Elaborating on the MS Engage Prompts

This page contains the answers to prompts given during the Engage Project Competition phase.

How does my app demonstrate the use of algorithms in streaming apps?

• Under Spotify Stats

  • Top Tracks & Artists: Algorithms employed by Spotify determine which songs we like the most

  • By Popularity, Length and Release Date Cards: Searching algorithms employed to find the tracks on the ends of the spectrum

• Under Song Recommendations Section

  • Search bar: Employs the Spotify Search Engine Algorithm to produce results

  • Song Recommendations: Audio Analysis and NLP algorithms (and possibly Content-based Filtering algorithms too) to fetch recommendations

Demonstrate what kind of role would a sorting algorithm play in a Recommendation Engine

• Sorting algorithms are vital in sorting the ranking generated by recommendation engines.

• They are utilized in both the search algorithm as well as the recommendation system in Spotify.

• In Search Algorithms, the search results need to be ranked and re-ranked based on relevancy as a user types out their query. This is decided by several user behavior elements and the metadata of heterogenous content types (songs, podcasts, radios, etc.).

What is the most efficient sorting algorithm to use in this scenario, and why?

• A ranking algorithm that handles multiple parameters with with varying granularities will be the most efficient algorithm.

• There are several ML and Deep Learning based algorithms that rank data such as Bayesian Ranking, Regressions, etc. The exact algorithm to be used differs based on the use case and kind of optimizations that are required.

Demonstrate what kind of role would a search algorithm play in a Recommendation Engine? Which search algorithm does your app use, and why?

• An ideal search algorithm must be capable of effectively utilizing the data available to narrow down the search space as much as possible.

• Hence, a combination of Information Retrieval Methods and Machine Learning Algorithms work best, just like how it done in the industry.

• Such algorithms allow us to enhance the precision/confidence levels of the probabilistic search results. Given the scope to harvest vast amounts of data in terms of user behaviour and the content's data, it becomes a choice to naturally utilize the same too.

• This app uses Spotify's search algorithm via the Spotify API - but since the app accesses the engine via an API, the search algorithm is unable to access user-specific data to fine tune the results. This, although, doesn't have an effect on the results in the Statify app.