How to beat the Spotify algorithm

Spotify's algorithm seems to have changed and listeners worldwide are complaining about being served up the same songs, from the same artist. 

How great is Spotify? 

One hundred million music tracks at your fingertips... no need to hunt for that CD or record... suggestions for new tunes you'd otherwise never listen to. 

More than one million New Zealanders have an account. 

But lately it seems there's been a change in the algorithm, and if you've been a victim of the perpetual Sabrina Carpenter playlist you'll know what we're talking about. 

It's something that's been bothering RNZ's Music 101 host Charlotte Ryan, who says the new Kiwi releases she looks forward to are getting more elusive on her feed. 

"To have every single song that you'd ever dream of at your fingertips to listen to, every single catalogue, and then bonus unreleased songs... you can get it now and listen to it anywhere you want in the world. So that is a dream," she says. 

"But there are many downsides to this platform as well." 

It's long been an industry belief that the musicians lose out from all this freely available material, needing millions of streams to get paid. But Ryan talks to Mikee Tucker from Loop Recordings who says the updated figures are improved.  

"I think the people who are complaining are people who in the CD era wouldn't even have got their CD on the shelf and would have been lucky to sell 100 at their gigs. They probably need to look at their career trajectory and place themselves in past iterations of the music industry and actually compare themselves to that. When you do end up even as a medium-sized artist on Spotify, it pays well," he says. 

Last year Spotify paid out nearly NZ$15 billion to the music industry worldwide. 

Another gripe from Ryan is that Spotify's system of showcasing single songs is likely to lead to the death of the album as a concept, which she says is "bad news for music purists such as myself, who love the album as a full piece of art."

"Some artists are thinking about not even releasing albums in the future and just releasing singles, because that's the way that music listeners are listening to music on Spotify. They just get gifted all these new singles and playlists rather than being introduced to the full album.

"Some artists believe you should be able to line up the album and play it right the way through because that's the intention of how they created the piece of art. But Spotify doesn't really encourage that in the way it's set up." 

Now music also has to compete with podcasts and audio books on Spotify, which is another of Ryan's criticisms of the platform. She wonders how a bot can suggest books to her based on her music preferences. 

Then there's geo-fencing, where artists are linked by location rather than just music preference worked out by sonics, or conversation trawled from users' other social platforms like Facebook. 

Spotify considers Australia and New Zealand to be one country, so if you're losing that Kiwi feel to Aussie songs, that's why. If those songs don't feel similar to your usual preferences, it could be because the algorithm is looking at what's played on (Australian radio station) Triple J and picking up on its playlist. 

Recently, TikTok users have complained that every second song they're dished out is either 'Espresso' or 'Please Please Please' by Sabrina Carpenter, no matter if they're listening to grunge or Irish punk rock. 

"Sabrina Carpenter is one of the biggest pop stars - or her record label want her to be the biggest star in the world at the moment - so they're basically doing anything they can to get her music into our feeds. I don't even listen to much pop music but that's coming into my algorithm at the moment," says Ryan.

But it is possible to manipulate your feed. 

Fuchsia Davidson is the digital accounts manager at the Nettwerk Music Group, which is a record label, a publisher and an artist management company. She says the best way to get your feed more aligned to your tastes is to make sure you 'like' your favourite artists.

"The algorithm is going to be there whether we like it or not, so I think the best thing to do is to work with it, and give it as many prompts in the right direction as possible. 

"So something that is super-valuable for artists and a great thing to do as a fan anyway is to follow them on Spotify, then you get updated obviously when new music comes out, but it tells the algorithm 'actually I am invested enough in this artist to follow them, and follow their journey'. 

"If you hear a song that you like, hit the 'like' button. And all of this stuff, even if you're not using it to then go back to listen to your liked songs, it's telling the algorithm 'no, push me in this direction', as opposed to whatever it assumes that you may like. Give it as much information as possible." 

Mikee Tucker also has instructions on how to make Spotify's algorithm work for you.

"I play the main song that I like and let Spotify run from there for days, and it will take me to this great Spotify wormhole. You've just got to let it roll." 

But the platform is crowded - there are 100 million songs on there, every day 120,000 songs are released, and as Ryan points out, because anyone can upload their work, there's no quality control. 

"I believe that some people are making music to get into algorithms. There's chill playlists that do very well... all these playlists to fit moods. What I understand is that 'musicians', if you can call them musicians, are making [music] to fit those playlists rather than those authentic, genuine, 'I'm going to make a song from my feelings'." 

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