[illuminati1911]

"Spotify would consistently "rabbithole" me into the same ~150 songs, most of which I didn't even like."

They do that because their fake top/featured/popular now playlists are crafted by major record labels and other influential people/companies in the music industry. Those 150 songs are what they wanna push right now and what are at least remotely close to your taste. The trick is to find custom and good quality playlists made by others.

I listen to a lot of thrash metal and I just found "New thrash 2022+ only" playlist (or something like that) and it's full of awesome small never-heard bands that have only 50-5000 listeners per month. I would have never discovered any of them if I just followed the algorithm.

[wyclif]

What I've found is that the trick with Spotify is to listen to the user-curated playlists, not the Spotify-created playlists. I've discovered a lot more music, and a wider variety of music, that way.