Maybe their AI is particularly good with me because I use YouTube so much and I’m constantly liking things?

I'm sure Google pulls in data from everywhere they can, but it was reassuring for me to see that liking songs in YTM does in fact help improve your personal recommendations.

I assume the same works in Spotify, but it seems to work better in YTM for me.

I did use Spotify the way you mentioned though. Been a paid subscriber for more than three years, I create my own playlists, follow a bunch of custom playlists too, but when I listen to Discover Weekly or Release Radar, most of the songs just don't appeal to me.

It's true that YTM has a larger pool of data to pull from, but that shouldn't really matter. If Google has the tools at its disposal to make YTM algorithms better, why not use them?

I use Google Play Music for all my streaming listening, and dread the day Google will give it the axe in favour of YTM (and that day is gonna come, possibly soon). Play Music has a way better app (and web interface, and podcasts) and the music selection was also much better (last time I checked). Hopefully, YTM will get up to par feature-wise before they shut down Play Music. An option to transfer the library would also be very nice.

That's interesting. I don't think I knew about Google Play Music or if I did it fell off my radar for some reason. I installed it and used it this afternoon. The interface is like butter but I feel like I'm starting over building up a music library.

Pandora recently added several different options for fine tuning the discovery process on individual stations: see pic below.

It’s taking me awhile to figure out the difference between “Discovery” and “Deep Cuts”. For the 80’s hair band White Lion, Discovery seems to play more heavy metal and bands that are one hit wonders. Deep cuts plays more side B songs from Journey and the like.

I wonder what Discovery would do with Frank Sinatra. Bossa nova?

Have you received your Spotify 2019 Most Frequent Playlist yet? Does Google offer a summary of your years listening too?

I've only been on Spot for a couple months, so I'm not as much a noobie as my playlist might suggest. 😎

I've received mine too, it's quite a highlight of using Spotify actually. #SpotifyWrapped is trending on Twitter as everyone is sharing their own wrap-ups.

Unfortunately, Google offers no such thing in YTM, which is another feature it lacks compared to Spotify, and its users aren't oblivious to this omission.