The extent of disassociation between my music and the related artists was such that a considerable proportion of these artists had no monthly listeners whatsoever and no profile photos. How could an artist profile that has ~20k monthly listeners could be grouped alongside artists who have no following to speak of.

My extremely high-level, outsiders understanding of the FAL (Fans also like) algorithm is this: Spotify looks at an artist with N number of listeners and checks to see who those people are also listening to. If a majority of those N listeners also listen to me…that artist would then show up in my FAL.

So then how could an artist with 0 monthly listeners have a majority of their audience like my music…there is no audience. It just didn’t make sense.

As you can imagine, this was extremely frustrating and disappointing, and I repeatedly contacted customer service about the issue. However, their response was always the same; “keep releasing music” and the “algorithm is working correctly”.

For the data nerds…despite gaining traction through TikTok and editorial playlists, my radio streams only totaled 30,000 and just a mere 25 total Daily Mix streams since 2015. These numbers were far below what they should have been if the algorithm was working correctly. To cement my point…30k streams over the 3 years I was actively releasing music is ~27 streams a day. And yes, over 3 years I had a total of 25 streams coming from Spotify’s algorithmically generated ‘Daily Mix’ playlists…that’s ~8 streams per year.

In a last-ditch effort to solve the problem, I posted on a Spotify sub-Reddit where I received help from a Spotify employee. He initially confirmed that the algorithm was working as intended and the 10 artists listed in my FAL were indeed correctly associated with my music.

I wasn’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer and decided to investigate further using a website which visualizes Spotify’s algorithm and music classification, www.everynoise.com. After hours of exploring, I eventually discovered that some of the music I released in 2011 was surfacing on this website still associated with my artist profile, even though I had removed it in 2016.

I then went directly to the Spotify API and found that the metadata from my 2011 releases was still being retained by Spotify and linked to my artist profile. Upon investigating the other artists I was “correctly associated” with, I discovered that they, too, mostly only had 2011 releases.

Bingo. It became clear that somehow I got grouped with these artists in 2011 and I just never moved.

Despite Spotify’s reassurances, I persisted and eventually convinced them to reset my “Fans also like” data and start from scratch. The data officially reset on April 12th, and I began to see an increase in my radio streams the very next day.

It’s worth mentioning that in parallel I went back to customer service and told them they were actively violating GDPR compliance by retaining metadata on my releases I had removed from their platform in 2016. They have since removed the old releases.

As of today, my streams have not dramatically changed. I currently have ~20,000 monthly listeners, which is the same I’ve had for the past few months. However, my radio streams are slowly figuring themselves out, and my daily mix algorithmic streams have grown by 700% in the month of April. This sounds impressive but when you’re coming from ~8 streams a year…it’s really not that much.

While I am relieved that the issue has finally been resolved, I can’t help but feel that the algorithm’s incorrect data representation has set me back in my career for 3 years. If my radio streams in April are any indication, I may have missed out on 300,000 streams or more due to this issue. As an artist, I hope that Spotify takes steps to prevent this issue from affecting other musicians who may not have the technical expertise to diagnose and fix the problem. I also hope that my algorithm will soon understand my music and appropriately represent my fans.

If you’re reading this and would like to help solve the problem…here is my profile page on Spotify where you can listen to my newest release, ‘voldemort’.

To the left is a screenshot of a post by Reddit sharing their support of a hackathon I co-founded at my women’s college, HackHolyoke. First, I’d like to thank Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, Lyndsey Scott and all of our sponsors for their amazing support of HackHolyoke.

Secondly, let’s talk equality. Just a quick search on Google you get that equality is “the state of being equal, especially in status, rights, and opportunities.” So why did HackHolyoke put so much emphasis on achieving a 1:1 gender ratio? I’m not alone on the organizing team for HackHolyoke when I say that I’ve been to hacks and been discriminated against. I’m not alone when I say I’ve been told that I “don’t know what I’m doing” regarding the code I’ve written. I’m not alone when I say that I was told at a hack that the only reason I would get a job in the tech industry was so the “men in the office could get laid”. HackHolyoke was created to provide a space where comments like these are not acceptable — where everybody can learn and excel in a welcoming and challenging environment. HackHolyoke believes the best hacks are dreamt of, executed and created in a space that harbors equality.

Now — for these comments.

“I thought it was about hacking, turns out it’s about equality. Oh well.”

Reddit said it. Equality and hacking are not mutually exclusive. How does equality suddenly take away the ability to say that HackHolyoke is an environment “that welcomes hackers from around the country to be fearless, to truly be innovative, and to develop brilliantly new and disruptive technologies.”? Spotify did a 1:1 gender ratio hack recently, is that no longer hacking? Is Spotify not concerned about creating new products to change the world? Just because we encourage all genders to attend HackHolyoke does not mean we’re creating an environment adverse to hacking. In fact, it’s been researched and concluded that women and men working together is exponentially more productive than working separately.

In case there’s still some confusion here, here’s an article from the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) that talks about the advantages of gender diversity and that companies that are gender-balanced “Demonstrate superior team dynamics and productivity.” And here’s an article by Credit Suisse saying how companies with women on the board have “outperformed those with no women on the board in terms of share price performance”.

Oh, and for the person who wrote “Focusing on equality is kinda ridiculous, it’s like focusing on equality for hobby lobby xD” — See above. Focusing on equality is exactly what we should be doing right now.

“Why do people call this hacking when its basically just making? Or working with components?”

Alright, first let me explain what hacking is. I like to define hacking as breaking the rules. You’re given 24hrs to create something you just thought of and it’s your chance to make it happen. In order to make it come to life — you hack it. You find quick ways to do things and the entire time you’re learning and making memories.

HackHolyoke is your place to break the rules of how you “should” code. We’re providing you with a space free of a teacher making sure you’re doing the “right” things and correcting your “mistakes”. For the 24hrs that you’re innovating and dreaming — those hours are yours to do whatever you can imagine. Don’t hold back.

That being said, while yes we are “making” and yes some people who decided to work with hardware are “working with components” they’re also hacking. They’re coming up with new ways to do things and experimenting with new technologies. All the while being extremely sleep-deprived and shower-less.

“I bet no hacking went on.”

For some strange reason in between the midnight easter egg hunt, the 2:00am dance party/karaoke and the mysterious hauntings hackers managed to find some time to hack.

Here’s an article by Intel describing some of the amazing hacks that came out of HackHolyoke. Here’s another article from HackHolyoke Fall 2014. Here’s a buzzfeed article about the Hashtag Gloves which came out of HackHolyoke Fall 2014 and here’s an article from TODAY.com.

And if you don’t want to read articles, read what some of our hackers had to say for themselves.

“#HackHolyoke was a great experience & I met so many fantastic & smart techies from students 2 professionals.”

“24 hours, $25 on Amazon, and 1Tb hard drive (for best AWS hack). @HackHolyoke was the best hackathon I’ve been to!”

Not only did people write positively about their amazing experience at HackHolyoke online — they weren’t afraid to stand up and say it to everybody in attendance and to others watching via livestream. During our closing ceremony Lyndsey Scott asked the male hackers in the room what it felt like to be in the 1:1 ratio environment and the response was just what I had hoped for. A male hacker stood up and said “it feels like this should be the norm”. At this point, I started bawling and many of the others in the room followed suit.

“It feels like this should be the norm”

I’m proud to say that I am the co-founder of HackHolyoke, but I’m disappointed equality still has to be defended. At the end of the day, HackHolyoke strives to be an inclusive environment for all genders and all experience levels. As an organizer I work tirelessly to speak to every attendee and get to know their hacks more in-depth and hope that each hacker leaves after the 24hrs with a new perspective on hackathons. I hope they’re encouraged to try new things and excited to step outside of their comfort zone. I hope that HackHolyoke provides a safe space for beginners to take the first steps and gives the opportunity for advanced programmers to learn something new.

HackHolyoke will be an annual hackathon, so if this is something you would like to attend, keep an eye out on our website for registration for the 2015/2016 hack.

24-hour hackathon brings women hackers to Mount Holyoke College

And because you made it through this entire post — here’s the video we sent to Alexis to get him to come to HackHolyoke. We really do have a goose you can take a selfie with, her name is Jorge ❤

“I thought it was about hacking, turns out it’s about equality. Oh well.” was originally published in Ladies Storm Hackathons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This semester I’ve been lucky enough to be developing on the Oculus Rift. I pitched a game idea at Hampshire College for a Virtual Reality horror game based off of the Belchertown State School for the Feeble Minded. It was chosen and now I am working with 6 other students to create a truly horrifying experience.

Just like any programmer, Google is my best friend. However, it’s been useless for the first time in my whole life. Back in CS101 when I didn’t understand a string, one search and boom — got it. Now, I could spend 30 minutes going through pages looking for answers about the Oculus and find nothing.

I’ve never been ahead of the technology game. I didn’t code before coming to college, I didn’t spend hours playing video games and researching the “next big thing” but now…I am. And it’s wicked cool.

I’m working with technology only developers and sleep deprived hackers are lucky enough to touch let alone develop on. Even cooler? The three programmers on my team are all women. Two of us come from Mount Holyoke College (myself included) and the third programmer is studying at Smith College. I couldn’t have asked for a more exciting and difficult semester.

Working with technology only a handful of others in the world are developing on means we’re spending hours at night just trying to solve one small problem. But it also means that when that problem is solved, the feeling is unforgettable.

We’ve given up on Google. We’re solving problems without StackOverflow. We’re making progress together as a team.

Watch our progress on our game’s website here: Neurosis.