I think the issue is algorithmic curation uses popularity/traffic/engagement as signals over the actual content. Hence why I think outrage, politics and whatnot gets promoted more often. It leaves content that isn't popular in the dust, and causes people to modify their behaviour and content to optimise for the algorithm unfortunately—I personally think it's a broken system insofar as it's optimising for engagement rather than curation.

Somewhat related, but I've been using Plex's Sonic Analysis[1] and it's been great at recommending tracks in my library (large but not spotify huge), much better than the streaming services, which often would recommend popular non-independent content over gems.

It's "simple" but it works—ideally services ought to let users easily tweak how content is curated for them

>The Musical Universe consists of points in N-dimensional space. But what’s important is that this allows us to see how “close” anything in your library is from anything else, where distance is based on a large number of sonic elements in the audio.

1. https://support.plex.tv/articles/sonic-analysis-music/