Nov 11, 2025, 9:36 PMThe algorithm failed music.
Music recommendation algorithms were supposed to help us cut through the noise, but they just served us up slop. Spotify leadership didn't see themselves as a music company, but as a time filler. The employee explained...
https://jwz.org/b/ykxT
@jwz As someone that made a career out of building recommendation algorithms, this completely tracks. When I started I naïvely thought discovery was important. Even the PMs talk about excitement and discovery. But the metrics are always a time spent or something analogous. Which isn’t wrong per se, but reinforces the problem with similarity based recommendations, you play it safe and recommend the same six things over and over again.
Now I look at recommendation algorithms for what they are: checkbox driven requirement no one cares about.
Trust me. More people at Spotify care about their annoying AI drive-time DJ than making your “Daily Mix” playlist have something than same six bands that were popular in 2011.
@jwz do you know how fucking insulting it is when they say "here are your forgotten favorites" like bitch, it's because you make me have to explicitly pull them up otherwise
@jwz I recently complained to Spotify support that my Weekly playlist included obvious AI slop from fake "artists". Support person told me I was wrong, the (obviously fake artist with an AI pic and no presence elsewhere on the internet) was "verified" and therefore legit.
@jwz Just spent a couple of hours with Spotify because someone generated a bunch of songs and linked them to my band account, Spotify didn't send that interested in stopping the practice, but they did say they'll remove the albums from my artist page🤷
@jwz yeah this tracks
I like nu metal but that doesn't mean I wanna listen to the same 10 lp songs on loop, yt music