Seems like the recommendations are somewhat hit or miss so far. I would suggest finding a way to say why it recommended a particular song. I know that this is already common, but maybe you could come up with a new spin on it.
Also, other comments have suggested that this was trained on 120MM of the audio previews instead of the full songs. That might explain why the recommendations seem a little off for some people.
I'm totally going out on a limb and guessing here - I'm more on the UI/UX side of things so I know nothing low-level about what goes into a building recommendation engine, algorithm, or whatever. But I do know music pretty well, and this feels like it's matching too closely to the technical aspects of the music and not the overall theme/je-ne-sais-quoi that makes a song something you feel.
I tried two of my all-time favorite songs:
The Gaslight Anthem - Handwritten
Thrice - The Artist in the Ambulance
On the first, I would say it was a total swing and miss - the recommendations had similar elements to Handwritten like strummed power chords, but the vibe was completely off. With Thrice, same thing. The first match was a remaster of the song itself by the band, so of course despite being a "different" track it was the closest possible match. The rest of the recommendations had a similar tempo and more heavy metal riffs (as are common in Thrice's songs), but none of them were songs I would voluntarily listen to.
This is a cool idea and I hope OP if you read this you take the criticsm as it's intended - I'm not trashing the implementation or anything. This just feels like it truly is a robot that can't feel the emotion of a song making me recommendations.
Honestly, thanks for taking the time to give such detailed feedback!
The current model I have isn't as good as I want it to be, and I'm working on a newer one with a different training process as well. This should address some of the shortcomings people have mentioned.
I was really nervous of shipping my v1 with the current model, but thought I might as well share what I have so far with the world, in case someone finds it useful lol.
Hey, no problem! Best of luck going forward. FWIW I almost never try out Show HNs and recommendations on here, the idea really piqued me. I am always looking to find the next new song or artist I love. So that should be a good signal for you. I look forward to revisiting in the future!
Also, other comments have suggested that this was trained on 120MM of the audio previews instead of the full songs. That might explain why the recommendations seem a little off for some people.