[solarkraft]

> What are they optimizing for?

Probably engagement. The more clicks, the better.

I've switched to Tidal. It pushes some ads too, but not nearly as badly. The discovery algorithm is slightly worse but pretty close. Most importantly it doesn't keep playing the same 3 songs (at least it's more like 30).

[digging]

I left Spotify for their policies (pro-Rogan, shit pay to artists), and landed on Tidal. it's not perfect, but it absolutely fits the niche that Spotify did and feels way less stupid.

[90-00-09]

Is Tidal still prioritizing US hiphop? I really liked it (about 5 years ago) but left because they pushed e.g. Beyonce to me on every visit on every possible surface despite me having a completely different taste in music.

[solarkraft]

I don't think I've ever seen any hip hop while using Tidal, so probably no, at least if you're not interested in adjacent genres. Even the ads (stupid playlists I don't want to see, I can only explain them forcing them on me with financial interest) include a probably average amount of it.

[digging]

mm, maybe. I got a lot more Kanye than I wanted (>0) early on, but I was able to just ban that artist. for other stuff, it does seem to favor US hip-hop on my account, but I don't listen to a lot of hip-hop and it's mostly US-based, so YMMV. I would say that if you're making playlists of non-US and it's pushing US suggestions, that's kind of a problem, yes.