The influence of music recommender systems on the diversity of music consumed

Idea

Music recommender systems are integral to popular music platforms, such as Spotify, Pandora, and YouTube. Recommender systems help to filter the tremendous amount of content available, and - with it - they also influence to a certain degree what kind of content users consume. The central question of this project is: How do music recommender systems influence the diversity of the music items consumed? Subquestions that have to be dealt with:

• What is considered “diverse” in the context of music recommendations?
• Does the diversity of items consumed change over time? How?
• Is there a difference in the diversity across different types/segments of users?

Relevant references:

• Lorenzo Porcaro, Emilia Gómez, & Carlos Castillo (2024). Assessing the Impact of Music Recommendation Diversity on Listeners: A Longitudinal Study. ACM Transactions on Recommender Systems, 2 (1), Article No 3 (March 2024), 47 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3608487