No, but it's also biased toward their commercial partners. From this page [0], detailing their recommendation process:
> How do commercial considerations impact recommendations?
> [...] In some cases, commercial considerations, such as the cost of content or whether we can monetize it, may influence our recommendations. For example, Discovery Mode gives artists and labels the opportunity to identify songs that are a priority for them, and our system will add that signal to the algorithms that determine the content of personalized listening sessions. When an artist or label turns on Discovery Mode for a song, Spotify charges a commission on streams of that song in areas of the platform where Discovery Mode is active.
So Spotify's incentivized to coerce listening behavior towards contemporary artists that vaguely match your tastes, so they can collect the commission. This explains why it's essentially impossible to keep the algorithm in a historical era or genre -- even if well defined, and seeded with a playlist full of songs that fit the definition. It also explains why the "shuffle" button now defaults to "smart shuffle" so they can insert "recommended" (read: commission-generating) songs into your playlist.
The link they provided is the disclosure. You'd be surprised to find out this is the business model of the radio for years and why most radio stations that need profits only play recent songs, and usually the same songs over and over until new ones that are pushed by labels come out.
Is there a site that has hand-curated playlists I would love that let's say if I want to listen to Korean pop from the 90s or Minimal Techno from the 00s.
> How do commercial considerations impact recommendations?
> [...] In some cases, commercial considerations, such as the cost of content or whether we can monetize it, may influence our recommendations. For example, Discovery Mode gives artists and labels the opportunity to identify songs that are a priority for them, and our system will add that signal to the algorithms that determine the content of personalized listening sessions. When an artist or label turns on Discovery Mode for a song, Spotify charges a commission on streams of that song in areas of the platform where Discovery Mode is active.
So Spotify's incentivized to coerce listening behavior towards contemporary artists that vaguely match your tastes, so they can collect the commission. This explains why it's essentially impossible to keep the algorithm in a historical era or genre -- even if well defined, and seeded with a playlist full of songs that fit the definition. It also explains why the "shuffle" button now defaults to "smart shuffle" so they can insert "recommended" (read: commission-generating) songs into your playlist.
[0]: https://www.spotify.com/ca-en/safetyandprivacy/understanding...