Some Links for the Readings
April 6th, 2008 by BenThe McCourt/Burkart article discusses online music services. I thought it would be useful to visit a few modern and popular incarnations of the types of services they discuss.
1. One type of service mentioned is “listening machines” that automatically analyze and categorize music based on actual waveform, tempo, etc. A free and popular service that does this (related to the Music Genome Project the article discusses) isPandora.
2. Another type of service is “collaborative filtering” where the musical tastes of people who listen to similar music as you dictate suggestions. A popular and free service for this type of site isLastFM.
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3. Musicovery.com is similar to pandora, though the selection of genre, tempo, and mood are more directly accessible to the user, and it features a visual representation of the interrelated genres.
As a pandora.com user myself, I personally enjoy the exposure to new music. This “listening machine” certainly adds to the vast array of fandoms that exist today, seeing as they are so readily available and actually cater to your established likes and dislikes. Pandora exposes you to new types of music that are similiar to those you already enjoy– its a pretty ingenius way to get your music more mainstream and expand your audience.
The only issue here is your goal, seeing as Pandora is a free website. The artists who allow their music to play are not ensuring a sale. Pandora seems great for the fans, but not so much for the artists themselves. We come to a balancing act– while most fandom seems to be based around non-economic personal interests, most of the production of fan objects relies on monetary means. We cannot ignore our economic society.