Discover Weekly, what to expect?

As we all know, the road to discovery can be a bumpy one. Sometimes the results can be unexpected. We all know Columbus didn't exactly find what he was looking for, but Native Americans became Indians nonetheless. Music discovery can have the same mouth watering effect to certain nerds that Spanish doubloons have on deep sea divers. 

Let me get to the point. 

This week, Spotify rolled out their new personalised playlist Discover Weekly: 30 yet unheard tracks from the Spotify vaults, selected based on your listening behaviour and those of users with similar taste in music. 

The mechanics behind it are purely systematic: a comparative analysis of tracks and styles  of a single user compared to 70 million others, picking up on similarities and the probability of a ‘match’ between a user and a track. 

On the one hand it’s a huge leap forward, crowd-sourcing nuggets on such a scale is genius. On the other hand, there is no chance of accountability, of a narrative behind the selection. Something which make DJ sets and curated playlists such a joy to discover and/or revisit. 

For example, I regularly check out Perfects.nl’s A Perfect Chart, curated by DJ and eclectic music mainstay St. Paul. He's an acquaintance of mineThe overlap in music taste is quite big, and I know he’s still quite a bit more compulsive as far as music discovery is concerned. And, in line with Perfects.nl’s USP, there are liner notes. That is an added value that Discover Weekly can never have. 

Another dizzying question: How do we rate these playlists? And who or what is it we rate when we do that? I suppose it’s the natural born critic in me that feels the urge to examine this playlist, to judge its worth. 

Supposedly, a review would best be considered over a certain period: six months or a year or so. That’s quite a task: 30 tracks per weeks, times 52 weeks equals 1560 new tracks on a yearly basis. Most people don’t take in that much new music by a mile. So in my view Spotify is really targeting their core users, the nutters that are already knee deep in music compulsions. These people already have their Perfect Charts, New Music Fridays etc. It will be interesting to see whether Spotify’s new algoritm has the power to really take people by suprise and knock ‘em out with a hit unheard. 

As for my first week’s worth of Discover Weekly. I’m not a full-on Spotify user, Itunes and my turntable still being my foremost music players. As such, there were quite a few songs I already knew (Alabama Shakes, Tamikrest, tUnE-yArDs, Floating Points, D’Angelo, Axel Boman).

Some early reviews complained about old tracks being added to the mix. I don’t really consider this a bad thing. In fact, it turned me on to music I knew but haven’t heard in  while (Neu!, Swans, Underworld), and in at least one case (Scott Walker) I knew about the artist without ever having listened to them. 

Finally, this week’s playlist introduced Henri Texier to me, a French jazz bassist whose 1977 album Varech is an incredible piece of home recording. Very different, but very groovy. There are currently 0 copies of this album on sale on Discogs, so you might say this is as obscure a nugget as it gets. There are very few people who could have put me on to Texier’s work, and I’m happy to know it. 

Obviously, there were also lesser songs on this list. But it’s not every week I get to discover artists like Henry Texier or Scott Walker. In the end, the value in any recommendation is dictated by the extent to which it resonates with the person on the receiving end. The tingle I get when I hear something new and exciting - that’s the endgame. And this week’s playlist has not disappointed in that -very important- sense. 

In the next few weeks, I’ll try and give an update of my experiences with Discover Weekly. As said before, we should really see how DW functions over a longer period of time. After all, nobody needs another one hit wonder.