The radio feature and all “for you” playlists contains commercially promoted music and they don’t publish what percent or label what songs. I hadn’t seen a post about this so it might be common knowledge on here idk.

From Spotify “In some cases, commercial considerations may influence our recommendations. For example, Spotify offers a promotional tool that enables artists and record labels to highlight priority songs, increasing the likelihood of them being recommended in specific algorithmic playlists: Radio, Autoplay and certain Mixes. This can help artists be discovered by new listeners and grow their fan bases, including prior to a new release, as part of a cultural moment, or in celebration of a milestone. For streams of those priority songs generated in impacted playlists, Spotify charges a commission. This tool is not active in other”

"part of a cultural moment"

nice kumbaya way of saying " if artists pay us enough we'll stick their shit everywhere"

This is how it has always been since day one for every major DSP. The music industry has always been pay-to-win. It just changed from paying radio stations for spins to DSPs for front page banner ad placements and major playlist algorithm priority.

This is how it works for Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Tidal, YouTube Music, etc. The big labels like UMG, Warner, Sony, etc. all spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to push certain artists and albums to win. That is their job. That is pretty much what Billboard charts mean, who paid the most for the Billboard ad space?

Do you know how to stop this? Make your own playlists of what you want to listen to or listen to albums, instead of doing the laziest let them pick for you algorithmic shuffle. It is the simple difference of using a platform with your own curation and organized lists, or by just loading it up and letting the homescreen suggestions decide what to play for you.

...in the music programming business, they call this "being worked".

There needs to be some sort of differentiating between passive listening and active listening streaming numbers.

From what I was reading Apple Music doesn’t do radios the same way.

Your tag says your a music producer so obviously music is your passion. I don’t think you can expect every person to create their own playlists all the time.

yeah i noticed this too when i kept getting the same 5 songs in my Discover Weekly, even after i skipped them every time. felt like the algorithm was just ignoring what i actually do

making your own playlists is the way, i started doing that last year and it's so much better. takes a bit of effort at first but once you have couple good ones you just add to them slowly

also turning off autoplay helped a lot, that thing is the worst for pushing promoted tracks

With so many alternatives, trying to compete in spaces dominated by the major labels makes no sense.
It's better to share music with other like-minded musicians in healthier environments.

Even YT Music is preferable than Spotify.

I am definitely more nerdy about playlist building and curating myself, but you do not have to build them out yourself.

I recommend you just find playlists other users have built. If you search up Playlists and it has the Spotify logo or something like "Genre Name Mix", then those are Spotify Editor curated or algo generated. Those may be more susceptible to label promotion and influence.

There are still thousands of playlists made by every day users that you could add to your favorites to come back to later.

I remember when I first got the premium version of Amazon music many years ago and it was so good. You could search and play one song and it would go into an autoplay mode playing similar music amd was always so spot on with how it built the playlist.

They also had a station called "My Music" or something similar that did an amazing job of compiling songs choices based on your listening habits, playing your favorites while also interjecting other songs that more often than not hit the target.

Then one day it played a song from an extremely popular pop artist that in no way should have ever landed in my algorithm. And I recognized it for what it was. And the shift continued to the point that all of their suggested music mirrors the trash being force fed to the masses by monopolies like I Heart radio.

I was gladly paying for this service that seemed to fully understand my music tastes, and it became just another enshitified corporate money grab.

Think, “Kendrick Lamar around the superbowlDrake beef” as a cultural moment. They will pay high dollar for those time periods.

Every platform heads that route, and all you can really do is either try and weed the algo garden through positive and negative enforcement signals, or simply try and shift more to controlled Playlists or curated segments that is only content you want to enjoy.

Half the fun is discovery though, so I try to sprinkle some algorithmic shuffling into the mix. Never go full algo.

Tidal isn't anywhere near as bad. Back when I had Spotify and I made a radio station from a song I would always get the same collection of songs, every time. With Tidal I don't have that happen anywhere near as much.