Vote: Algorithmically imprisoned?! Have auto-generated playlists changed the way you listen to music?

[DanielT]

In my case, yes. A while ago on my Spotify, a new list: Indie Mix. A playlist generated, I assume, a bit of what I listen to and similar music, songs I haven't played that were automatically added to that list. At the moment, that's the list I listen to the most. Really fun discovering songs you haven't heard or haven't listened to in a long time.

Indie Mix

Indie Mix · Playlist · 50 songs

open.spotify.com

 

[Turambar]

No.

 

[Hayabusa]

Yes, totally!

 

[Petevid]

It's replaced listening to the radio a bit by that I mean having a list playing in the background whilst doing something else. For serious listening I still tend to select the artist I want to listen to but this can be influenced by tracks I've heard in an auto generated play list. So yes.

 

[DanielT]

Poll added.Note only Yes and No options. No more answer options. You can further explain your answer in the if you wish. If it is in some sort of gray area, that is.

Damn, I think this is interesting. How to listen to music.

 

[Sal1950]

No, not at all.
I only use streaming to preview new releases (some old too) that I read about on the web

 

[antcollinet]

No - unless you count the radio paradise stream which is about 70 % of my listening currently. But that is not auto generated.

 

[SIY]

It's replaced listening to the radio a bit by that I mean having a list playing in the background whilst doing something else. For serious listening I still tend to select the artist I want to listen to but this can be influenced by tracks I've heard in an auto generated play list. So yes.

Ditto. For long drives or solo hiking, I let Amazon do the choosing, and I've discovered people I hadn't known before.

In my listening room, I do all the selection.

 

[DanielT]

No - unless you count the radio paradise stream which is about 70 % of my listening currently. But that is not auto generated.

Internet radio is also one of my big sources of listening.

BUT why not let algorithms and AI (whatever AI is defined as) shower you music, songs you didn't know you liked? What is predicted that you will like and maybe you will like it? Or is it a little about free will? No algorithm, AI to come here and mess with my free will?

Okay, of course there is a disadvantage. Algorithm/ AI generated, shaped music lists, which sounds pretty much the same (if they sort by theme as I mentioned in the initial post), BUT it's not like that's the only thing you need to listen to. You can vary. It's just another part of the music you can listen to.

 

[antcollinet]

BUT why not let algorithms and AI (whatever AI is defined as) shower you music, songs you didn't know you liked?

Because it can only be based on what i already like. So I risk getting locked on to a narrow range of styles. The advantage of RP is it exposes me to a wider range of music, some of which I dislike, but some of which is amazing.

 

[JeremyFife]

No
Background listening is mainly radio: BBC 6 Music keeps me happy, informed and occasionally challenged
Other than that I choose based on my own library or on recommendations and reviews

 

[Jimbob54]

Only recently yes. The varous my mix /my discovery mix on amazon, my daily discovery on tidal and weekly discovery on Spotify have been a good source of discovery for me. Sufficiently diverse to not bore me though the daily Amazon My Mix does tend to get too genre /style specific but at least that changes daily.

Though I can't abide the genre/artist based mixes that litter all these services. Why would anyone want to play 30 tracks in a row that sound like Artist X?

 

[computer-audiophile]

No, it's so stupid!
If I take Deezer's algorithm: it thinks I have very simple tastes.

 

[DanielT]

Because it can only be based on what i already like. So I risk getting locked on to a narrow range of styles. The advantage of RP is it exposes me to a wider range of music, some of which I dislike, but some of which is amazing.

BUT it can also be nice. You don't have to force yourself to listen to, for example, atonal music just for the sake of it.

Comfort food, Comfort music.

 

[Jimbob54]

Because it can only be based on what i already like. So I risk getting locked on to a narrow range of styles. The advantage of RP is it exposes me to a wider range of music, some of which I dislike, but some of which is amazing.

Not sure anyone should just use these types of playlist as their only source of listening and discovery for the reason you state, plus they can get boring quickly.

But as a way of finding artists /tracks you might like but have never encountered I've had decent results lately.

The the services do need a reasonably diverse range of "likes" from me to deliver something useful (I have around 7000 albums favourited across a reasonably wide range of music). I can imagine if I only listened to and liked (for eg)90s Britpop my generated playlists would be depressing indeed!

 

[eddantes]

Absolutely!

Most of my music listening now is a constant discovery trek. I still have some "favourites" from the last 50 years of being a music fiend, but I seldom return to them. Some of my favourite music of old - 70s Rock - almost never gets a spin.

My "favourites" playlist grows about 5 songs per week, and is the playlist that gets used while I bike or drive (the key being that I don't need to interact with it). Otherwise, most of my listening is via the Dicover Weekly, Release Radar and then a random scowering of the music landscape. While I too worry about being algorithmically imprisoned, I don't deny it the opportunity to suprise me. I do counter it, by enforcing serendipity - even if it means only giving a song 20 seconds before I move on. Once I do find a song I don't mind - it get's added to the favourites list. Once there, if I notice that I wan't to skip it - it may eventually get pruned. Thus the favourites list is not simply an evergrowing list, but something that represents the contemporary me with whisps of my history.

 

[DanielT]

It might be a bigger question than I thought. What is narrow musical taste? Listen to more or less the same, whatever that means vs a wide intake of music styles, whatever that means?

I do not know. It goes in waves for me, what and how I listen. To be honest, I rarely listen to new pop music. I guess I'm a conservative fart, but I don't know. I just experience new pop music as ..boring...same. As Rick Beato thinks:

 

[DanielT]

.... algorithmically imprisoned, I don't deny it the opportunity to suprise me. I do counter it, by enforcing serendipity - even if it means only giving a song 20 seconds before I move on. Once I do find a song I don't mind - it get's added to the favourites list. Once there, if I notice that I wan't to skip it - it may eventually get pruned. Thus the favourites list is not simply an evergrowing list, but something that represents the contemporary me with whisps of my history.

Superbly described. I added it to the title of the thread.

 

[AnalogSteph]

Amazon Music's auto-suggestions after my music have finished playing seem to be very US-centric. Not terribly good IME, even if I have come across some decent stuff this way.

 

[Jimbob54]

Amazon Music's auto-suggestions after my music have finished playing seem to be very US-centric. Not terribly good IME, even if I have come across some decent stuff this way.

The "best" auto playlist they give me is "My Discovery Mix" which is a weekly 25 track weekly selection of things they think I will like. I tend to recognise around half of the tracks/ artists on the list but it reflects my tastes . Interested to hear from you how "good" your version of that is.