How Spotify knows what you like

10

October

2021

5/5 (3)

Remember the time where we needed to download music on our computers and transfer those songs to our mp3, not being able to listen to more than 20 songs? Times have changed since then, and almost everyone now uses the app Spotify. Hundreds of millions of people around the world use Spotify to listen to their music. With over 50 million songs and podcast episodes, it is not surprisingly beating the mp3 (;

But Spotify is doing more than just giving people access to podcasts and artists and their albums; Spotify is using technology to give their users an exceptional personal experience.

For example, they brought in Discover weekly, where every monday players receive a new playlist with 50 tracks. This playlist is based on songs they like and recently listened to, but haven’t heard before. How does Spotify do this? They use a form of machine learning. One of the used techniques is Collaborative Filtering, where an algorithm compares the songs you’ve listened to with other user-created playlists with similar songs. Another technique that uses a similar algorithm, but in a different way is Natural Language Processing (NLP). NLP is the ability of an algorithm to search through the web to find music related articles and blog posts. This way, the algorithm can match songs based on the way they are being discussed on the internet and new songs can be added to the discover weekly list. Additionally, they use Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) to make sure also less-popular songs are considered for the playlist. With CNN Spotify matches songs based on their attributes (e.g. beats per minute, loudness).

The company also just released a new feature on the 9th of September called ‘Enhance’. With this feature Spotify adds recommended tracks to your own playlist based on the already existing tracks using similar algorithms as described above. 

All these techniques make it easier for us to discover new artists and tracks more than ever. Algorithms track what we like, then give us what they think we like. This also made me think how hard it has become to discover new types of music that differs from what we already know. I still have a record player in my room and go to record stores every once in a while to step out of this filer bubble and wander into fresh territory. How about you?

References

E. (2021, January 15). On Netflix and Spotify, algorithms hold the power. But there’s a way to get it back. Experience Magazine. https://expmag.com/2019/11/endless-loops-of-like-the-future-of-algorithmic-entertainment/

How Spotify Uses Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Machine Learning. (2021). Data Science Central. https://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/6448529:BlogPost:1041799

Tambekar, A. (2020, May 11). How Spotify Uses Machine Learning Models to Recommend You The Music You Like. GreatLearning Blog: Free Resources What Matters to Shape Your Career! https://www.mygreatlearning.com/blog/3-machine-learning-models-spotify-uses-to-recommend-music-youll-like/#:%7E:text=Convolutional%20Neural%20Networks&text=Each%20song%20is%20converted%20into%20a%20raw%20audio%20file%20as%20a%20waveform.&text=With%20these%20key%20machine%20learning,would%20have%20never%20found%20otherwise.

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My best friend, Spotify

29

September

2021

5/5 (1)

In today’s world the majority of society utilizes social media. Being connected to a large number of people all around the globe goes hand in hand with sharing personal information about yourself. More and more people criticize the lack of privacy due to large amounts of data collected by services such as Facebook or Instagram. Nevertheless, I was recently thinking about that issue. It is not a secret that social media users are obliged to share personal information to a certain extent. However, the life users show on their platforms is often superficial. Hence, I was thinking about other services, such as Spotify, where the collection of personal information is less obvious compared to other social media services. Everyone with a passion for music knows that your taste in music can say a lot about yourself and your personality. Music can connect people, cultures but also impact someone’s sense of style and fashion. Further, the music we listen to often reflects our current state and mood. Nevertheless, people are less hesitant towards getting a Spotify description than creating a Facebook account considering privacy and data regulations. Now the question arises: Who knows me best?

In order to answer this question it is important to take a look at the techology behind Spotify. As most people know, Spotify is not only known for its wide range of music, but also its personalized features. Especially for its ‘Daily-Mix’ introduced in 2015, which is a playlist personalized to each users recent listenings and preferences.

To create this playlist, Spotify needs to extract information, by making use of three so-called recommendation models. The first model is known as collaborative filtering. You can visualize this as a huge matrix consisting of millions of vectors representing the amount of users by the amount of songs. Explained in everyday language, Spotify analyses your listening habits and matches them to similar users. Based on that the algorithm recommends you similar songs other users with a similar taste in music liked. The second model uses Natural Language Processing (NLP). In short, Spotify scans the web to look for articles, blog posts or discussions related to a specific song, artist or genre and connects them. This can also be done by scanning lyrics. To illustrate this, you can think of rap music. Many artists use similar terms. Also when speaking about rap music in ‘natural language’ users often communicate in a certain slang. By connection several dots, Spotify can detect similar music and make a connection between songs or artists. The most recent recommendation model introduced, analyses raw audio models. Spotify identified that the two previously described models put upcoming artists at a disadvantage. Hence in this last model, the raw audio is analyzed for Acousticness, Danceability, Energy, Instrumentalness, Liveness, Speechiness, Tempo, and Valence. Through that, Spotify recognizes similar songs and groups them together.

Overall, it seems like Spotify knows its users better than any other platform does. Spotify might even know more about us and our mental state than we do ourselves or want to admit to ourselves. Hence, it is questionable to distrust social media platforms but use Spotify without questioning it. Let me know in the comments how you feel about this!

Anderson, A., Maystre, L., Anderson, I., Mehrotra, R., & Lalmas, M. (2020). Algorithmic Effects on the Diversity of Consumption on Spotify. Proceedings of The Web Conference 2020. Published. https://doi.org/10.1145/3366423.3380281

Ciocca, S. (2020, April 9). How Does Spotify Know You So Well? – Featured Stories. Medium. https://medium.com/s/story/spotifys-discover-weekly-how-machine-learning-finds-your-new-music-19a41ab76efe

Spotify. (2021). Web API Reference | Spotify for Developers. https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/reference/

Tiffany, K. (2018, February 5). You can now play with Spotify’s recommendation algorithm in your browser. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2018/2/5/16974194/spotify-recommendation-algorithm-playlist-hack-nelson

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ORANGE MIGHT BE THE NEW BLACK, BUT SPOTIFY IS UNDOUBTEDLY DIFFERENT FROM NETFLIX

18

October

2018

No ratings yet. The recent news about the growth of Netflix subscribers reveals a strong and sound business model. Executives prediction of 5m net new users was far below the actual number of subscribers who joined the platform in the past three months (around 7m). Furthermore, more than 6m of them are international clients, meaning that the business is steadily expanding outside the US.

Because both companies are massive, rapidly expanding and active in the media and entertainment industry, Netflix and Spotify are often compared and considered alike enterprises. In reality, there are some important and structural differences that cannot be disregarded.

Although the two offer an all-you-can-stream service in exchange of a monthly fee, Spotify also provides customers with a free of charge subscription, while Netflix does not, having user subscriptions as the main source of revenues. This implies that as thousands of active users of the music stream app are not paying for the service, accepting the limitations that this entails, the Swedish company also relies on revenues from advertisement.

Furthermore, the two industries they are engaged in, are indeed very dissimilar. First, in terms of production expenses: while almost anybody can produce and broadcast a song, films and series are extremely more costly. This is translated into different incentives for producers: on the one hand, artists and songwriters are likely to rely on as many platforms as possible to increase the diffusion of their pieces to extrapolate most value out of them. On the other, to start the process, filmmakers need sponsors who spread the risk they face by investing in more than one production.

With respect to this, it can be highlighted that Netflix is also involved in the creation of content, while Spotify is not. The former therefore is both a producer and a distributor, while the latter merely offers a product that can be easily found on other platforms.

Spotify is in a weak position when setting prices. In particular, its costs rise as more people subscribe to the platform and stream the song because labels, that still play a major role in the industry, generally pay artists per user who listens to their songs. For this reason, scalability constitutes an issue for the company. Instead, Netflix enjoys a reduction in its per unit costs as more users subscribe to the platform, becoming over time a crucial partner that enables studios to enlarge their reach.

Only the following years will tell us whether Spotify succeeds in the difficult task of transforming its business model into a more sustainable one or whether, after having changed the way people listen and pay for music, it will be replaced by some other company.

Sources:
https://www.barrons.com/articles/spotify-why-it-is-and-isnt-like-netflix-1522939226
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-23/why-spotify-can-t-scale-like-netflix
https://www.ft.com/content/f6512c08-d163-11e8-a9f2-7574db66bcd5
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/spotify-stock-price-netflix-cant-compare-2018-4-1020586061
https://www.valuechampion.sg/5-reasons-why-spotify-not-netflix-music

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Spotify Defeated Microsoft’s Groove Music

9

October

2017

No ratings yet. Have you ever heard of Groove Music? Probably not. Groove Music is a digital music streaming service owned by Microsoft, where users can purchase songs or buy streaming subscription. Groove Music was first launched by Microsoft in 2012 as Xbox Music, and earlier got renamed as a part of rebranding strategy. Users of Microsoft 10 operating system have probably seen Groove Music on their laptops, as it came preinstalled.

Despite Microsoft’s attempt to make their music service widely accepted, the company announced in October 2017 that it will kill the service on the upcoming New Year’s Eve (Fingas, 2017). Groove was unable to compete with Spotify, and Microsoft’s officials have been honest acknowledging their loss. They publicly confirmed that the customers wanted “access to the best streaming service, the largest catalogue of music, and a variety of subscriptions” (Roetgers, 2017), which Groove service was unable to provide. In order to make Groove’s customers a bit happier, Microsoft has partnered with Spotify to allow them to transition their music collection and playlists to the Spotify service.

Microsoft has shown its weakness in making technology for consumers. It has never released specific user numbers or revenue for the Groove service (Weinberger, 2017), which makes us think that the numbers were not worth being mentioned. Despite its technological wisdom, Microsoft was unable to compete, as it seeks to partner with Spotify instead of creating its own rival services (Warren, 2017). Unlike the past, there isn’t another Microsoft-branded service waiting in the wing.

Meanwhile, Spotify has once again confirmed its winner-take-all position. Music streaming market is characterized by low demand for differentiated services since one platform typically has all music genres; high strength of network effects for both users and studios; and high multi-homing costs as users must purchase subscription for each service. Therefore, competing with a leader in this market is extremely difficult, which is confirmed by Microsoft’s example. Multiple tech experts have confirmed that Microsoft has wasted resources in Groove Music, and it should have quitted earlier (BBC, 2017). With Microsoft’s exit, Spotify has won huge chunk of consumers, who will boost its leadership position even further.

Do you think Microsoft had chances to beat Spotify with Groove? What has it done wrong?

 

References:

BBC, (2017). Microsoft axes Groove Music service. Available from: <http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41483492> Accessed [09-10-2017].

Fingas, J., (2017). Microsoft gives up on Groove Music, switches customers to Spotify. Avaiable from: <https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/02/microsoft-drops-groove-music-in-favor-of-spotify/> Accesses [09-10-2017].

Roetgers, J. (2017). Microsoft Discontinues Groove Music, Partners With Spotify Instead. Available from: <http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/microsoft-groove-music-dead-1202578189/> Accessed [09-10-2017].

Warren, T., (2017). Microsoft retires Groove Music service, partners with Spotify. Available from: <https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/2/16401898/microsoft-groove-music-pass-discontinued-spotify-partner> Accessed [09-10-2017].

Weinberger, M., (2017). Microsoft is killing its Spotify competitor, will partner up with Spotify instead. Available from: <https://www.businessinsider.nl/microsoft-discontinuing-groove-music-pass-2017-10/?international=true&r=US> Accessed [09-10-2017].

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Is the internet of things destroying the internet?

23

October

2016

No ratings yet. With the rise of the internet of things, the internet and its advantages as well as dangers have become much more integrated with our devices. This also creates an opportunity for hackers to launch cyberattacks targeted to those connected devices. Due to the inherent properties of software, the internet of things can never be 100% secure.

Lately a botnet has been created out of a large array of cameras and other devices that fit into the internet of things. This so-called Mirai botnet consist of more than half a million nodes. The targets of this botnet and the consequences are not small with recently reported DDoS attacks to Dyn’s Domain Name System management services (DNS) infrastructure, resulting in outages of websites such as Twitter, Spotify and Reddit. It is estimated that just around 10% of the nodes of the botnet were used for this attack.

Examples of Internet of Things devices that are used in this Mirai botnet are for example security cameras. Ironically, many of those cameras cannot be easily updated to increase their data security. The amount of devices that can be used for such a bonnet is ever increasing. As it is impossible to control for the security of all software that is put on internet of things devices, the problem is only likely to become worse.

After a hacker put the source code to this botnet online on a hacking forum, more DDoS attacks were predicted by CERT, the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team. Given that the source code was published before the outages of e.g. Spotify and Twitter, this is also what happened.

What do you think about the future of this development? If software (or accompanying hardware) can never be 100% secure and the amount of connect devices increases how secure is the future even? Apart from DDoS attacks, how about all the internet connected sensors of these connected devices and its effect of the inherent properties of software on security and privacy? Let me know what you think!

 

https://motherboard.vice.com/tag/The+Internet+of+Hackable+Things

https://motherboard.vice.com/read/criminal-hackers-have-launched-a-turf-war-over-the-internet-of-shit

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/internet-of-things-malware-mirai-ddos

https://motherboard.vice.com/read/twitter-reddit-spotify-were-collateral-damage-in-major-internet-attack

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Tinder + Spotify = perfect match?

26

September

2016

No ratings yet. Imagine this: you found your perfect match on Tinder. The conversations have been going great and you really cannot wait to meet this person. You finally go on a date, and everything seems to be going smoothly, until you ask her what music she listens to. You’re shocked; she says she is a major fan of boybands and Taylor Swift. Your world has been shattered because you hate boybands, and especially Taylor Swift. You know for sure that this will be your last date together.

This will no longer happen. The dating-app Tinder and the streaming service Spotify recently paired up, and together they might be able to create some sweet music. Tinder now allows its users to choose their “Anthem”, which will be shown on their profile, as well as sending music to their potential matches. When viewing someone’s profile you are able to see their top-played songs, and see what preferences you may have in common.

https://youtu.be/f49Z0ZPBaWA

The thought behind this collaboration is that you can easily tell a lot about a person based on their taste in music, and if you share the same taste the potential future dates may be more interesting. Tinder CEO, Sean Rad, thinks “Music is an important part of making new connections and getting to know existing ones”. Additionally, the Tinder-users are now also able to play tracks from Spotify directly on the Tinder-app, without having to own a Spotify-account. This creates a win-win situation for both Apps, as more users will be drawn to join Spotify, and more users will be inclined to use Tinder to express themselves. As Spotify’s Brendan O’Driscoll said “Not every Tinder user is a Spotify user, so a whole bunch of new people will start to interact with Spotify content, and gradually get to know and use and like Spotify. [But] it isn’t just for acquiring new users. It’s for existing users as well.”

This may not seem like a major advancement to online dating, but it might serve as a clue to what the future dating scene will look like. Will be all be automatically paired up with our potential “soul mates”, based on several amount of preferences, or is it possible that opposites do attract? Let me know what you think!

 

 

Sources:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2016/09/21/spotify-and-tinder-link-up-to-form-a-match-made-in-heaven/2/#1c9e703a7dad

http://venturebeat.com/2016/09/20/spotify-tinder-partnership/

Tinder taps Spotify to let you add music to your profile

 

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Beware of fading mutual attraction

7

October

2013

No ratings yet. In my homework assignment article I explore two online music platforms: Apple’s iTunes Music Store and Spotify. They both face problems with one side of their user group. My purpose is to show that two-sided platforms rely on mutual attraction. If one user group doesn’t like the service provided and leaves, the platform could face a walk out of the other group as well.

Problem with listeners
Apple-users don’t like the look & feel of the iTunes Music Store anymore. It looks like a spreadsheet instead of giving the thrill of buying something. Apple also missed out on the trend of streaming music. The company clung too long to its concept of download-to-own. In my view Apple can simply not afford to let slip the user group of listeners, since there is a close tie between the service of Apple’s online music platform and the sales of its devices (iPod, iPad and iPhone). If music lovers definitely turn their back on the iTunes Music Store this step will automatically lead to the decline in sales of Apple devices.

Problem with musicians
Spotify was confronted with the first band, Atoms for Peace, to pull their music from the platform, because in their opinion the returns are too poor. It is not clear how many artist have followed this example, but it is clear Spotify cannot ignore this sign. Music lovers seeing their favorite bands leave a platform, might decide to follow, causing the total collapse of the platform. “The value of a platform depends on the value on the number of users on the other side,” according to the article in Harvard Business Review I used for reference and theoretical background.

New competitor
In 2014 both platforms might have to deal with a new competitor as Pono will be launched by legendary artist Neil Young. Pono is an online music platform that ‘will save the sound of music’ according to Young. That will make both musicians and fervent music lovers happy, who might decide to switch to this new platform. Being a late mover Young can avoid all the mistakes early movers made.

Conclusion:
Two-sided platforms are based on the mutual attraction of user group. They do however not run themselves. Managing a platform means having a keen eye for the various needs of both user groups. If one group is not happy with the provided service and decides to leave, the platform becomes unattractive for the group on the other side. This group could also decide to move elsewhere, leaving the two-sided platform a no-sided platform.

Find out more about Pono:
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/neil-young-expands-pono-digital-to-analog-music-service-20120927?print=true
Interview Neil Young at David Letterman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL1ffo8TwGM

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