site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1062 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 25, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Have any of you tried feeding a list of your favorite songs to ChatGPT / Claude and have it analyze your music taste?

I've long been bothered by Spotify's utter garbage recommendations, so I sent my 500 track 80s playlist to ChatGPT and had a long conversation with it about other examples I like and don't like. The result is frankly eerily accurate and manages to simultaneously explain my distaste for all post-1996 popular music and how Kraftwerk, trad Irish music, 80s pop and mid 90s Eurodance all fit neatly and consistently under the same "me like"-umbrella.

Yeah, I've tried, multiple times. The recommendations were even worse than Spotify's.

To be clear, I use AI a lot and find it very useful, but I don't think it understands music very well.

The recommendations were even worse than Spotify's.

How? Seriously?

For me Spotify's recommendations are so garbage that it keeps suggesting different variants of songs I already have on a playlist and songs I've disqualified a dozen times. It could be trivially improved by multiple orders of magnitude without even requiring any intelligence and all that could probably be done by a fresh junior level programmer if they just added "don't recommend this song ever" and "don't recommend this artist for this playlist". As it is, Spotify keeps shuffling the same two or three dozen songs over and over in the recommendations, none of which I like, just because they're "popular" among people who listen to the artists I have on my playlist.

I don't think it understands music very well.

It doesn't directly understand music and I ran into that when I asked for recommendations about "guitar music" within 80s pop rock genres, as that would have required it to actually listen to a bunch of tracks and analyze specific sub-attributes in them.

It does however seem to have a good understanding of what's been written about music and coupled with being able to follow instructions ("If an obvious major artist isn't already on my list, assume I don't like them") that worked wonders for me in honing out my true music preference profile and then getting recommendations both within the 80s rock & pop genres (more new additions than I'd found in the last 6 months by myself) and in completely different genres ("You don't like any classical music but do like Thomas Tallis? Check out these renaissance sacred polyphony polyphony composers." / "You hate all jazz but somehow don't mind Don Ellis' Whiplash? Try these specific tracks in that same composed, odd-meter, riff-driven corner of Jazz.").

Basically a combination of "analyze the common patterns across a large tightly curated playlist and ask me questions to further hone in on them" and "use prior analysis to suggest compatible music in genre X or across subgroup Y".

YMMV of course.

The result is frankly eerily accurate

Well, what is it?

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats