That difference is easily captured by the cases where you don't skip that track. If you have listened to a track two times and on the third case skip it, then that's "I don't feel like this now"; if you have been offered that track twice and skipped it both times immediately, then you probably hate this.

Or I just am not in the mood again. If I do not like something I want a way to tell the engine that and not be afraid of skipping my favorite songs because I want to listen to them at another time. I think alogrithms are great but feel really frustrated and helpless because it somehow became impossible to explicilty give it signals or tweak it. It's like living together with someone who always tries to guess your needs but you are not allowed to talk to them. That's just a broken system.

I often leave my computer playing music, and step away for 15+ minutes to have a conversation. So "you have listened to a track two times" may be a false indication of "like".

Surely they have some context as to what "now" means?

I read that YouTube Music recommends different music depending on time of day, whether I'm at work / home / in the car, and even takes the weather into account. I'd be surprised if Spotify didn't have some context awareness as well.

I haven't noticed that Spotify would do anything like that. Instead they're pushing their podcasts and curated playlists. To be honest, I've thought that they're more like banner ads on websites rather an attempt at custom recommendation.

They can't possibly have sufficient context.

I recently got super into the band Squid. But I hated them the first time I heard them. It was because I was depressed and looking for more music like Black Midi-- Black Country New Road came up and was perfect. Squid came up and made me want to punch my speakers.

If they have enough data to predict my mood to that extent then I would like to hire them as my therapist.

Same! Started with Squid and Spotify took me to Black Midi, Yard Act, Dry Cleaning, all of whom I'd skipped in the past because I just didn't get it, now I'm obsessed. Some music just defies understanding on a first lesson.

it's not perfect, but ytm does what gp says. "You often listen to X in the morning" can be helpful even if it doesn't know about personal events in your life