1
|
Finding the Next Big Thing
It starts when you're young -- a friend's older brother hands you a Fugazi tape and all of a sudden, you're hooked on that buzz you get from hearing something totally new.
At first, the reach of the web made discovering new music easier, but with the constant flood of new artists and bands popping up on the internet, finding something you might actually get excited about became more of a chore.
The emergence of social networks and music recommendation services have made finding new music easy again. Thanks to tools such as iLike, Last.fm, Pandora and Qloud, a vast realm of friends' older brothers with excellent taste are just a click away.
The process of generating recommendations works by finding users who like some of the same artists as you and then assuming that their other favorites may also appeal to you. This process of "taste matching" is far from perfect, but better than a simple Google search.
So how good are the actual recommendations of these services? Well, they vary somewhat. To test each service, I searched for bands similar to Neutral Milk Hotel, Talib Kweli and Justin Timberlake. None of the sites suggested the same artists for each recommendation, but Pandora gave me the most enjoyable set of results.
Oddly, the results for recommended artists similar to Neutral Milk Hotel, which is arguably the most obscure pick of the three, were almost universally better. In my experience, the more mainstream an artist is, the less precise your results are likely to be.
I first encountered iLike when I reviewed it on the Monkey Bites blog, and I've since become an avid fan. The site is actually a full-featured social networking site centered around music, but its integration with your computer's iTunes playlists is what turns it into a powerful music discovery tool.
ILike adds a sidebar to Apple's iTunes player and tracks what your listening habits. The service then matches your tastes with those of other users and recommends similar artists from others' playlists that you may enjoy. The sidebar also automatically posts your playlists to your iLike profile at the website so others can study your listening tastes.
When you're listening to a song in iTunes and you see an iLike recommendation in the sidebar, clicking the arrow beside the name pauses your iTunes playback and streams the recommended song.
The iLike sidebar passes along recommendations from two categories: established artists and new, unsigned artists. For the artists who are already part of the record label machine, you get a 30 second sample and link to buy the song from the iTunes Music Store. Songs by unsigned artists are streamed from GarageBand.com, iLike's partner site, and you get to listen to the whole song. If the artist allows it, you can even download it.
ILike only supports the iTunes player, though the company claims it's working on support for other players. If you aren't an iTunes user, iLike probably isn't for you.
Pandora, a site from the creators of the Music Genome Project, is a music recommendation service that's dead simple to use. Just type in a band you like, and Pandora will immediately begin streaming a playlist of music similar to the band or artist you entered. The service will even give you explanations of why it thinks you'll like the songs it picks for you.
The streaming playlists offered by Pandora can only be played in a browser window, but the stations can be emailed to friends or shared on personal websites. Pandora's service also has some helpful features, like the ability to bookmark songs for later review and a search tool called Backstage that tells you more -- biographies, discographies and further recommendations -- about the artists you encounter.
When recommending music to match with my own tastes, Pandora was the best at guessing similar artists. It also managed to pull in an interesting selection of results that I wouldn't have expected.
Last.fm, another popular site that's geared towards helping users discover new music, is essentially a web-based, user-programmed radio station. Last.fm studies your tastes through a desktop applet called an "audio scrobbler." The tiny application runs in the background, tracking your playlists in iTunes and other popular players. It then streams a playlist made up of songs by artists similar to the ones you like based on similar tastes of other Last.fm users.
If downloading desktop software isn't your bag, Last.fm recently added a Flash-based music player which lets you listen to streams of user-recommended music in your browser window.
Qloud is another popular site, though the JavaScript-heavy interface may turn some users off. Features like auto-complete search suggestions are fancy, but they come at the expense of your browser's back button. Also, Qloud requires Windows Media Player to play its song samples.
If you're a true music nut, one thing is certain: When it comes to deciding how to spend your hard earned cash at the record store, one service will not be enough.
|
