I understand the licensing deals with record companies set much lower prices for radio-station-like ux compared to on-demand ux. ML-built playlists aren't necessarily ideally equivalent to the playlist you'd make yourself with infinite time and patience, but... I wonder if licensing terms influenced the pivot.
I'm not sure how much ML applies to Pandora. They apply a list of characteristics to music, which is done manually, and select music with similar characteristics. Their algorithm seems to favor music is cheap to play from an unknown artist and small label.
Their algorithm seems to favor music is cheap to play from an unknown artist and small label.
One exception I noticed a couple of years back is that Pandora started playing Mumford and Sons on pretty much all of my stations. I like their music, but it is definitely not dubstep, so something fishy was definitely going on. That year M&S was Pandora's highest paid artist.
