Tag Archives: Algorithms

Music, My Stories, Stupidity

Algorithms

Spotify has been in the news a lot lately and when it hits the news its always for the wrong reasons.

I can tell ya that no one in Australia gives a crap about Joe Rogan and the Neil Young/Joni Mitchell drama. The majority of the country here doesn’t even know or care who Rogan is. And for Young pulling his catalogue of songs from the service, he’s cut his income by 60%. Maybe it’s a North American issue as Young’s reach in Australia is minimal unless he had a crossover song which became mainstream like “Rockin In The Free World” and “Hey Hey My My”.

Young can take this stance as well. You see, he hasn’t sold his rights to investment firms and hedge funds, so he’s entitled to do what he wants with his music, whereas the artists who sold their rights and took the money are silent. Because they have to be. There are too many players on their rights.

And the news cycle is fast. What was trending last week, disappears after 24 hours and I’m probably the only one writing about this a week later.

But this post is not about Neil Young or Rogan. It’s about Spotify.

It’s about the algorithms from digital services.

We’ve come a long way since Apple release the iPod in October 2001.

While the algorithms might have been cool at the start, all they do now is recommend more of the same.

It looks like the coders behind em, have gone to various lists and Wikipedia pages across the internet and used those lists to create their algorithms.

For example, Google, “Great Guitar Solos” and multiple lists come up. The Spotify coder would then take that list and use the artists in the lists for a playlist. In other words, its basic dumb coding.

When I want to hear Guitar Solos like “Comfortably Numb” from Pink Floyd and Dave Gilmour, I want an algorithm that uses the emotion of that solo to find me other emotive solos like it from artists I don’t know and know.

Like “Try Me” from UFO and the great Michael Schenker. Or “Angel Of Mercy” from Black Label Society and Zakk Wylde as the guitarist. And it would be cool if its evolving, bringing in something different, like the “Live at Budokan” version of “Hollow Tears” from Dream Theater and John Petrucci. And the next time I go to it, the list is different, because it’s trying to recommend something cool and new and different.

But the algorithms just look at my past listening habits and mirror those habits back at me. And I’m not finding anything cool from em.

I’ve gone back to the old school way of getting recommendations from friends and other bloggers, reading reviews and making my own decisions on whether to check something out or from artists themselves who mention an act or band that’s blown em away.

And artificial intelligence can automate a lot of this, but it can’t automate the cool and social aspect of being blown away by something sounding so good, because each listeners experience and connection to the music is different. While music is a personal experience, its social in nature. We want to share our experiences, talk about it, watch it live with others, dance to it and put our views out there.

Lift your game Spotify.

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Music, My Stories

Sameness

We are living with too much of the same. A lack of variety.

There is a new Star Wars flick which will borrow from other Star War flicks, a new Transformers movie or spin off which will be much of the same of what came before. A new Joker flick or a new Batman reboot. A new Terminator flick, a new Spiderman flick/reboot and another Avengers saves the day movie. And it just goes on and on and on. And if you’ve watched one movie in the franchise, it’s like you’ve seen em all.

Game Of Thrones became part of the public conversation, then all companies who produce TV shows decided they needed something similar. We got Vikings, Frontier, The Last Kingdom, Spartacus, Rome and Outlander. Amazon is now bringing a Lord of the Rings prequel, and HBO has three different GoT pilots on order.

And the reason why GoT was special was the story and the details in the story. Then when the TV show surpassed the books, the show creators got an outline and they proved incapable of filling in the detail, so they did what every writer their age does, they followed Hollywood’s lead.

The tech titans all want us to gravitate to their products. Facebook wants us to use it, Snapchat wants us to use it and Twitter wants us to use it. In the end, it is the same of what came before.

To surround us with “yes” answers and “likes”.

Algorithms on their sites and on the apps you visit, know what you like and click on and those algorithms also know what you ignore and it’s working super hard to surround you with the sameness of your views and to confirm that you’re right and to make you feel safe.

And if the algorithms notice that you have something you’re interested in, well don’t be surprised to see more of it, in your emails and feeds. This can be bad and good for you depending on your point of view and if you live in a bubble instead of reading critically

Amazon wants us to buy from it and use it for streaming, Apple wants us to buy from it and use it for streaming and Spotify wants us to use it as well.

And what we see on these services is created by AI algorithms, which again, brings back the same content for each user. Then again has anything really changed. The largest selling magazine for decades was the TV guide, which covered three channels and told people what to watch. And we paid to be told what to do.

We get a new metal or rock band who does okay and suddenly we get hundreds of other bands who sound the same. Even the sounds have similar production because what worked for one band has to work for the next. And even though the bands are different, they start to sound the same.

Don’t believe me, just google “Metallica St Anger” and see how people respond when the sound production is different to what they have been brainwashed to like.

When I started buying 70s albums in the 90s, I was blown away at how different each record sounded. Listening to the 70s period, I didn’t get a sense of sameness with each recording as I did get towards the end of the 80s and even into the 90s.

Would guitarists who had a voice like Ace Frehley, get a chance to do a solo album these days, with them singing lead vocals?

To me it feels like listeners are conditioned to believe via “The Voice”, “The Idol shows” or the “X-Factor shows” that people need to have unbelievable voices that all sound the same to make it.

Tell that to James Hetfield, Vince Neil and Ozzy Osbourne. They didn’t have the best voices on the planet, but they had a bigger career than those people on the shows. And the bands they where in, did what they wanted to do.

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