[tpurves]

The real big lie is the idea that the recommendation algos were ever actually for the user.

The premise that many folks miss here is the idea that Spotify is, at best, thinly interested in recommending music that is good for YOUR interests. Spotify is the music business, and specifically the pop music business, has long discovered that's it's much more economically expedient to force feed musical taste onto the public than it is to chase the whims of organic hit-making. Payola is as old as recorded music. Spotify recommends what Spotify wants it's users to listen to. They have all kinds of side deals and marketing deals with labels, they have cheaper costs/royalties on some tracks than others. Popular tracks cached in their CDNs are probably cheaper to recommend than long tail ones etc. They have strategic priorities like gaining on apple for podcasts, and therefore injecting allsorts of podcast recos in the UI wether you asked for that or not.