Pimping your Musical Algorithm

I’m a YouTube Premium Music listener and am finding that lately my music algorithm is a bit….samey.

How do you encourage it to delve deeper and wider?

I listen to a lot of roots reggae and dub, old school hip-hop, ‘Bristol sound’, a lot of American Hardcore punk and British punk etc, but really it just seems to rotate the same handful of well known songs when really there is an enormous back catalogue of these artists plus all of the related music you’d think would be available.

I can set it going playing an artist radio, but it really only ever seems to play a handful of songs from that actual artist.
I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve heard Tv Party and Slip it in by Black Flag now… 😂

Do you steer your algorithms in some way?
I thought that streaming might widen my listening horizons but really it seems to be limiting them.

I want to give it an artist I know, for it to introduce me to some that I don’t. It’s not particularly.

Let your nine year old daughter choose some music on it. Also play her pop music from your childhood, add in some novelty pirate metal and convince yourself you can learn German by listening to German language hiphop.

My Spotify is very confused.

Do you steer your algorithms in some way?

IME, for all that the IA is going to take over the world, and we’re all going to be relegated to become batteries for our electric overloads; they are very simple…The Algorithm is based on what you and everyone else wo listens to that band is playing. So blame your peers, or the band – Either everyone who listens to that band are also playing the same 5 tracks as you, or the band has no other popular songs.

Create playlists it’s the only way to be sure.

Let your nine year old daughter choose some music on it.

That’s another thing. There ought to be a setting where you can play something and not have it include it in your future algorithm.

Going on a long drive I might put on some Taylor Swift and J-Lo for my girlfriend. That DOES NOT mean that I want to spend the next month listening to Shake it off at work! 😂
(Although secretly, Shake it off is awesome)

This was where the previous app (Play Music) was way better than YouTube music. YOu could start with a song, and within 4 or 5 songs a couple of new/lesser well known songs would appear. Leave a playlist running for a couple of hours and I would often find entirely new artists to me that I had never heard of, but really liked.

YouTube music is more like the ‘Now that’s what I call Music’ of streaming…

I don’t know if youtube allows it, but on spotify my algorithm is improving having done a fair few discord listening partied with my work colleagues. Opens my ears to new music and when I start liking them the algorithm wakes up and throws more stuff at me.

I sort of have the same issue, though it’s of sameness within genres on YT Music. I have eclectic taste but have found the same issue as you that if I launch a radio off say, Tom Waits’ “I Hope I Don’t Fall In Love…” then it will default to the same 20ish, similarish songs that are already on my likes, followed by a fair amount of dross. For some reason the Talking Heads radio lists are very good though.

One thing that has helped is listening to some of the pre-prepared playlists on the app, which has massively expanded my appreciation of modern hiphop and got me out of my 1992 to 2002 rut. These have now been added to my Likes list and made the rap algorithms more interesting. Definitely recommend that if you’re into your old school!

Cheers.
I’ll give it a go.

I’m trying to actively thumbs up things I’ve not heard but like, but as I say, it doesn’t seem to go that far from my initial choice.

Bugger algorithms! It’s the same buying CD’s from Amazon; “you’ve previously bought this, so you might like these”, followed by a list of artists works that I either have, or would never buy. I go by things I hear on 6Music that are new to me and which I Shazam, reviews in Uncut Magazine, and music articles that pop up on Flipboard.

Which I then download on Apple Music. Then I’ll often check for other artists or bands associated with those I’ve downloaded, which quite often takes me down some interesting rabbit-holes, leading to music I’ve never heard of and probably would never have discovered otherwise.

Just one example was a track Ezra Furman played a little while ago, when he was standing in for Guy Garvey, and I was in the car. I remembered the name, Japanese Breakfast, so checked them out, and I really like them. I doubt I’d have ever come across them otherwise.

Stop playing me Black Coffee by Black Flag ffs!!!

They have an enormous back catalogue and yet I STILL only get about two songs of theirs.

YouTube music sucks! 😡