| > the minute a user clicks on my embedded Spotify player, almost every action they take thereafter steers them away from my music I mean, that's exactly what all recommendation systems do: they look at what's popular and tend recommending in that direction. I'm dissatisfied with this as well, but it works for a significant chunk of people. > YouTube, soundcloud, audiomack, pretty much every other audio platform Which other platform? Youtube has plenty of instances where "video cannot be played embedded on the site". And that is invariably some stuff where rights holders are involved. The other two are services that allow direct uploads from artists, so they are not as bound by licenses and contracts. Spotify does not have direct uploads from artists. The music comes from rights holders or from distributors. And this comes with a set of rules and costs. I don't know what they are (I'm nowhere near the licensing teams), but I've worked in streaming for a while to know some of this :) > on mobile most times clicks don't even play the correct artist song, and on desktop, as soon as an independent artist's song is played, the next song is one by another artist, instead of logical behavior of playing another track by the original (linked) artist What seems to be the logical step might not be the logical step from the point of business ;) Spotify is in an unenviable position of trying to satisfy the rights holders, _and_ the listeners, _and_ its own business. I can't say I like or approve of all the decisions, or that all the decisions are correct, but you'd be surprised how often the most logical/simple solution at the first glance is far from the actual solution after you've dug into details. That said, current incentives in music (with the Big 4 dictating all the rules) really suck for independent artists. |