But would the Digg of music be enough? iJigg, which is something like that, launcher earlier this year. http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/01/18/jigg-that-music/. Although it doesn't seem to have moderaters with real music knowledge. But even if it did, that wouldn't be enough to make results relevant for everyone because the criteria for relevance is an individuals concept of "good". Sure moderators might know what is "good" for certain audiences, but if results are organized in a digg-esque fashion, it becomes a top-ten list, meaning that no matter how good your moderators are, they can't generate recommendations that will be "good" for individuals (and the strategy to appeal to the largerst number of individuals is to appeal to the lowest common denominator, which one could argue radio already does well.)
The key with these communities is seeding them with, OMG, domain-specific talent.
I can imagine a social platform where various DJ's, music supervisors, musicians, etc, could be the curators of long long long playlists [organized by mood, genre, style, time period, lyrics, whatever] that are tagged with a bunch of metadata [enabling them to be recombined easily].
Non-curators can suggest tracks and gain authority by having them added to curated uberplaylists.
Or something like that ;-)
The key is knowing your ass from a hole in the ground about music...really. Not just thinking you have good taste...that's how all the media execs (that all tech people hate) got into this mess in the first place.
Anyways, I'm already on this, if anyone is interested further you can contact me ;-)
I don't think that it is entirely accurate to equate news delivery with music delivery, nor do I think the lessons from journalists are entirely relevant when it comes to building a social platform for music playlists. Cultural objects (e.g. music,art,fashion,film,literature etc.) are substantively different than news articles.
The news is largely valued for its accuracy, timeliness, and topical relevance to a reader. Music and other cultural objects are valued for their enjoyment, which is contingent on individual personal preferences. I'm skeptical of a platform that would use domain-specific talent to create playlists for what comes down to individual personal preference. Domain specific talent makes much more sense regarding news where the relevance can be easily determined because it is largely topical, whereas the relevance for music is based on personal preference, which can't be determined through domain specific talent.
I'm also not convinced that more meta-tagging is the answer either. If I tag a song with a mood, genre, style, etc., it will help a user find that song based on those new categories. But in the end, finding new songs based on categories isn't that helpful because what matters is finding songs based on individual personal preferences. For example, I might know I want an energetic, intense, electro-rock ballad, but defining that domain doesn't guarantee I will like the results. People rarely like all the songs on an album, and as far as domains go, albums are very tightly defined domains. Likewise, using Uber-Dj's as domains don't seem to be the best answer. After all, their playlists are based off of their preferences, and, regardless of how much they "know" about music, unless their preferences are like mine, their list will not help much.
You're being pretty dogmatic about what music is...
You may be right that, in some respects, "cultural objects are substantively different than news articles", but not in ways that are germane to this argument:
"The news is largely valued for its accuracy, timeliness, and topical relevance to a reader. Music and other cultural objects are valued for their enjoyment, which is contingent on individual personal preferences."
I addressed this in an earlier response..."personal enjoyment" of music is inexorable from "timeliness" and "relevance."
I get more "personal enjoyment" from John Zorn than anyone else, but I don't wanna hear it when I'm making out with my girl, or at a club.
Think about the success of mood/circumstance specific mix CD's like "Ibiza Club" or "Ellington for Lovers"...
Musical preferences have a lot more to them than "people like you also like"...
Also, with all the choice available, it's easy to overestimate people's desire to even HAVE choice.
Finally, I am imagining a more sophisticated metadata model that is not just about creating categories for things. I don't really have the details on that, though ;-)
The examples you use as counter-arguments to my approach are not really counter-arguments, but deal with a different issue than what I was talking addressing in my last response. I was talking about finding music based on personal preferences. Your counter-examples of "making out with my girl" or dancing "at a club" are group situations where group preferences are most important.
You are right when you say that compilations like "Ibiza Club" or "Ellington for Lovers" make a lot of money: so does selling Muzak (the background music in supermarkets and most commercial spaces with music). Background music is the ultimate "genre" that is compatible with group preferences: no one is offended... but at the same time, nobody really cares.
I agree with you that musical preferences have more to them than "people like you also like"... this would disregard the reality that people sometimes do categorize music by situation/mood, categories like listening to music to dance, exercise, study, make-out, host cocktail parties etc.
But as I suggested before, domain specific categories of music do not have to be mutually exclusive to personal preferences (currently they are). Let's say your goal is to have romantic music. Why not use a "people like you also like" function bounded by the category of romantic music? This way you could get romantic music, i.e. music everyone thinks is romantic, and romantic music that you like as an individual. Even better would be to use a "people like you and your girlfriend also like" function within the specific category of romantic music :)
"Also, with all the choice available, it's easy to overestimate people's desire to even HAVE choice." This is pretty fatalistic don't you think? I think the explosion of choice online frustrates people because they KNOW something is out there that they will really love, but they can't FIND it. This screams opportunity for a website to act as a choice agent to direct people to the music, video, merchandise etc. that they want but can't find themselves among the infinite choices. Infinite choice results in infinite search costs without a decision agent.
Okay, I think I have identified a central reason why we disagree on some of this stuff, and it basically stems from views on art criticism.
The phrase "personal preference" to me makes a case for relativism:
"If I think something is good, then it is good."
WRONG.
As Bruce Sterling and others have argued, just because you like something [or just because you can make something, like a mash-up] doesn't mean it's good.
I don't have time to parse this much more right now, but the fact is that it behooves technologists to develop a robust art criticism within these applications.
Another reason I am high on the idea of people making decisions about what to listen to vs. algorithms [if there has to be a choice] is that, while there is a LOT of choice in the music world, it's not even CLOSE to infinite.
I believe that among the 10,000-50,000 (a pretty random number of people i picked), "legit" (whatever that means) music aficionados could parse out the vast majority of great music in all genre/mood/styles, from Britney to Bach, in a fairly short amount of time.
Also, this paragraph:
"You are right when you say that compilations like "Ibiza Club" or "Ellington for Lovers" make a lot of money: so does selling Muzak (the background music in supermarkets and most commercial spaces with music). Background music is the ultimate "genre" that is compatible with group preferences: no one is offended... but at the same time, nobody really cares."
Is utter bullshit. Do you honestly think I'm thinking of it that way?
Finally, let the record show that in all my hundreds of hours listening to last.fm and Pandora [PURELY for research reasons] I have NEVER EVER heard anything that I wasn't already aware of that was half decent. EVER.
So, my perspective on this is skewed. Like everything else, 95% of people don't know shit about music, so these incremental algorithmic solutions are a panacea to them.
Your idea of weighing "influential" people heavier in an algorithm has a lot of merit. I just think that pure human-powered peer production would get to the solution of better music for every occasion a lot faster.
I think iTunes reduces a lot of the risk the article is revolving around (of buying something you didn't like in the first place). I think most P2P downloads are of songs one heard on the radio. If I wanted to discover new music I'd go for Pandora or last.fm instead of illegal downloads.
I can say from personal experience that when I was a student and was low on cash I felt bad about spending 20 dollars at a time on an album (out of which I liked a couple of songs). Buying songs from iTunes allowed me to buy what I wanted or get entire albums for $10 dollars. But even that didn't allow me to get all the music I wanted on a student budget.
Now that I have a job I ended up spending hundreds of dollars on iTunes over time because for the most part it was less time consuming than finding the music on P2P networks. Once my time became valuable buying music started to make sense.
When online piracy reaches a certain point of perfection, there is no reason to buy music anymore.
I'm a member of oink, which is one of the best private bittorrent trackers out there. It is focused mainly on music. It's both where I acquire music and discover music. Everyday, I go and I look at the Top 50 most popular albums uploaded today and at least three or four sound interesting. I usually download at one MB/s and the oink archives are by far more complete than iTunes. I also get to pick from a FLAC and V0 encoding, at least. By the time I've discovered my new music, I already have the whole album. Thank you, technology.
What iTunes does not reduce are the search costs incurred by a user. If a user isn't planning on purchasing what is on the top ten list, a user has to know what he wants beforehand at iTunes, just like shopping at a Virgin Megastore. So before a purchase is made, a user still has to pay search costs to find what he wants before he makes a purchase.
So as you said, you would go to Pandora or last.fm instead of illegal downloads to find new music and when the new "good" song is discovered, you go to iTunes to purchase it. In this situation, Pandora and last.fm decrease your search costs by presenting what you found to be a "good" song in less time than it would have taken you to find a "good" song on your own. So as long as Pandora and last.fm can reduce your search costs enough so that the value of the "good" song outweighs the cost, then Pandora and last.fm replace the record companies as better agents and you derive more value from your music.
But are Last.fm and Pandora good enough agents for everyone? Or do they really only work as good agents for some people (i.e. better solutions exist)? For example, record companies can and do play a strong hand in determining the results on Last.fm. As long as there are mass-media outlets like the radio and MTV, record companies can influence the "tastes" of mass numbers of people, which influence what music they play and share on file networks, which influence dramatically the scrobbling statistics on Last.fm and the recommendations Last.fm produces with its collaborative filter, skewing results dramatically and consistently toward major label artists: getting results of mainstream artists on Last.fm does not reduce search costs as these artists were easy to find regardless.
It seems to me that the search costs for discovering music on Pandora are also very high, as I have to listen to Pandora like a radio station as opposed to just getting results, and the database is set-up by what musicologists think. Sure the sonic characteristics and structure of a song influence the song, but it doesn't determine whether I will think it is "good". As an extreme example, take two piano sonatas: one is written by Chopin, the other by Tom Dick last week in Ohio. A musicologist at Pandora would classify them the same as they have the same sonic characteristics, arrangement, instrumentation, structure etc. but that does not help me reduce my search costs because I still have to listen to Tom Dick's sonata on their web radio before I get to Chopin.
I think audiences that consume a lot of music could significantly reduce their search costs on a site like oink, because everyone there consumes a lot of music. Because everyone in the community is always on the hunt for the new "good" music (and are technologically savvy), their top ten lists are predictably very relevant to their community, probably much higher than any of them would ever find on Pandora or Last.fm.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5842972550
Obviously, the game is in reducing search costs.
The REAL issue I see here for all these "music recommendation" startups is that they still are nowhere near competing with quality human DJ/knowledge.
There are thousands of music supervisors, party Dj's, and just general record nerds whose recommendations/playlists CRUSH last.fm, et al.
Somebody needs to build the Digg of music, moderated by people with real music knowledge.
That's the moneymaker.
All this implicit listening information is garbage.