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Track variety, not only clicks, when you personalize recommendations

Oct 10
3 min read

Updated: Oct 11

Public-domain art plate: Audubon — Belted Kingfisher, Birds of America (1827-1838)
Belted Kingfisher, a plate from John James Audubon's The Birds of America (1827-1838).

The recommendations that get the most clicks can also make the world of each user smaller.


The study. David Holtz and co-authors from MIT and Spotify ran a field experiment with 852,937 Spotify Premium users in 17 countries. None of the users had listened to a podcast before. A shelf on the home screen showed each of them 10 podcasts to try.


The finding. Users who got podcasts that a model picked for them streamed 28.90% more podcasts. The control group got the 10 most popular podcasts for their group. But each treated user listened to a less varied mix, while users became more different from each other.

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