would get less popular songs by bands like Pale Saints, No Joy, and Tamaryn on these stations, but now I feel like it's just playing the top song from each band in that artist's related tab for some reason.

I feel like it is better than it was a few weeks ago though (my Drop Nineteens station now plays other artists than only Drop Nineteens), so hopefully there's progress being made 🙂

[smlashells]

First, I have thumbed down every the postal service song that comes onto my radios and they still continue to play them and way too often at that.
Secondly, my radios are starting to suck overall. I have stations from completely different genres playing the same music. Over and over.
Third, I've been using Spotify forever and the radios have never been this bad.
Finally, could resetting my accounts history help this problem at all and how can I go about doing that.

[Joe]

Hi. They've been working on the radio algorithms lately and it should be much better now. Why not try popping 200 tracks into a playlist and start a new playlist radio station from it. See if that works better for you?

[kc22033]

I've noticed that the Country genre radio channel has a strong aversion to female artists. I don't have a strong listening preference for male or female artists, but it is bad enough that I've taken to giving a "thumbs-up" to every female artist track, simply because they are so rare!

[devilfirestar]

'Radio based on Artist' used to be my favorite Spotify feature. Tottally spot on genre wise for each artist and has lead me to discovering some great new music. But it just took a total nose dive in the last week and now just seems to play stuff that is related to my entire listening history, regardless of what artist I start with. Not at all what I'm looking for. Hope it gets fixed soon because right now it's not worth the subscripton fee.

[Crisu65]

Perhaps not in the right section but how do I ensure that a song I have selected as "thumbs down" doesn't reappear again and again and again. Does the algorithm not exclude someting given repeated "thumbs down" too? How can I avoid this?

I'm new to the forum so forgive me if this is in the wrong place. Maybe it's me but I found posting a topic difficult. Perhaps that is by design. Also as a paid subscriber is this the best I can hope for when it comes to support for this app? As you can probably tell I'm a little frustrated by this "feature" and limited if not existant support.

[Fred]

Hi @Crisu65 and welcome to the community.

Unfortunately it does seem that even though a track is thumbed down, it will reappear.
You may want to give your support to this idea about blocking songs that have been disliked:
http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Remove-quot-Disliked-quot-Songs-From-Radio/idi-p/67557...

[ymn83]

OK, I just played the artist radio based on Apoptygma Berzerk (Synthpop) and the radio played 1) Kings of Leon (Alt. Rock) & 2) Iggy Azalea (Hip-Hop) 3) Broken Bells (Indie Rock) & 4) Bad Meets Evil (Hip-Hop).

Yes, something is definitely wrong.  I am sure Spotify is working on it, but such a wide variance in selection is disturbing.  The algorithms must be really messed up to have this happen in this fashion.

[photoplayer]

I have the same issue this week. For instance, I play the Social Network radio that I created and so much rap music (often from the same unknown artist) keeps popping up. OR silly girl guitars songs. This used to be a great station but it's ALL over the place now. That's not the only radio I have that's having this prob, it seems to be all of them. It seems they all have multilpe personality disorders. . 

[tkla]

I have the same issue.  I always "thumbs down" Postal Service, yet they keep feeding them back to me 10 minutes later.  In addition, no matter what radio station I listen to, or what artist I choose, they keep feeding me the same 'hit" songs.  It seems out of the 20 million songs they have, I'm only allowed about 30.

When I first logged on to Spotify it was great - it was discovering odd songs from Spain and Eastern Europe for me.  No more.  Even those songs I "thumbs upped" in the past are not playing for me anymore.  Everything now is familiar western "name brand" artists.  I appear to now be restricted to lyrics in English.  It's more like "top 40" radio.

[Brebos]

Okay so I created a fresh station for Wolves at the Gate, a hardcore band. The first song is a Wolves song, then Justin Bieber. 6 songs in, it's a Zedd song. Are you guys getting paid to randomly insert pop songs in all radio stations?