I have no proofs, but I feel that liking/disliking songs does make difference (even though I'm still struggling to get rid of tons of bad covers and mediocre music in Slav languages)

Liking/disliking makes a difference, but for some reason my likes from 2014 seem to have an identical weight to my likes from today.

I haven't observed that with my account. I think it does change if you spend a bit of effort at letting it know what you like. Like songs you like, hide songs you loathe, skip songs that are meh.

> even though I'm still struggling to get rid of tons of bad covers and mediocre music in Slav languages)

What region is your Spotify set to? It seems to base the recommendations on the region (I live in the Nordics, but used the US version for some time and got recommended a ton of spanish music).

I'm in Israel but originally from Russia and listen to some Russian music and Spotify somehow assume Polish would be just as good for me. Leave alone decent amount of German music due to Rammstein.

I also got some Scandinavian stuff too but it usually fits my taste at least.

I wish the playlists were better but half the time when I search for a playlist to suit a specific mood, It'll have a minimum of 5000 songs on there which means that the overall average quality of the songs is probably going to be pretty low.

You know that the individual who created the playlist in no way hand curated that list, hell they probably haven't even listened to half the songs that they added to their playlist, much less vetted them.

>The problem with this service is that most times, I don't chose what I listen to. Spotify does.

This is one reason I never really clicked with it, or with Pandora, and why I have really enjoyed and used Apple Music. I'm not really interested in algorithmic playlists most of the time. I want what I want. I've been listening to music a long time; I can make connections on my own. ;)

I follow artists I like as a way of adding them to my library and "like" particular songs if I want them more accessible without having to go to the artist page. This is the way I listen to what I want (along with occasionally making playlists).

I actually really enjoy the ability to effortlessly discover new music I never would have found otherwise that Spotify gives. The recommendation algorithm can be weird at times, but I hear liberal use of likes and dislikes helps though YMMV.

As an aside, everyone else I've seen using Spotify tends to strictly build playlists and not really follow any artists. Not really sure what to make of that.

I don't mean to dismiss algorithmic discovery entirely, I should say. It's good if you want it. But mostly I play stuff I've gleaned from elsewhere (read that article, got a suggestion, whatever).