How Kids Destroy Your Spotify Algorithm

Spotify has apparently decided parents need help. It put out a feature that lets you exclude kids' music from your profile, meaning the songs your children play 3000 damn times don't have to infect your recommendations or yearly summary anymore. This makes sense because Spotify has spent years building one of the most sophisticated recommendation algorithms on Earth, only to have it absolutely dismantled by a 7 year old with access to mom and dad’s phone. You know what, that’s actually pretty damn funny to me. Somewhere, Spotify is looking at my listening history trying to determine whether I genuinely enjoy the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack or whether I'm being held hostage. They probably have data scientists studying it. Unfortunately, I have bad news for them.

I fucking love KPop Demon Hunters.

I don't mean I tolerate it because I'm a good dad and I know my kids like it. I mean there are songs from that movie I will totally listen to when my kids aren't with me. It always starts with Okay, this is actually pretty catchy. Then you're doing dishes and realize you're humming it. A week later, the kids aren't even around and you're halfway through a song before realizing they didn’t put it on. You did.

Your Music Taste Changes When You Have Kids

Kids don't casually enjoy music. They identify one song they like and then try to determine how many consecutive plays it takes before another human, most likely their parents, flip out. Adults hear a song we love and add it to a playlist. Kids hear a song they love and decide every other musician on Earth can go eat shit. Spotify doesn't understand that your daughter requested the song 30 times on the drive home. It sees 30 plays and thinks, Holy shit, SavePointDad is REALLY into this. And after enough repetitions, apparently Spotify might be right.

The same shit has happened to my YouTube feed. There will be gaming videos, workout shit, some clips from a documentary I wanted to watch, and then videos of roller coasters and monster trucks. It’s funny cause I've discovered YouTube videos through my kids that I genuinely like. I've learned music from them that I never would've heard otherwise. My kids have somehow become two extremely pain in the ass recommendation algorithms who live in my house, make a mess, and once in a while introduce me to some pretty cool shit.

Someday My Spotify Algorithm Will Be Mine Again

Before kids, you spend years figuring out what the hell you like. Your music, movies, games, hobbies, restaurants, weekends. Then you have kids and someone basically creates a second save file directly on top of yours. They don't delete your shit; they just start modifying the damn world. I've written before about how parenting is basically an escort mission that lasts 18 years, but apparently it's also a multiplayer game where the other players are allowed to permanently change your settings. Eventually you can't even remember what the original save looked like.

I still like the things I liked before becoming a dad. I still game, work out (to be honest I actually didn’t like working out before), and waste embarrassing amounts of time watching dumb shit on YouTube. But now all of that exists alongside things my kids like. We spend a lot of time introducing our kids to our stuff because that's one of the fun parts of having them. You show them the games, movies, and music you love and then become personally offended when they aren't impressed. But the exchange goes both ways. They're introducing us to their world too.

Maybe Spotify Isn't Wrong

Technically, Spotify can now help parents separate children's listening from their own profile. Spotify Wrapped is supposed to represent what I listened to this year. Well, my kids made me listen to some shit 150 times in a row. That's what happened this year. And if my daughter introduced me to a song that I eventually started liking, why would I want to erase that? If some ridiculous soundtrack played during school drop-offs, road trips, cleaning the house, and a hundred completely forgettable Tuesday afternoons, then it wasn't fake listening. It was part of our life.

There's also the slightly terrifying realization that today's annoying repetition is probably tomorrow's nostalgia. Right now, hearing the same song for the sixth time in a row can drive you nuts. 10 years from now, that same song could play randomly in a grocery store and absolutely fucking wreck you. Suddenly you're back in the car with your kids singing half the words incorrectly and demanding that you restart the song because they weren't ready. Kids have no idea they're creating our nostalgia while they're annoying the shit out of us.

Let’s be clear, I'm not saying I like every single song they pick. Let's not get freaking ridiculous.

Someday the Algorithm Will Be Mine Again

Eventually this problem will fix itself. My kids will have their own phones (that’s scary), Spotify accounts, and shitty taste in music. Nobody will scream requests from the back seat. Nobody will hijack YouTube and leave my recommendations looking like 3 different people share my account. And that sounds kind of shitty to me.

That's parenting. The things driving you nuts slowly disappear, and then you somehow miss them.

So Spotify can keep trying to figure me out. Let it wonder why a 40 year old dad's listening history suddenly swerves from workout music into K-pop. Let YouTube think I'm interested in gaming, documentaries, and Peppa Pig. My recommendations don't represent one person anymore because it’s not just me anymore.

Thanks for reading. If this made you laugh, feel slightly attacked, or check your own completely destroyed Spotify recommendations, follow SavePointDad and subscribe at SavePointDad.com.