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more on Under Recommendation Engines' Hood
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 17:23:23 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Bob Drzyzgula <bob () drzyzgula org> Date: June 16, 2006 10:11:36 AM EDT To: David Farber <dave () farber net>Cc: ip () v2 listbox com, Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>, Monty Solomon <monty () roscom com>
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 () warpspeed com> Date: June 15, 2006 8:59:27 AM EDT To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net () warpspeed com> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Under Recommendation Engines' Hood Reply-To: dewayne () warpspeed com [Note: This item comes from reader Monty Solomon. DLH] From: Monty Solomon <monty () roscom com> 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> ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as bob () drzyzgula org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ipArchives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting- people/
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- more on Under Recommendation Engines' Hood David Farber (Jun 16)