[IP] more on Under Recommendation Engines' Hood
Begin forwarded message:
From: Bob Drzyzgula <bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 16, 2006 10:11:36 AM EDT
To: David Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Monty Solomon <monty@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [IP] Under Recommendation Engines' Hood
Dave,
So I tried this last night. About to turn 50 in a few
months, I've been suffering from Mr. Fry's "familiar trap",
only advanced by a dozen years. If my initial experience
is any predictor, this service could turn out to be quite
expensive -- before the evening was over I had spent about
$80 on music from artists I'd never heard of before.
I put in the name of the last artist I'd listened to on
my iPod: Diana Krall. In addition to artists who were to
me more or less familiar -- Diane Schuur, Sarah Vaughan,
Dianne Reeves, Blossom Dearie -- Pandora played songs by
artists who were completely new to me, and in one case,
new to recording. It played nothing I hated, and a bunch
that I liked a lot. Of those, I eventually paid money
(to Amazon, Amazon/CDNOW & emusic.com [1]) to populate my
iPod with stuff by Karrin Allyson, Tierney Sutton, Ilona
Knopfler, Jane Monheit, Patricia Barber, Sara Gazarek,
Nancy Lamott, and Marilyn Scott. I doubt that I would
ever have explored this material otherwise; there are,
for example, very few "similar artist" links among them
at allmusic.com, and some don't even have bios in their
listings there. This morning I listened to several songs by
Gazarek & Allyson I'd gotten as emusic.com album downloads.
I wasn't disappointed.
In my opinion, this is exactly the kind of technology the
recording should be promoting to drive sales.
--Bob Drzyzgula
[1] Big plug here for emusic.com. I'd always thought that
they only carried stuff from the most obscure artists,
but recently took a close look and found that there's
quite a bit of mainstream stuff there as well. As they are
managing to sell, with cooperation from the publishers,
DRM-free music for as little as 25 cents per song, I'd
encourage everyone else to take a look as well. We need
their model to be successful.
On Thu, Jun 15, 2006 at 11:05:53AM -0400, David Farber wrote:
Begin forwarded message:
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 15, 2006 8:59:27 AM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Under Recommendation Engines' Hood
Reply-To: dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[Note: This item comes from reader Monty Solomon. DLH]
From: Monty Solomon <monty@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 14, 2006 9:39:50 PM PDT
Subject: Under Recommendation Engines' Hood
REAL TIME
By JASON FRY
Under Recommendation Engines' Hood
The Choices Engines Make for Us May Be
More Accurate Than We'd Like to Believe
June 12, 2006
Last week I started playing around with Pandora, a streaming-music
service that several folks have recommended to me. At 37, I'm facing
a familiar trap for music fans: I have less and less time and find
myself gravitating toward the familiar, yet don't want to admit that
my musical tastes have ossified and I'm hopelessly out of it.
Pandora is elegant and simple: Visit the Web site and tell it a
handful of songs and/or artists you like, and it generates a
streaming-media radio station for you, playing songs it thinks you'll
like. You can guide it by indicating you like a song, hate it or are
tired of it. (It's free at first, then asks you to subscribe. Read
more about Pandora here.)
To test it, I began slinging the names of artists and songs I like at
it: OK, Pandora, I like songs by the Sugarhill Gang, the Unband, Guns
N' Roses, Earth Wind & Fire, Steve Earle, Billy Squier, the Rolling
Stones, the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Kanye West, Lucinda Williams,
the Replacements, Ernie K-Doe, The Clash, Lyle Lovett and
Sleater-Kinney. Tell me what to listen to. I dare you.
.....
<http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114961753581872822-
jcRlO7GbCpnPIHxI4kKqWTOufgA_20070611.html>
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>
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