The "New Album" Thread . The maybe, possibly, at some point, soon, whenever, wtf Axl thread🤞

[The Real McCoy]

Just now, AxlRoseCDII said:

Fuck it, we had some good memories and laughs. Even if it yielded nothing it was 10x more interesting than the UYI box set imo. Don't really care about 60 live tracks of songs we've already heard hundreds of times.

The real Spotify album was the friends that we made along the way.

[Rodzilla72]

On 9/21/2022 at 7:07 AM, Shacklermyrye said:

800 pages. If there is no new music before page 1000 i will tip myself into a volcano

@Shacklermyrye I was just reviewing the whirlwind that has been the "Spotify Arc" of this Purgatorial Saga of a thread and found this comment... how do you feel now, 5 days later, as we stand at the precipice of 900 Pages? 

[Guest]

Just now, Rodzilla72 said:

@Shacklermyrye I was just reviewing the whirlwind that has been the "Spotify Arc" of this Purgatorial Saga of a thread and found this comment... how do you feel now, 5 days later, as we stand at the precipice of 900 Pages? 

cant talk now sorry climbing volcano

[Lies They Tell]

21 minutes ago, DuffBrazil said:

I have said this before and I will say it again, algorithms are hard to understand even for the people who makes them. 

The search engine is always evolving, always "learning" from their users. You guys are helping the search engine know these words are related to GNR.

This is what I've been trying to say as well. None of us understand exactly how these algorithms work. It's very complicated. Just because you have a basic understanding of what an algorithm is, doesn't mean that you understand everything about them. Like you said, algorithms are hard to understand even for people who make them.

It should be safe to say that GNR isn't officially releasing Ballad of Death, so the algorithm theory is the most likely explanation for this.

There's evidence that the algorithm associates other big artists with their unreleased songs as well. Some say that it happens because playlists affect the algorithm and that's most likely true. But it's much more complicated than that. I don't pretend to know how exactly it works and people at spotify customer service sure as heck don't know how exactly it works.

The only people who could maybe have a clue about it would be the people who program these algorithms. But even they don't always understand how exactly it works.

[Nick85]

7 minutes ago, The Real McCoy said:

The real Spotify album was the friends that we made along the way.

So true…And really, they can’t take away the Soul Monster in all of our hearts.👌🏼

[gavgnr]

Oh well, back to obsessing how I can’t afford the UYI boxset 🤣

[MrSoftie]

There's also the possibility that searching a DJ Ashba song brings up Guns as he was a member of GNR once. 🤷‍♂️

I honestly believe songs are being uploaded to Spotify servers for a release at some point.. but as always the question is when.

[Dean]

18 minutes ago, AxlRoseCDII said:

Yep. Everyone loses in this discussion. Per the standard for being a GNR fan.

If only Guns N' Roses were more like Hot Chocolate, where Every 1's A Winner.

[Jw224]

21 minutes ago, GoodOlJohnnyK said:

What’s hilarious is that some of you put too much stock into a Spotify customer service line (do you think they know whether or not the Guns N’ Roses songs are coming out? Why don’t you ask them for the track list of Taylor Swift’s Midnight and see how that goes - and that has a release date!).

But what’s even funnier is that the hapless Spotify employee - who is trained to reset your password or fix account issues - even went so far as to give you multiple explanations for why this could be the case - including related search terms, etc. - and some of you have bypassed those completely and instead are focusing on “well they said there *could* be a song uploaded in the system with that name! CHINESE DEMOCRACY II LIVES ON!”

Yeah lol, the employees do not know. The only reason one of them said it's unreleased is because they assumed it was an already announced song. Why would someone be messaging them about it otherwise?

[Blackstar]

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 artist 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.

Edited September 27, 2022 by Blackstar

[Axl S]

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 

[Homefuck]

12 minutes ago, Dean said:

If only Guns N' Roses were more like Hot Chocolate, where Every 1's A Winner.

Great fucking song! They should do a cover of that one rather than the snooze-fest "wichita lineman/linemen/linesmen" (can't be bothered to look up the proper title).

[Dean]

1 minute ago, Homefuck said:

Great fucking song! They should do a cover of that one rather than the snooze-fest "wichita lineman/linemen/linesmen" (can't be bothered to look up the proper title).

That it is my man. Errol Brown was a champion, Wichita Lineman is one of the greatest songs of all time to my ears though! (Glen's version obviously!)

[Axl S]

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.

[AxlRoseCDII]

4 minutes ago, Axl S said:

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.

Why does DJ Ashba's tone always sound like diarrhea funneled through an amp? It's kind of impressive, in a uniquely dogshit sort of way.

[patolea10]

1 minute ago, AxlRoseCDII said:

Why does DJ Ashba's tone always sound like diarrhea funneled through an amp? It's kind of impressive, in a uniquely dogshit sort of way.

Thank you.

[klakly]

2 minuti fa, AxlRoseCDII ha detto:

Perché il tono di DJ Ashba suona sempre come la diarrea incanalata attraverso un amplificatore? È un po' impressionante, in un modo univoco di merda.

We understand that 99% of the GnR Fanbase does not like Ashba.

The problem is figuring out why Axl liked him 😅😂

[Blackstar]

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.

[Sosso]

5 minutes ago, klakly said:

We understand that 99% of the GnR Fanbase does not like Ashba.

The problem is figuring out why Axl liked him 😅😂

He was literally the last "guitarist" who showed up at the auditions and that's how he got the job. 

[Lies They Tell]

8 minutes ago, Axl S said:

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.

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.

[Axl S]

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?

[Axl S]

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.

[sl4yer]

I have no idea what to think of this. I’m really skeptical about full album being released by GNR. But I just can’t believe that this amount of people could affect the algorithm THAT much.

When you search for these titles- GNR is not suggested at youtube, google, apple or anything. 

People who know about leaks are in a tiny group. When you go under HS or Absurd video to see the comments you’ll see that a vast majority of people don’t even know that these are old songs. And god, Silkworms was played live in 2001!

 

7 minutes ago, 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.

Irony, sarcasm….

[DTJ80]

23 minutes ago, Dean said:

That it is my man. Errol Brown was a champion, Wichita Lineman is one of the greatest songs of all time to my ears though! (Glen's version obviously!)

Funnily enough - It started with a kiss was on the radio at the weekend. Any time I hear it I think of I’m Alan Partridge as he sings it at the end of an episode. Good singer was Errol Brown.

[Blackstar]

7 minutes ago, Axl S said:

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.

I just searched for "abnormal" and "objectify", two released songs by Bumblefoot, which he performed live with GN'R as well, and the latter is also on Appetite for Democracy. Moreover, they are, of course, on ASCAP and list GN'R among the performers.

I got nothing in the results. No GN'R and not even Bumblefoot. I guess it's because Bumblefoot's fanbase on Spotify is small, but I would think that quite a few hardcore GN'R fans would have searched for these songs and added them to their playlists.

So it's not easy to draw a conclusion here. It's very confusing.

Edited September 26, 2022 by Blackstar