For me is the opposite, almost half the value i get from Spotify is about discovery (the other half is convenience).
Specifically, I discovered amazing artists through the Discovery Weekly and the Artist's Radios. But also the "Fans also listen to" section in an artist profile. I found all sort of things, even obscure indies with a few thousands of listens and other "hidden gems". I'm really happy they now added the "Enhance" function to playlists.
What I noticed though, is that I have to be very careful with my interactions on the platform to "train" the algorithm in the right direction. I have to like only specific genres that I want recommendations about, use playlists for anything else and use a lot the "i don't like this" feature on the discovery weekly. There was a period where I listened to more casual genres than usual and it completely broke my profile. My Dicovery Weekly was terrible at that time, it was a bummer.
What I think would be great is if Spotify would be more open about this. I would love to be able to tweak the discovery by myself (like suggest specific genres or artists, blacklist others). Maybe even create different discovery profiles for different genres. Instead I have to play the game of interacting blindly with the platform and see the results next monday on the new discovery weekly.
I really wish that I could (while respecting privacy) dig into real people's music tastes. I used to download songs with Napster and find some amazing song/artist, and them dig into what else that person had and loved almost all of it.
I have been looking to recreate this discovery through kindred-spirits-in-music ever since.
I spent so many hours finding a user on Napster (or Soulseek) and looking through the albums they had in their collection. Maybe it was because there was a higher barrier to entry for an album getting into a person's collection back then -- they either had to rip it from CD or download it on relatively slow connections, and hard drive space wasn't what it is now of course. It's not anything like favoriting a song or album on a platform like Spotify, even if you could browse their saved albums.
I'd love to have discovery require a little bit of work again, there was a lot of fun and playfulness in digging.
Specifically, I discovered amazing artists through the Discovery Weekly and the Artist's Radios. But also the "Fans also listen to" section in an artist profile. I found all sort of things, even obscure indies with a few thousands of listens and other "hidden gems". I'm really happy they now added the "Enhance" function to playlists.
What I noticed though, is that I have to be very careful with my interactions on the platform to "train" the algorithm in the right direction. I have to like only specific genres that I want recommendations about, use playlists for anything else and use a lot the "i don't like this" feature on the discovery weekly. There was a period where I listened to more casual genres than usual and it completely broke my profile. My Dicovery Weekly was terrible at that time, it was a bummer.
What I think would be great is if Spotify would be more open about this. I would love to be able to tweak the discovery by myself (like suggest specific genres or artists, blacklist others). Maybe even create different discovery profiles for different genres. Instead I have to play the game of interacting blindly with the platform and see the results next monday on the new discovery weekly.