[amelius]

I could try that. But I think I eventually want something more flexible. For example, when listening to a song, I want the system to automatically pick songs that are similar to that song. Or I'd like to pick songs based on instruments used, tempo, origin, language, genre, etc.

[afro88]

Spotify does that already too - right click a song and "Start Song Radio". This will automatically pick songs that are similar.

I know it seems like this is what you want, but for me I've never been satisfied with this simplistic approach to discovery. Taste is very complex, and for me saying to someone "I really love xylophone" and them recommending me a lounge jazz tune with xylophone will always fall flat. What most people don't realise is why they love certain instruments or tempos or genres etc. It's usually down to how they were introduced to these, which defines their archetypal music using these instruments for example. It's all contextual.

My context for liking xylophone goes something like this "I love xylophone, because in the late 90s I listened to a lot of Beastie Boys 'Hello Nasty' which has some really nice pieces of music with some great xylophone in them. Then hearing some Mulatu Astatke recently got me interested in xyolophone and ethio jazz in general, combined with a really cute reaction my girlfriend had to one of his songs."

The best recommendation engine I've seen is Spotify Weekly. It's really very good, but make sure you get in there and save a lot of artists and albums you like first

[earlz]

You can do this if you right click and do play song/artist radio.. but in my experience it sucks really bad, and has only gotten worse over time. Use to, it was kinda useful. Now it's complete garbage. I'm not sure what they changed in their algorithm but typically when I do this I get 5 artists that are only marginally related, and then it proceeds to play music from those 5 artists in a loop and the "dislike this" feature seems to do nothing. I've actually disliked a song and then it came on about 20 minutes later.

[Scarblac]

I have a playlist of a lot of songs I like (except I try to keep it to one or two songs per band).

The radio from that converges to endless Foo Fighters and The Prodigy -- over half the songs!

It's not that I dislike them, but I don't particularly love them either and there is just no diversity on that station.

[krisdol]

I understand, suggestions still have issues. I listen to a lot of more obscurely specific genres, and sometimes will get just a couple of repeated songs if I make a radio based on a lesser-known artist.

That said, if you haven't given the Spotify Weekly Recommendations a shot -- you should. Maybe it's because it has more data to work with than song/artist/playlist-specific radios, but for me that feature has been extremely spot-on. In fact, I hadn't used spotify for a while because I kept hearing the same songs, but now I religiously keep on top of my discoveries each week.

[Scarblac]

I agree on the weekly discoveries, they are great. The radios, at least the playlist radios, are crap.

It seems like the radios point me towards the most common denominator and plays the most mainstream stuff that matches, while the weekly discovery lists come up with some very quirky stuff that I love.

I guess the radios can't have any "memory", it seems to generate close to one song at a time (hence a lot of repetitions), whereas the discovery list can be created 30 songs at a time and seems to go out of its way to find songs by bands that I've never listened to.

[Aissen]

It does that as well, and calls it "radios" for a given artist or song.