Why I Finally Quit Spotify

In The New Yorker, Kyle Chayka bemoans the creeping blandness that settled into his Spotify listening experience as the company leaned into algorithmic personalization and playlists.

Issues with the listening technology create issueswith the music itself; bombarded by generic suggestionsand repeats of recent listening, listeners are beingconditioned to rely on what Spotify feeds them ratherthan on what they seek out for themselves. ���You���regiving them everything they think they love and it���sall homogenized,��� Ford said, pointing to the algorithmicplaylists that reorder tracklists, automatically playon shuffle, and add in new, similar songs. Listenersbecome alienated from their own tastes; when you neverencounter things you don���t like, it���s harder to knowwhat you really do.

This observation that the automation of your tastes can alienate you from them feels powerful. There’s obviously a useful and meaningful role for “more like this” recommendation and prediction engines. Still, there’s a risk when we overfit those models and eliminate personal agency and/or discovery in the experience. Surely there’s an opportunity to add more texture���a push and pull between lean-back personalization and more effortful exploration.

Let’s dial up the temperature on these models, or at least some of them. Instead of always presenting “more like this” recommendations, we could benefit from “more not like this,” too.

Why I Finally Quit Spotify | The New Yorker