Music choices & YouTube recommendations

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How many use YouTube's recommendations as a guide to music choices?

Lately, it seems that YouTube's recommendations are becoming increasingly savvy in understanding personal music choices - that is YouTube's picks can be stunning, and uncanny at times.

To try out YouTube's recommendation feature:

* Log on to YouTube.
* On LEFT side of screen, click 'History.'
* On RIGHT side of of screen click:
- Clear all watch history.
- Clear all search history.

This provides a clear slate to allow YouTube's recommender algorithm to generate music picks (listed on the RIGHT side of the screen).

EXAMPLE: Personally, the 1964 song 'House of the Rising Sun' by the British group 'The Animals' is a recurring recommendation via YouTube. I had started-out with 'House of the Rising Sun' to see what Youtube recommended.

The results were interesting - that is YouTube's recommendations pretty-much indicated my overall musical preferences - which in itself is amazing!

What are your experiences, and recurring song picks via YouTube?

YouTube's recommendations of any kind, are usually the worst.

Some say yes, some say no - I tend to agree!

I haven't found youtube's recommendations particularly helpful, with just a couple exceptions, which I attribute to luck and volume. As far as I know they base recommendations on other viewer's choices, using shared interests. Pandora had (has?) a more interesting approach. They characterize music according to a number of parameters and choose music that is similar to the songs you "like." Thing is, though, I found pandora's recommendations got farther and farther from relevant the longer I listened and "liked."

I once suggested to pandora that I be allowed to say what I liked about my favorite songs, and I actually got a response from someone very high in the company explaining that while that might work for me, if I actually know a lot about music, that most people don't know enough about music or about how their own brain works to avoid leading the algorithm astray.

I've never liked or followed an algorithm's recommendations like this. I find it too passive. I've always preferred following whatever reaction I get from a band's name, song title, or other fact I learn about them. Most music I've discovered was from reading or seeing something interesting on the shelf. This has helped me stay in touch with my instincts, though I find it's a behavior few relate to.

While I think it's great people can discover so much, now, I find it also doesn't tell you much about anyone. Before YouTube pirated everything, you could learn a little about people from what they liked. 20 years ago I was a Beach Boys obsessive, and when I met other fans I knew they 1) were open-minded enough to like such an uncool band, and 2) were curious enough to seek out obscure Beach Boys albums, or even bootlegs. Now that it's all a click away, that means far less. Everyone is a music aficionado, and nothing is really alien anymore. The fact that so many TV shows want to plunder every last song doesn't help, either.

Even though people may be more aware of culture and history, they still expect someone to tell them what to think and like. So it becomes off-putting. It's all an identity anyone can easily buy.

Of course, it's identity more than self-discovery which most people have always wanted.

I view Pandora with interest - as Pandora specializes in analyzing the features of music.

The 'Similar Songs' feature can be compared with YouTube's picks.

I just follow a few channels the promote genres I like.

Pandora's 'Similar Songs' feature sometimes lists songs whose close similarities are questionable.

Whenever I listened to a little bit of black metal, just clean bands, as mainstream as the genre gets, a month later my recommendations are inexplicibly full of notorious neo-nazi bands. Not any videos of other, normal acts. Which is odd and doesn't make me very happy.

But anyway, most of the time, the majority of videos on the front page are the exact same ones, every day, that I've either already seen or have no intention of viewing.

Occasionally I'll check some music I haven't heard that shows up on YT, but usually that doesn't lead me to listening full-time, the recommendations just aren't that interesting and I usually stick to discovering new music through other means.

There are some extensions for browsers like FireFox that let you stop YouTube's recommendations or have more control over your recommendations. It sux that YouTube won't let us have more control directly on their site or app but they are a mega social media business run by Google so YouTube has it's own agenda that they want to push.

Regrets Reporter, Take back control from the algorithm, Block harmful YouTube recommendations
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/youtu ... sreporter/


Unhook: Remove YouTube Recommended Videos Comments
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... ed-videos/

Pandora has expanded my knowledge of lesser known musicians, which I find delightful and rewarding.

Updating discussion thread.

Anybody feel that YouTube's recommendations have improved with the progress of Artificial Intelligence (AI) lately?

Lately, I've noted frequently recurring song recommendations - based-on many different variations of personal preferences.

I've found recurring song recommendations very good indicators of my overall music preferences.

Five recurring songs almost always stood-out - the older generations here on WP would best remember these five songs:

- Angel of the Morning (Juice Newton).
- American Pie (Don McClean).
- California Dreamin' (The Mamas & Papas).
- The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (Gordon Lightfoot).
- Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin).

Any similar experiences?

Apparently YouTube thinks I should watch this video every single time I open the page.

recent uploads is nice as well
or something random


it was better, then got worse, now it has its days
somedays all the choice is what you've seen or these pesky things you don't want but they keep them up for days - or weeks

its a shame all the corporate uploads there's no comments, you get more info if needed w comments,
i never see nasty comments, maybe that's more a thing on current toppers

I keep my watch and search histories shut off.

I don't get recommendations apart from new content from channels where I'm subscribed.

None of them are music.

Thank-you for the recent additions to this discussion thread.

Four other frequently recurring YouTube recommendations are:

- Hey Jude (The Beatles).
- Something (The Beatles).
- What is Life? (George Harrison).
- House of the Rising Sun (The Animals).

The nine recurring YouTube recommendations mentioned....are selected to generate additional YouTube recommendations.

Four recurring recommendations are:

- Hotel California (The Eagles).
- Everybody Wants to Rule the World (Tears for Fears).
- My Way (Frank Sinatra).
- And yet again, Juice Netwon's version of 'Angel of the Morning.'

Long before TECH. driven recommendations, I knew my music preferences are the not too soft, not too hard decades-old songs.

Just that YouTube's recommendations do a pretty-good job of reflecting diverse personal music tastes (sometimes recommendations that are stunning) is amazing in itself.

The original post in this thread goes into detail on how to harness YouTube to make song recommednations.

Anybody find frequently recurring song recommendations?