Axl S

1 hour ago, AxlRoseCDII said:

That's the type of things that just irritate me about this whole case. Each theory we present, algorithmic or not, at best, can only be 60% or so accurate. There's too many holes in each story.

All of the explanations can be true at the same time.

• It can be true that tracks on their system but not yet live influence the search results.
• it can be true that repeat user search sessions + their listening habits, local files, playlists influence the search results.
• It can be true that certain metadata associated with GN'R ends up in their system from web scraping.

The first tracks that appeared could legitimately be on their system, waiting to go live. And then the others could be appearing subsequent to that due to the algorithm being influenced by user activity. The dual reasoning also starts to explain the timing thing of why this all is happening now.


After all, the one thing that doesn't make sense with the solely algorithm theory is "Why now?". Why were these titles not yielding GN'R search results in 2019 and 2021? What caused the first tracks (Atlas and SoG) to start appearing in the first place? The solely algorithm theory doesn't really answer those questions.

Spacebrained (and not happening theory). What if the original info for Silkworms got cut off and developed into it's own thing that is now Silkworms.... yeah I don't think so either.

3 minutes ago, Jw224 said:

The mixes of HS and Absurd were really bad. Sounds like early mixes that were compressed to all hell and then released. The drums sound so bad. Everything is so compressed it sounds like a jumbled mess. 

I thought Absurd sounded alright, but Hard Skool... those drums are lifeless

15 minutes ago, Sosso said:

Interesting question. I doubt that he would fly all the way down to South America just to watch the shows. 

He's dating Melissa. That + being friends with the band is most likely why he's there.

1 hour ago, sofine11 said:

This is most definitely The General. 

I really don't hear it.

6 minutes ago, AxlRoseCDII said:

Have we seen any alt lists since the first show? I know the first show was nothing interesting but if we see one from a recent show it would clear up whether or not this is a new song or cover. If there's nothing on the alt lists then it's 100% just a jam.

Yeah, short of them being paranoid about a surprise being on the alt lists it has to be there. Their shows require so much coordination these days, with the techs and everything that they need it noted beforehand.

The Spotify situation could mean lots of things

• Absolutely nothing, entirely driven by scraped content from the web, user's playlists, user's local files, and user's search sessions. The only question with this theory is... why now? Why not months/years ago?
• Everything. All those titles (or at least the information about them) are in Spotify's system or another record label system that Spotify integrates with.
• Something inbetween - the first title or two that cropped up do exist in Spotify's or a third-party's system. The rest of the results are pollution from users.
• Another reason that no one has theorised yet.
   

It sort of doesn't matter thought because none of the above means a release would actually happen. It's Guns N' Roses. Them releasing new music is rare. Thankfully there are some indicators that something might happen, that have nothing to do with Spotify search results.

1. Slash publicly talked about how him and Duff went in and worked on a lot of Axl's CD leftovers. He then even talked about how more were coming out "soon" and at one point stated he expected "one or two" to come around the time of the European tour this Summer. That hasn't happened, but so far everything he has talked about has eventaully come to pass. He said that he expect Guns to be putting something new out in an interview in 2020 or 2021, eventually new music turns up. He said he expected UYI box this year, it eventually has turned up.
2. They actually released new music last year and these things can happen quickly. We went from Absurd turning up on the setlist at the first show last year with some fans wondering "Is... is that Silkworms?", it being played at the next show and then at the third show Axl announcing a midnight online release. They have shown that it is possible for them to actually do this.
3. UYI box has no new or unreleased songs on it. The UYI box really doesn't do much to promote additional tour legs, it's just a niche product for hardcore fans who still buy physical media. Future tour legs after this year will soon need something to promote them and they're probably due back in the States in 2023.
4. After the UYI reissue there's nothing left to do but release new music.

1 minute ago, Manfisman said:

I think what he is trying to say that it makes sense that Ballad of Death is being associated with GNR because it was released oficially by the band, it's composed by DJ and performed by GNR, so having both GNR and DJ Ashba as suggestions make total sense. That's exactly how algorithms are supposed to work.

 

What doesn't make sense is having GNR being suggested on obscure random demo names like Thyme, Soul Monster, Perhaps, etc. It's very hard to find a reason why the algorhitm would make that suggestion without having it registered somewhere.

This ^.

Yeah I was being sarcastic about there being no logical reason for BoD to be associated with GN'R besides "magic algorithm". There is a reasonable explanation, the artist was their guitarist for 5 years and this particular track was on a GN'R release. 

I would expect some of Spotify's associated metadata for artists is pulled from record industry systems. Ballad of Death is listed on ASCAP with some of the publishing rights belonging to a subsidiary of Warner Music Group. A large record label whose systems I expect Spotify do interface with in some way. It's also performed on an official GN'R release, released by UMG. It's association with GN'R in search results makes some sense.

Why Bumblefoot's songs don't get results? No clue. Why these unreleased clues, get results? Couldn't say definitively. Spotify associating the metadata for GN'R with some related tracks and search terms for artists related to them or for songs they've been mistaken for before.... i can see why that happens.

For completely never released, never published, some never leaked songs. I can't see how that happens.

Folk keep trying to experiment with other artists unreleased tracks or related GN'R artists tracks. Instead try experimenting with random words and phrases, see if anything turns up in results that makes no logical sense. That would be a better test.

I am typing in random shit just now: "electric soda can", "walrus fucking", "love bastard", "engaged", "fried salad", "fearless", "central park". All the results that show... make sense. No random big name artists that their "algorithm" has built an association with.

So why does it associate GN'R strongly with basic words like "thyme" and "perhaps" without some related entry in their system for that?

Just now, Lies They Tell said:

What exactly are you trying to say? That GNR is about to release Ballad of Death? Is that what you're suggesting?

Of course Ballad of Death is associated with Guns n' Roses. That is exactly why the algorithm is giving GNR as a suggestion when you search for Ballad of Death. Algorithms are based on associations.

People are suggesting BoD turning up in results means that these results are just "the algorithm" and it's just users searching for stuff or their playlists. I'm suggesting maybe it's appearing because it's on an official Guns N' Roses release.

Same with Wichita. GN'R published a live performance of that on YouTube. Hell, their listed as a performer for it on ASCAP. Those associations make sense.

These unreleased and never performed tracks don't make anywhere near as much sense.

4 minutes ago, Blackstar said:

I think there is definitely a correlation between users' listening habits, what words people search for, the popularity of the artists in general on Spotify, and the search results (so if it's not a popular artist, they won't appear in the search results even if they have released songs containing part of the searched phrase - especially if the title is very common). So the way the algorithm works is not irrelevant. However, it's still seems odd that this would also work for songs that are not in the database.

And if Spotify populated their metadata by scraping from articles, or itemised lists of unreleased CD tracks on wikipedia or wherever else... why only these select few titles?

Truly impossible to imagine how this recording on an audio and video product released by UMG that, will include a writing credit for Mr Ashba and a performing credit for Guns N' Roses could ever lead to this track being associated with Guns N' Roses. It must be an ambiguous algorithm.

Ballad of Death could have been associated with GN'R for a very long time for all we know.

All we know is there is some metadata associated with Guns N' Roses as an artist and/or their tracks and albums that associates them with these search terms. The only question for that is why? One very simple reason would be that they are in their system or a system that Spotify connects to and uses to add to the metadata for an artist.

Another could be that they scrape the web for associations between artists, albums and songs in their database. They do that for sure to power recommendations and population of things like the Release Radar and Discovery Weekly playlists. It makes a lot of sense for them to do that for those things. It does not make as much sense to do it for search results. Those are two user experiences, one where a user is open to hearing suggestions on things they might like, the other where they are specifically looking for something.

Think about this, Atlas Shrugged. It's the title of a fairly well known book. I might want to find a podcast about it or Ayn Rand. When i go searching Spotify for "Atlas Shrugged" what good does it do to recommend me Guns N' Roses, their songs, and official Spotify playlists containing them. There are other artists on Spotify who have released songs with that title, why not show me them first at the least? Why on earth has that strong an association in their metadata been built that it's showing me GN'R as the top result?

I can't imagine that our user search sessions are steering it that much. I could see web scraping but then I'd have to wonder why. Perhaps has barely been spoken about online anywhere and yet GN'R is almost a stronger hit for that in the UK than Arctic Monkeys who have a song title that starts with the word "Perhaps".

I think that the likeliest explanation is probably the right one. These tracks are in Spotify's system (or a record industry system that they connect to) and that's why this strong association between GN'R and these terms exists. Does that mean new album anytime soon though? No, ... it's Guns N' Roses.

8 minutes ago, Blackstar said:

For me (with VPN USA) "ballad of de" (not the whole phrase) suggests GN'R but not Ashba. However: there's an Alice Cooper song called Ballad Of Dwight Fry, Alice Cooper is the top artists and there are playlists featuring both Alice Cooper and GN'R. It's also likely for Ballad of Death that people have searched it in the previous years as "ballad of death guns n roses", because it was played live. Something similar with what happens with the covers played live.

For a similar reason, I would totally expect GN'R to appear when searching songs like Cats in the Cradle, Every Rose Has Its Thorn, Bed Of Roses, since many people through the years have mistaken them as GN'R songs (plus two of them contain the word "rose") and moreover Spotify probably considers these bands as related to GN'R.

I think there are more than one possible explanations for everything we're discussing.

Speaking of mistaken GN'R songs, ASCAP lists GN'R as a performer on White Christmas 

4 hours ago, SoulMonster said:

We are not affected the search results but our preferences affect what music Spotify suggests for us.

But we've tested on unused devices, on different home and public internet access, searching the Spotify catalogue as a not signed in user and found these results.

There isn't a personalised search result element to this. Only suspicion is if GN'R fan activity, searches, playlists and local files on Spotify affect the results for everyone - issue with that suspicion as others have mentioned is if that were the case then Spotify's results would be a mess for every artist.

So the mystery is what is in the metadata in Spotify's system that associates the GNR artist entry, official GN'R playlists, GN'R albums & GN'R songs with these search terms.

One fairly sensible theory is these tracks are uploaded to Spotify's service but aren't live yet. Another could be that Spotify hooks into private record company services which include listings for unreleased and upcoming material and that feeds into their metadata.

1 hour ago, Shacklermyrye said:

Away from the Spotify thing but still potentially to do with new music. Do we know anything about a song called Dragon by any chance?

Alleged to have vocals. Was on a list of candidate tracks for CD that was amongst a bunch of documents in Zutaut's locker.

3 hours ago, ryanf23 said:

I so wish the version of Coma that leaked months ago where Axl changes the lyrics about someone else writing some lyrics would come out 

It's known who has it, they don't want to share.

1 minute ago, GNR 1991 said:

Ehhh can someone DM me which “other forum” they’re referring to? Thanks

Jarmos runs it, if you google his name and Guns N' Roses you'll find it.

2 minutes ago, metalavenger99 said:

LOL I just read at the other forum the "technical reasons" on why this is happening and yeah, that puts the algorithm thing to rest. Go and check it out by yourselves. 

Why can't we name the other forum? There a rule on MyGNR I don't know about?

1 minute ago, aleksir94 said:

I've been using Spotify to listen all the local files on my computer like a "media player" (all leaked cd's etc..) ... i think that spotify (algorithm) is "uploading" that information to somewhere and thats why they suggests GNR when we try to search atlas, sog an so on. I don't know how to explain it

How does that explain Soul Monster?

2 minutes ago, gavgnr said:

Yup, still no zodiac though 🤔

I got Zodiac in Sweden when I browsed unsigned in using a vpn

Can confirm "thyme" in the UK brings up GN'R as an artist

9 minutes ago, jettesnel said:

Zodiac shows up in Sweden. Also The General, state of grace, perhaps and Atlas shrugged (I still Believe its the Algorithm)

Got a screenshot of Zodiac?

17 minutes ago, Bailey15 said:

If it's any consolation, I'm going to see Billy Joel tonight and he hasn't released a new album, with vocals, since 1993.

 

He did release a music only album since then. 

 

Remember when Axl said he would like to do a music score one day.

 

I think these artists know their singing voices are shot so they tour their old hits as long as people will continue to pay to see them. It is much more difficult to produce a hit song when your singing voice is 50% of what it used to be.

Billy Joel also wasn't chatting online with fans about this awesome mean section he sang over a song called Soul Monster in 2008 or talking to Rolling Stone in 2000 about how great a song called Oklahoma is.

Different setting of expectations.

1 hour ago, AxlRoseCDII said:

Yep. Although important to note that they will eventually show up at a certain point when she does finally submit them to Spotify, closer to her album release in mid October. But the fact that Mastermind isn't showing up at all despite being 2 days after the fact is evidence to me that the Algorithim isn't really at play here, and keep in mind her fanbase is likely 100x larger (maybe more) than the subset of GNR fans who would be searching for Soul Monster, Atlas, etc.

They'd also be searching "Mastermind" and "Mastermind Taylor Swift which you would expect to very quickly affect the results if the search algo was changing to that degree just from user searches.

45 minutes ago, AxlRoseCDII said:

Worth noting that the newest Taylor Swift song title “Mastermind” triggers absolutely nothing in her name in Spotify currently, further disproving the algorithm theory.

That will be a good search term to test with going forward. Any of her announced song titles honestly.

Just now, Blackstar said:

Yes, and the two Ashba tracks have also been registered (no idea since when or if this is common knowledge.

I think the Ashba tracks had been registered for a while