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So, not at all? (Score:5, Informative)
So, not really so much at all...?
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Sponsored herd-it advertisment? (Score:2)
The article links to apps.facebook.com/herd-it/?refcode=slashdot
So I'm thinking this is payed advertisement disguised as an article. That's just low.
Re:Sponsored herd-it advertisment? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yup. This way the folks who created the app can find the most effective place to put their free advertising-disguised-as-news.
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If submitter registered slashdot, and is getting some kind of benefit from it, that's in poor taste. Boo!
If slashdot registered slashdot, and is getting some kind of benefit from it, that's also in bad taste. But whatever, we expect that from slashdot
Bias exists for a reason (Score:2, Interesting)
When are people going to realize that unpopular music is unpopular for a reason. Sure the music execs try to push their own artists more than others, and they try to target the largest cross section of the population as possible, but why wouldn't they?
Trying to bring 'unpopular' must to the masses because that will suddenly make it popular is stupid. Music becomes popular because someone hears it and likes it, not just because they hear it.
Throwing Timmy's garage band onto every radio station in the world
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Re:Bias exists for a reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you generally this obtuse?
The idea is not to popularize shitty bands. Given perfect AI, this program is supposed to do the following:
1) Listen to all popular music (for various classes of popular).
2) Figure out why that music is popular (for its class).
3) Listen to any *new* track and figure out if it is like those popular tracks (and any popular class).
Now of course we don't have that kind of AI and hence all this research.
The idea is to promote good bands that would have been popular except for the fact that they are not already popular and hence might go unnoticed.
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3) Listen to any *new* track and figure out if it is like those popular tracks.
The idea is to promote good bands that would have been popular except for the fact that they are not already popular and hence might go unnoticed.
In this scheme, the no-name band that is most successful in cloning the big-band sound will score the highest.
You might as well be hosting the Fat Elvis competition at the state fair grounds.
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If they play a local show and people like to hear them, they'll get requested and more people will hear them.
That's seriously how you think it works? People just get gig after gig and work their way up and eventually [major label] just starts throwing money and contracts at them?
Where you live, who you know, and how much free time and money you have matters a _lot_ more than how good you are. Sure, talent can eventually get you there too, but for most bands it doesn't. Your options are either to have some contacts that can get you in front of someone important quickly, or to have a shitload of money so you can do
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Throwing Timmy's garage band
Timmay, timmay timmay TIMMAY TIMMAY timmay.
Timamy,
Timmay.
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While I have no doubt a computer program could figure out that I like certain tempos and time signatures and musical patterns, none of it says whether it is any good.
What I don't understand is the concept that it has to be 'fair'. There are thousands of wonderful singers, songwriters, musicians,and drummers out there. I can listen all day to great music, who cares if some unknown in Gary Indiana is better and is being ignored. Tell him to get off his fat ass and work to get noticed like e
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Stuff they say won't becomes stuff like Peaches... Rush... the list goes on :)
Just because some industry scount likes a band and dislikes another doesn't automatically mean one sucks and one rocks. I'd point to the popularity of the Jonas brothers as a good example.
A lot of what the record industry offers is EXCELLENT studio processing. The difference between a great song and a merely good song is sometimes just the production values. Go watch some concerts, really. Some of the top bands sound like complete
Anyone actually use "Genius"? (Score:4, Insightful)
I tried Genius for awhile, but I recently disabled it for two reasons:
1) The "recommendations" were not very good nor did they maintain a "common theme", by which I mean, I chose a rather edgy electronica/punk song by Crystal Castles... three songs down we get something by The Nationals... which is very mellow rock. If I choose a song that is edgy, electric, and with a faster pace, I want ALL the songs in that 25 song playlist to be at least within a similar genre.
2) It takes up too much time when importing vast libraries to new machines. I recently centralized my 300+ GB music library on a Mac Mini Server, iTunes was unusable due to genius choking on the sheer volume of data it had to deal with.
In the end, it's really nothing more than a way for Apple to try to get you to buy more crap from the Apple store.
They lost my wallet years ago to Amazon MP3 store who had no DRM. I see no reason to go back to iTMS even now that their DRM is gone. Especially seeing what dicks Apple has been with their conduct around ACC, "fair play", and App Store lock-down.
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I've made three observations with Genius:
1) It used to be much, much better. Whatever Apple's doing to incorporate new data is having an adverse effect on the quality of the results.
2) It doesn't work particularly well with large libraries. When I upgraded my hard drive, and merged my "archival" collection with the "everyday" music I carry around with me, I found that the quality of the genius results seems to have deteriorated, even though it doesn't necessarily choose any songs from the huge pile of jaz
for some, 'good' and 'popular' are the same (Score:4, Insightful)
Just tried this out (Score:2)
The first track that played was a System of a Down tune. Which is about as pop as it gets. The ones after didn't get much better. If they really want to use this to push less played songs which have potential, they should actually better get some.
The Academic meets Capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
Capitalism: Hello there Academic. How are you?
Academic: Hi... what they heck are you? You look so strange to me...
Capitalism: I'm Capitalism. Oh, I'm really not all that strange, but I might be a little complicated to understand.
Academic: Complicated!?! I am the master of complicated, I am an Academic for crying out loud.
Capitalism: Ok then. Let me try to explain myself. I am a system that provides stuff via supply and demand.
Academic: Nonsense! I dont hear music that deserves to be heard on the radio or on popular websites!
Capitalism: Deciding who deserves what really isnt my thing... see... its about supply and demand...
Academic: But who decides whats in demand!?! Certainly it cannot be the uneducated "masses", they... just aren't qualified!
Capitalism: No no... its about what many individuals, smart or otherwise, want based on need or dozens of different other factors.
Academic: Preposterous! How could they possibly know what they want or need if they havent been exposed to it?!? Foolish Capitalism!
Capitalism: Well, there are a lot of musicians out there and only so many different ways to get them heard, and, well, there are people out there who spend their lives learning what people like and dislike, and even they arent always right... so the best at determining who does best succeeds...
Academic: Rubbish! What we really need, is for the qualified, with a broad base of tastes to make an application for people to give them a view of all the music that is out there!
Capitalism: I guess you can try, no one can stop you, but you might not succeed.
Academic: Your so short sighted. I don't need to worry about succeeding, I receive public money to pursue my higher realm of thinking.
Capitalism: Right on... so I guess you will compete and regardless if your product sucks, you dont have to worry about it because your really just spending someone elses money.
Academic: Its progress my dear boy. Progress.
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The Academic fantasizes about the Technocrat that will eventually lead us all into utopia by prescribing us "plebes" the perfect formula to live our lives
For example, the Chicago or Austrian Schools of Economics.
Engineers at the University of California vs. Me (Score:2)
I wrote something earlier this week to do the same thing with the hashtags in the Twitter API and my music DB.
If you're bored, check it out. The recommendations are pretty close (bottom left). Metallica [clinko.com] or Weezer [clinko.com]
I found this one interesting Beatles [clinko.com] because it finds the singers names.
People like what other people like (Score:3, Informative)
For possibly the great majority of the population, music can be compared to fashion; does not really matter if the art is good per se, what matters is the trend and popularity, on a local scale (what my friends listen to) and global scale (media).
With the rock'n'roll revolution in the fifties, lots of teenagers liked that new music in part because it wasn't their parents' music. Same story can be said of disco, rap and grunge.
Problem with the long-tail approach is that people mostly judge music by non-musical criteria.
Last.fm (Score:5, Interesting)
The neighbor system groups people with similar musical tastes, and allows each person to tune to his/her "Neighbor Radio", to listen to songs liked by your neighbors.
(Disclaimer: I have no vested interest in last.fm besides being a paid member. [My Profile] [www.last.fm])
High Fidelity (Score:3, Funny)
Paraphrased from actual conversation in an indie record store:
Record store owner: "Why do people keep coming back here?"
Employee: "Well, it's not friendliness..."
Owner: "WHAT?! I'm the most f***ing friendly guy there is!
Doesn't work for me (Score:3, Insightful)
I've played with Pandora radio a bit before, but it doesn't tend to work for my taste in music. I like songs with funny lyrics... Monty Python, King Missile, Nellie McKay... the algorithms that focus strictly on musical styles generate pretty hilarious results, but not what I'm looking for :P
I've been pretty happy with some of the dj internet radio stations, though, like somafm.com and some of the ones on di.fm . Before I found some of those stations, I didn't really think there was much of any music that I liked. Certainly not on broadcast or satellite radio.
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There, now we got that out of the way (and I do feel oddly better about life) I have to say that I'm still skeptical about these algorithms for music recommendation.
A friend of mine and I listen to a lot of the same music. He got me on the soul train in a way, so we talk a lot about Soul, R&B (The old fashioned kind), Funk, Rare Groove, Jazz and Gospel. Now he and I can dig the same song for wildly different reasons. We can sit and discuss the same tune, which we both like, and discover we look at the t
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
I know you say you've tried all possible music sites... but on Pandora if you create a new station from an artist or song, they'll give you the criteria they use to populate the playlist.
Set up stations based on enough songs, and it's pretty easy to understand at least part of how their algorithm works. A big problem, of course, is that some of the criteria are somewhat subjective, which is why you may disagree with them. I find this especially true when creating stations based on artists, not songs.
I just wish I could tweak the individual conditions to see where it'd get me... like having all criteria match except genre.
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Mathematics != human preference (Score:5, Interesting)
It's exactly algorithms like the one used by Pandora that make me agree with the viewpoint that it's not possibly to calculate what "other music" I like based upon the "known music" that I like.
Anyone with a preference for Electro Pop will likely have been wondering when the hell Pandora would learn the difference between Miss Kittin and Scooter after mindlessly clicking "Dislike" on eurodance tracks when Pandora fails to see the difference between one type of electronic music with a repetitive beat and another.
The only really worthful algorithm we'll ever manage to produce is one that uses the collective intelligence of all its users.
Stop being arithmetic supergeeks wanting to put everything inside a box, and start figuring out how to get all these weird unpredictable people to input valuable data into your system.
Google figured this out more than a decade ago, so why are we still seeing stupid mathematical and "pattern-based" algorithms every year?
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Re:Mathematics != human preference (Score:5, Funny)
If your algorithm don't got Mojo Nixon, then your algorithm can use some fixin'.
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Re:Mathematics != human preference (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's not the point of the algorithm. The point is to generate a playlist of songs that share some characteristics with criteria you have specified via examples (seeds for a station, and up/down votes on songs in the playlist). It's not about your personal likes and dislikes, it;s about songs that are similar.
My personal experience: Don't use downvotes until the station is somewhat mature. Use upvotes only, so the algorithm can find the common ground basis for the station. Then, after 10-20 hours of playtime, use downvotes to start eliminating unwanted characteristics.
One last point: Pandora is good for general tastes. As your wants get very specific within a genre, as you point out, it starts to fail. My general advice for you is to not try to use Pandora to create a pseudo-random playlist of only songs you know you like. After tailoring your station, buy the songs you like. Then you can create a playlist in your preferred audio-file management software, and listen to only the songs you like. Revisit Pandora or elsewhere to expand your collection as needed. I think this is the only way you'll be really satisified.
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Re:Mathematics != human preference (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's nice to be important but it's more impo...etc (Score:3, Insightful)
Please read the GP. He's talking about the difference between Miss Kittin and Scooter. Scooter! There's a difference between "broadening your taste" and licking out a septic tank.
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I just wish I could tweak the individual conditions to see where it'd get me... like having all criteria match except genre.
Even a line-item veto for the "why did you play this song" would be ideal. Thumbs up or thumbs down on every song seems to make the music selections worse, not better. Obviously which songs I like and which ones I don't doesn't neatly boil down to criteria that pandora can identify, so I think it's unavoidable that it will pick up on what it thinks I like but I don't.
For example, I like hip hop with clever lyrics, but hate rappers who can only talk about themselves. Most hip hop artists though rap about
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've found a lot of songs/bands I had never heard of thanks to Pandora. I started a station based on "Panic Attack" by Dream Theater, and it's interesting to look at "why was this song selected" for new songs. The current song I'm listening to says "we're playing this track because it features a subtle use of paired vocal harmony, varying tempo and time signatures, chromatic harmonic structure and demanding instrumental part writing." I could have said that I like varying tempo and time signatures, and demanding instrumental parts, but it's neat that it can pick up on things like chromatic harmonic structure and paired vocal harmony.
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I've had great success with Gnoosic [gnoosic.com]
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I'm still skeptical about these algorithms for music recommendation.
You should be skeptical, but not dismissive. In its current state, this type of service is more like directed browsing than a true recommendation. But it still yields the an occasional gem, and with continued participation and increased competition it will get better. Skepticism makes it a useful tool, if you can live with having to wade through some misses along with the hits. Blind acceptance will, of course, be mercilessly exploited and
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It can be used in ironic terms to great effect.
Re:It's time to put it to a vote: (Score:5, Funny)
The wisdom of the crowds seem to be proving you wrong.
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Re:It's time to put it to a vote: (Score:5, Interesting)
Setting aside the obvious joke, the "wisdom of crowds" has actually been proven to be useful in certain situations.
If you ask, say, a single person how many jelly beans are in a jar, he may or may not come close. If you ask several hundred people how many are in a given jar and then average their responses, the result tends to be surprisingly accurate.
The problem is that this is limited to situations requiring little to no topic-specific knowledge. Asking a large crowd of random people what the GDP of China is will be a waste of time. It's a technique that requires you to be asking the right questions.
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Re:They should go through my collection... (Score:5, Interesting)
I love music, but, alas...I'm getting older, and am stuck in classic rock. Funny...they weren't classic when I started listening to them..haha.
But seriously, even I'm getting a little weary of listening only to the Stones, Zeppelin, etc over and over and over again...
I really love any kind of good guitar driven, bluesy, riff-laden rock. Guitar blues...etc.
I have to guess even in this modern, splintered genre world, there is still some of this type of music being put out by new kids. I've found Wolfmother, and really like that...but, that was a recommendation I got from a friend, but, I don't have the time to find music out there.
When I grew up...it came through the radio. Music wasn't nearly as splintered and specialized as it is today. On my 'rock' stations, I heard Stones, Zeppelin, AC/DC, Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac, Kansas, Beatles...hell even older than that you'd even hear an occasional John Denver or Olivia Newton John song....quite a mix without turning the dial.
Today on the radio, you have to tune stations all over to get each type of music it seems...and I just can't seem to find something with enough mix to keep my interest. And hit radio...same shit all the time, no variation.
People suggest the internet...well, most of my time is at work, and most places i work..won't allow you to stream music from the web, it is blocked. So, that's not my option.
I've recently discovered Pandora on the iPhone...I have started finding things like that I like from that.
I guess, more things like this and the tech mentioned in the article would really be a blessing for me if I could throw that one while at work, but, would have to be through the phone I guess since no streaming on work computer.
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Same experience here (except Pandora on the PC, not iPhone).
Best part -- not only am I continually discovering new music, I'm rediscovering classic rock I'd forgotten all about.
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Might also try things like Jet, Fratellis, etc. They're pretty decent examples of a modern approach to the 70s rock.
Pandora rocks :)
Only downside - it frequently seems to think that *all* versions of a song are the same, but just because the brand new live version of a Metallica song sucks doesn't mean the older live versions and the studio version suck.
My Gripe with Pandora (Score:3, Interesting)
Is to get 10 recommendations I have to listen to 10 songs in a row due to their skip limitations.
They can keep their skip limitation, that's fine, I get the licensing problem they have.
But why can't I get a simple list of the next N (10, 20...100?) songs they'd recommend based on my current "station"? It might even improve their recommendation engine for me because I could thumbs up/down (and I suppose, "I'm tired of this one", too) the songs and cut through the cruft faster. Sort of like Netflix "Rate Mo
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Well, when possible the internet is the best place; you can get "radio" from just about every radio station in the world. Go to KSHE [kshe95.com] for the oldest FM stereo rock station in the world, [kuro5hin.org] who played "classic rock" before it was classic and still do, along with some of today's dreck. On Sunday night they play seven albums in their entirety, back to back.
College stations are great, too. The one here in Springfiled, WQNA, [slashdot.org] is the only station I've ever heard where you can hear Tennessee Ernie Ford followed by the
Re:They should go through my collection... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually I've found last.fm's recommendation system works extremely well; so well in fact that I constantly have a tab open to it when I'm browsing music stores like eMusic (eventually I want to write a little app for this purpose using last.fm's API, but I digress). For those unaware, last.fm users submit what they're listening to through automated plugins (and the supported apps list is huge and very platform independent, I personally use both Amarok 1.4 and MPD); one of the things last.fm does with this music is identifies your "neighbors" (people with similar lastes, i.e. 8 of our top 10 artists are identical). I've found that one of the best ways to find new music is by browsing what my neighbors are listening to and checking out any of their top bands that I'm not familiar with. They also list related artists by correlating this information (e.g. the majority of users who have Band A as a favorite artist also like Band B). Another useful feature is being able to check what an artists most played songs are (great for when it's an artist you never heard of). With that said, I'm definitely interested in seeing what recommendations come from this UCSD team (and not just because I'm an alumnae) as I'm always interested in finding new artists, especially smaller and local ones.
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last.fm on android (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know how last.fm works but I downloaded the android application on my phone and so far it is treating me well. It is much faster than pandora and allows me to listen either by entering an artist, tag, or user. So in tags if I type in Jpop I get a bunch of japanese pop songs. I can find stuff from other countries as well which is cool.
It almost feels like iPods are overrated now. It would be cool if I just subscribed to a service and used my phone to stream in music based on my preferences or playl