Opinion

Spotify algorithm misses the note

“The Incredible True Story” by Logic

Spotify is great! It tracks your music tendencies and then tells you how your year’s music flowed using a complicated algorithm. 

This is great — unless you share your account or do album reviews for a newspaper.

Unfortunately, I shared my account in 2018, then started to do album reviews for the Agora in 2019. My results for back-to-back years have been skewed heavily.

My top song of 2018 definitely was not “Pieces of Me” by Ashlee Simpson!

Some of what Spotify configured was right, though.

“Automatic” by Don Broco

In 2017 my top song was “DNA” by Kendrick Lamar and my top artist probably was Linkin Park.

I was still in my edgy post-high school persona and had not dived into rap and other genres as much.

Logic has been my artist of the year since then.

I listened to Logic a lot in 2018 out of excitement and as a fan. This year I listened as a reviewer, he dropped two albums, “Supermarket,” and “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” which inflated his play time.

Spotify says I spent 31 hours listening to him this year. It is probably right, however, the albums had few good qualities and were mostly forgettable — maybe regrettable.

Aside from this, my top artists for 2019 seem unlikely.

“Because the Internet” by Childish Gambino

Linkin Park was my second top artist and I disagree with this selection.

They pop up here and there, but not nearly to the extent as artists like Of Montreal or Tyler the Creator have this year.

Third on my list was Muse. Again, I highly doubt it.

Their last album angered me so much that I started doing album reviews.

Bands like Muse and Linkin Park were my main artists for years like 2015.

The only artist I agree with being in my top five besides Logic is Childish Gambino.

“Because the Internet” is still one of my all-time favorite albums.

My top five for this year should look like this: Logic, Don Broco, Childish Gambino, BTS and Mike Shinoda. In that order.

Spotify and their algorithm be damned.