1. Voyage of (music) discovery

    In an attempt to discover new music, I’ve been using the random ‘radio’ feature of various online music services. I pick an artist or a genre that I like, and let the service suggest tracks that are related to that. Based on that, I’ve been able to infer something about the algorithms that each service uses. Here’s what I’ve worked out so far.

    Pandora

    GET chosen_artist_or_genre
SET albums = the_3_related_albums_we_have_permission_to_play
REPEAT
   PLAY random_song_from(albums)
   PLAY random_song_from(albums)
   PLAY ad_for_kosher_adult_diapers
END

    Spotify

    GET chosen_artist_or_genre
SET songs = songs_approximately_like_song_user_likes
SET song = random_song_from_selected_set(songs)
REPEAT
   FOR i FROM 1 TO 3
      IF was_last_played_less_than_3_minutes_ago(song)
         PLAY something_else
      ELSE
         PLAY song
      END
   END 
   SELECT ad FROM (ad_for_spotify_feature,ad_for_artist_in_totally_unrelated_genre)
   PLAY ad
END

    Rdio

    GET chosen_artist_or_genre
REPEAT
   IF random(5) > 0
      SET songs = songs_exactly_like_song_user_likes
      SET song = worst_song_in_selected_set(songs)
      PLAY song
   ELSE
      PLAY random_song_by_conor_obersts_bright_eyes
   END
END

Notes

  1. rainblog posted this