u/panyc77

The music your streaming app recommends isn't based on your taste. It's based on who paid for placement.

I'm Alessandro, the developer of Sonic Oracle, a music discovery tool for Tidal and Qobuz. I think about how streaming platforms recommend music every day. Here's what I've learned.

Open Spotify. Open Apple Music. Open Amazon Music. Look at your home screen. What you see isn't a reflection of your taste. It's a mix of what you listen to and what someone paid to put in front of you.

This isn't a conspiracy theory. It's the business model.

How promotion works on streaming platforms:

Streaming platforms make money two ways: subscriptions and deals with labels. Labels pay for placement. Featured playlists, homepage banners, "recommended for you" slots. The algorithm doesn't distinguish between organic recommendations and promoted content. It all looks the same to you.

Spotify's editorial playlists drive billions of streams. Getting on one is the difference between 10,000 plays and 10 million. Labels know this. Artists know this. The result is a system where what you hear is shaped by business relationships as much as by your taste.

Apple Music does the same thing with editorial content, exclusive releases, and homepage features. Amazon Music bundles recommendations with its broader retail ecosystem. None of these platforms have an incentive to show you a brilliant obscure artist with no label backing.

The AI filler problem:

It gets worse. Streaming catalogs are now flooded with AI-generated tracks and soundalike covers. Why? Economics. A cover version by a ghost artist costs the platform less in royalties than the original recording. An AI-generated "lo-fi study beats" track costs almost nothing.

These tracks end up in your playlists not because they're good, but because they're cheap. The algorithm treats them the same as real music from real artists. You search for a classic song and get a cover. You ask for a discovery playlist and get manufactured content mixed in with genuine recommendations.

The platforms have no incentive to fix this. Every AI-generated stream is revenue with minimal royalty cost.

What "personalized" means (and doesn't mean):

When a streaming app says your recommendations are "personalized," it means a model trained on your listening history is selecting from a pool of content the platform wants to promote. Your taste is one input. Commercial interests are another. The balance between the two is invisible to you.

This is why your Discover Weekly starts feeling stale. It's not because you've run out of music to find. It's because the system recommending music to you was never designed to take risks. Risky recommendations don't drive engagement metrics. Safe, familiar picks do.

What would the alternative look like?:

Imagine a recommendation engine with no label deals. No promoted content. No AI-generated filler. No engagement metrics to optimize. Recommendations coming from one source only: real listener behavior. What do people with similar taste listen to? Follow those patterns, build a playlist, put it in your library.

Every artist a real person with a real discography. A depth control letting you choose how far from the familiar you want to go. Playlists saved permanently to your streaming library, not stations disappearing when they're done.

The technology for this exists. The streaming platforms have no incentive to build it because promotion revenue is too valuable.

Something to think about next time your "personalized" playlist feels like background noise.

Alessandro

I'm Alessandro, the developer of Sonic Oracle, a music discovery tool for Tidal and Qobuz. I think about how streaming platforms recommend music every day. Here's what I've learned.

Open Spotify. Open Apple Music. Open Amazon Music. Look at your home screen. What you see isn't a reflection of your taste. It's a mix of what you listen to and what someone paid to put in front of you.

This isn't a conspiracy theory. It's the business model.

How promotion works on streaming platforms: Streaming platforms make money two ways: subscriptions and deals with labels. Labels pay for placement. Featured playlists, homepage banners, "recommended for you" slots. The algorithm doesn't distinguish between organic recommendations and promoted content. It all looks the same to you.

Spotify's editorial playlists drive billions of streams. Getting on one is the difference between 10,000 plays and 10 million. Labels know this. Artists know this. The result is a system where what you hear is shaped by business relationships as much as by your taste.

Apple Music does the same thing with editorial content, exclusive releases, and homepage features. Amazon Music bundles recommendations with its broader retail ecosystem. None of these platforms have an incentive to show you a brilliant obscure artist with no label backing.

The AI filler problem: It gets worse. Streaming catalogs are now flooded with AI-generated tracks and soundalike covers. Why? Economics. A cover version by a ghost artist costs the platform less in royalties than the original recording. An AI-generated "lo-fi study beats" track costs almost nothing.

These tracks end up in your playlists not because they're good, but because they're cheap. The algorithm treats them the same as real music from real artists. You search for a classic song and get a cover. You ask for a discovery playlist and get manufactured content mixed in with genuine recommendations.

The platforms have no incentive to fix this. Every AI-generated stream is revenue with minimal royalty cost.

What "personalized" means (and doesn't mean): When a streaming app says your recommendations are "personalized," it means a model trained on your listening history is selecting from a pool of content the platform wants to promote. Your taste is one input. Commercial interests are another. The balance between the two is invisible to you.

This is why your Discover Weekly starts feeling stale. It's not because you've run out of music to find. It's because the system recommending music to you was never designed to take risks. Risky recommendations don't drive engagement metrics. Safe, familiar picks do.

What would the alternative look like?: Imagine a recommendation engine with no label deals. No promoted content. No AI-generated filler. No engagement metrics to optimize. Recommendations coming from one source only: real listener behavior. What do people with similar taste listen to? Follow those patterns, build a playlist, put it in your library.

Every artist a real person with a real discography. A depth control letting you choose how far from the familiar you want to go. Playlists saved permanently to your streaming library, not stations disappearing when they're done.

The technology for this exists. The streaming platforms have no incentive to build it because promotion revenue is too valuable.

Something to think about next time your "personalized" playlist feels like background noise.

Alessandro

This sub is proof people want better music discovery. Every day someone posts "IIL this artist, what else would I like?" and gets a handful of replies. Some great, some generic. But the process is always the same: ask, wait, hope someone with the right taste sees your post.

I had the same frustration. I wanted to type in an artist and instantly see a bunch of connected artists I've never heard of. Not based on what sounds similar, but based on what real listeners with the same taste enjoy. And I wanted it as a playlist in my library, not a list of names to look up one by one.

So I built it. It's called Sonic Oracle. No AI, no promoted content. A playlist of connected artists saved directly to your Tidal or Qobuz library in under a minute. There's a depth setting going from safe picks all the way to stuff no streaming platform would ever surface.

I wrote about how it works and why streaming recommendations keep falling short on the blog: https://sonicoracle.music/blog

Check it out at https://sonicoracle.music/

Alessandro

I love recommending music. But the process of finding something new has always been the same grind. Open your streaming app, browse "similar artists," click one, listen to 30 seconds, decide, go back, click another. Repeat for hours. And most of the time, you end up with the same names you already know.

I wanted something to take an artist I love and show me a bunch of connected artists I've never heard of. Not based on what sounds similar. Based on what real listeners with the same taste enjoy. And I wanted the result in my library as a playlist, not a list of names to search one by one.

Nothing like it existed, so I built it. It's called Sonic Oracle. No AI, no promoted content. A playlist of connected artists, saved directly to your Tidal or Qobuz library in under a minute. There's a depth setting going from safe picks all the way to stuff no streaming platform would ever surface.

I wrote about how it works and why streaming recommendations keep falling short on the blog if you want to dig deeper: https://sonicoracle.music/blog

Check it out at https://sonicoracle.music/

Alessandro

Sonic Oracle is an independent product, not affiliated with Roon.

Quick update. I added click-to-discover to Sonic Oracle. When your results come back, click any artist in the list to run a new search from them. Chain one discovery into the next without going back to the search bar.

Say you find someone interesting buried in an Adventurous playlist. Click their name and go deeper from there. Every playlist lands directly in your Tidal or Qobuz library and your Roon system picks up automatically.

Free to try at sonicoracle.music.

Three playlists, no credit card needed.

Alessandro

You search for an artist, get a set of connections, and now if one of them catches your eye, you click their name and run a new search from them. Chain searches together until you find something you never knew existed.

This was already in the works, but a user request pushed it to the top of the list. Shipped the same day.

Free to try at sonicoracle.music

Three playlists, no credit card needed.

Alessandro

Quick update. Sonic Oracle has a new domain: sonicoracle.music

The old .ai domain kept giving people the impression this is an AI product. It's not. The engine is built on real listener data, not machine learning or generative AI. The .music domain says what it is.

Same product, same account, same engine. Old links redirect automatically.

Your Wiim will pick up automatically any new playlist created on your Tidal/Qobuz account, no download, no file transfer, no syncing

Free to try. Three playlists, no credit card needed.

https://sonicoracle.music

Alessandro

Quick update. Sonic Oracle has a new domain: sonicoracle.music

The old .ai domain kept giving people the impression this is an AI product. It's not. The engine is built on real listener data, not machine learning or generative AI. The .music domain says what it is.

Same product, same account, same engine. Old links redirect automatically.

Your Eversolo will pick up automatically any new playlist created on your Tidal/Qobuz account, no download, no file transfer, no syncing

Free to try. Three playlists, no credit card needed.

https://sonicoracle.music

Alessandro

Quick update. Sonic Oracle has a new domain: sonicoracle.music

The old .ai domain kept giving people the impression this is an AI product. It's not. The engine is built on real listener data, not machine learning or generative AI. The .music domain says what it is.

Same product, same account, same engine. Old links redirect automatically.

Free to try. Three playlists, no credit card needed.

https://sonicoracle.music

Alessandro

Quick update. Sonic Oracle has a new domain: sonicoracle.music

The old .ai domain kept giving people the impression this is an AI product. It's not. The engine is built on real listener data, not machine learning or generative AI. The .music domain says what it is.

Same product, same account, same engine. Old links redirect automatically.

Free to try. Three playlists, no credit card needed.

https://sonicoracle.music

Alessandro

Two weeks ago I posted a seed challenge here and the response blew me away. 5,000+ views, dozens of artists tested, and a lot of honest feedback about what the engine got right and where it missed.

Since then I've made some changes based on what this community told me:

The pricing is now $9.99/yr or $29.99 lifetime. Early supporters who paid more got credits for the difference, and yearly subscribers were upgraded to lifetime.

Adventurous depth is now a paid feature. Free users still get 3 playlists with Essential and Balanced. Adventurous is where the cross-genre connections live, the ones where the music has nothing in common sonically but the listeners do.

The engine is being tuned everyday from your feedback. If you tried it during the seed challenge and ran into gaps, it's worth another look.

I also started a blog with some deeper thoughts on why streaming discovery is broken and how taste affinity works differently: https://sonicoracle.ai/blog

https://sonicoracle.ai

Alessandro

Quick update for those who've been following along. A few things have changed.

The pricing is now $9.99/yr or $29.99 lifetime. Every early supporter who paid the original price got a credit for the difference, and every yearly subscriber was upgraded to lifetime at no cost. The people who showed up first should come out ahead.

Adventurous depth is now a paid feature. Free users still get 3 playlists with Essential and Balanced depths. If you've been curious about the cross-genre side of the engine, Adventurous is where the interesting connections live.

A major new platform integration is in the works. More on this soon.

Playlists still land directly in your Tidal or Qobuz library, ready to play through your Eversolo the moment they're created.

I also started a blog if anyone wants to read more about the thinking behind the engine: https://sonicoracle.ai/blog

Thanks to everyone here who's been supportive. This community has been one of the best from day one.

Alessandro

Quick update for those who've been following along. A few things have changed.

The pricing is now $9.99/yr or $29.99 lifetime. Every early supporter who paid the original price got a credit for the difference, and every yearly subscriber was upgraded to lifetime at no cost. The people who showed up first should come out ahead.

Adventurous depth is now a paid feature. Free users still get 3 playlists with Essential and Balanced depths. If you've been curious about the cross-genre side of the engine, Adventurous is where the interesting connections live.

A major new platform integration is in the works. More on this soon.

Playlists still land directly in your Tidal or Qobuz library, ready to play through Wiim the moment they're created.

I also started a blog if anyone wants to read more about the thinking behind the engine: https://sonicoracle.ai/blog

Thanks to everyone here who's been supportive. This community has been one of the best from day one.

Alessandro

Hey,

I wrote about why streaming recommendation algorithms get stale and why they're built to play it safe. Curious how Sonos users here handle music discovery. Do you rely on your streaming app's recommendations or find new music somewhere else?

https://sonicoracle.ai/blog/why-streaming-app-same-artists

Quick update for those who've been following along. A few things have changed.

The pricing is now $9.99/yr or $29.99 lifetime. Every early supporter who paid the original price got a credit for the difference, and every yearly subscriber was upgraded to lifetime at no cost. The people who showed up first should come out ahead.

Adventurous depth is now a paid feature. Free users still get 3 playlists with Essential and Balanced depths. If you've been curious about the cross-genre side of the engine, Adventurous is where the interesting connections live.

A major new platform integration is in the works. More on this soon.

Playlists still land directly in your Tidal or Qobuz library, ready to play through Roon the moment they're created.

I also started a blog if anyone wants to read more about the thinking behind the engine: https://sonicoracle.ai/blog

Thanks to everyone here who's been supportive. This community has been one of the best from day one.

Alessandro

Been thinking about why every streaming platform keeps recommending the same artists. Wrote some thoughts on it. Algorithms match sounds, not listeners, and the results get stale. Curious how everyone here handles music discovery.

https://sonicoracle.ai/blog/why-streaming-app-same-artists