MyStrands Links Music Recommendations To Wikipedia Info
MyStrands, a music discovery and social networking
site that covers the PC, mobile and physical worlds (see our profile in
January), has released an interesting new recommendations feature. It uses the
MyStrands Public APIs (called OpenStrands) to link their
social music recommendations to Wikipedia information. Essentially it's a mashup of MyStrands
music recommendations with artist information from Wikipedia. It's not a huge feature,
but it's a neat example of the innovation that is happening with music and the Web.
Music discovery and recommendation systems is a growing segment. I still like Pandora, where (as Alex Iskold wrote about in January) music is measured in terms of its "genetic" make up. But there are many other startups doing music recommendations. The Music 2.0 Directory lists the following companies in this segment:
- SoundFlavor
- MusicIP
- Owl Multimedia
- Elbo.ws
- The Hype Machine
- SeeqPod Music
- Upto11
- 9ViBe
- Jamendo
- Goombah
- iLike
- Last.fm
- ChartU
- Mog
- MyStrands
- Qloud
- U.[lik]
- herkesdinlesin
If you've used any of the above services, let us know in the comments. I'd like to check out a few of these and see how their recommendations stack up.
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I like pandora's concept - but hate their use of flash.
Posted by: Brenda | March 7, 2007 1:19 AM
I've tried MyStrands Social Player for Symbian smartphones, and is awesome!.
Kevin.
Posted by: Kevin | March 7, 2007 1:57 AM
i used qloud. It also links to wikipedia for band, album and track info. It's iTunes plugin in much better than anyone else's too
Posted by: Alexis | March 7, 2007 5:55 AM
@Brenda, hate their use of flash? what other options do we have?
Posted by: Emre Sokullu | March 7, 2007 7:17 AM
Alexis, are you using the Qloud plug-in for PC or Mac? Curious how the latter is coming along....I see they still call it alpha.
Posted by: Graeme Thickins | March 7, 2007 7:50 AM
IMHO none of them is perfect, but Last.fm is the best of those.
Posted by: Mind Booster Noori | March 7, 2007 8:26 AM
IMOP, all these sites are basically worthless, except Last.fm
I didn't read Alex's column on Pandora (I'm sure it's excellent), but the idea of a "music genome" is a total PR stunt in my opinion. Mapping the "DNA of music" with categories like "Degree of chromatic harmony"??? LOL!
I think it was a shortcut to getting the critical mass necessary for network effects to take hold [full disclosure: I am a trained musician]
To wit: the artist/tag radio "stations" on Last.fm give me vastly more interesting and likeable songs in all genres [electronic, jazz, indie rock]. I find myself giving a "thumbs down" probably every 5 songs or so on Pandora.
Even still, for my money, a great DJ [Sasha, Cut Chemist, Bob Dylan] CRUSHES all these services. The only other thing that comes close is an iPod filled with great music on shuffle.
Rock on, RWW! One of the best webweblogs by far!
Posted by: EthanB | March 7, 2007 10:06 AM
Great comment EthanB (I'm not just saying that because of the last line either) :-)
I agree, nothing beats a good DJ or one's own ipod selection. Personally I've found Pandora's choices to be good over time, the more you 'train' it - the one thing I dislike about it is that it tends to repeat songs a lot. I also like Last.fm and I agree the artist tags are great. My main issue with last.fm so far has been it's performance, which (for me anyway) is riddled with connection issues too often. Mind you I haven't tested it in a while, so maybe those have been fixed.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | March 7, 2007 11:24 PM
Thanks Richard,
Last.fm is still having more backend problems than they want right now. I fear it could really be hurting them...seems like they could be poised to take off, but server failures and "Oops!" messages just don't cut it AT ALL, ever, anymore. My attention is far far far too precious.
Jeez, haven't these fools ever heard of Amazon S3? Get it together! ;-)
Yes, Pandora repeats songs often. Lame! And doesn't that violate some SoundExchange rule? Maybe they don't have to deal with that...reckon they have their own licensing deals.
As big of an Umair Haque sycophant/"edge compentecy" nerd as I am, I still think one of the best investments ever in 2007 would be: a national FM radio network. No HD, no satellite. Just program it with great music and watch your "attention" share skyrocket. Radio has just left an absurd amount of money on the table by acting like it's still 1994.
It's wild, but all this "return on attention" business, after you deal with "micromedia reconstructors" and all that, boils down to: NO ONE has any patience for content that sucks.
It kills me because so much technological brainpower is going into trying to automate painfully obvious decisions like, "Which of the following is most worthy of my attention?"
Prince v. James Blunt
Amelie v. Music and Lyrics
Arrested Development v. Rules of Engagement
Arcade Fire v. Nickelback
I suppose that's what a real arts education turns you into: a taste nazi [pardon the reference] ;-)
Back to leveraging efficient coordination outside the firm...
Posted by: EthanB | March 8, 2007 12:47 AM
Hi all,
Reading this post and comments with interest, as I work at TheFilter.com. We’ve just launched the new version of our software which can create playlists from your iTunes library as well as fill your iPod and recommend new music from the iTunes Store.
We also have a version of The Filter for Symbian – which provides playlists on the go, as well as allowing people to navigate the music on their phone via recommendations.
Posted by: MT | March 8, 2007 6:10 AM
Just wanted to back up EthanB's comments - I think Last.FM blows pandora out of the water in terms of accuracy of suggestions. Perhaps more importantly longer term is that the site seems to really GET current web 2.0 trends - you can see it in almost every part of the site.
Every band on Last.FM already has a wiki, which I find to be great when listening to recommendations I'm not familiar with, because it will just update the screen with the wiki info for me. I can very quickly learn the deep relationships among various bands this way - "Oh, Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade has also been in Sunset Rubdown and Frog Eyes". This is the REAL genetics to music and is much more useful and memorable to me as a fan and a consumer than "extensive use of vamping".
The integrated event listings have proven to be much more useful to me than I originally imagined. The recommended concerts based on my location was surprisingly accurate and turned me on to venues I wouldn't have considered or known about previously. I think the popularity and potential reach of the site really hit home when I saw there were already 30 last.fm members listed as planning to attend a show at a small suburban music club.
Having said all this, I also have to agree that last.fm is potentially killing themselves with their backend/connection issues. It's beginning to make me think of what happened to Friendster. In any case, I think these problems are more a sign of what they're doing well than anything else.
Now, if only I could get all of this combined with an optional all-you-can-listen-to subscription service (that I could listen to in the car!), THEN I'd be in heaven.
Posted by: B. Phillip Smith | March 8, 2007 10:45 AM
i use last.fm. the artist's biography also links to Wikipedia.
Posted by: your wiki guide | March 8, 2007 5:25 PM
I've been using MyStrands for a while now and really like its playlist builder and autofill for my portable device. It also seems to work quicker in my browser than last.fm so I can see band info and recommendations a lot quicker.
Posted by: Ellen | March 9, 2007 8:16 AM
@ last.fm lovers, have you ever noticed that last.fm doesn't even provide recommendations for tracks? MyStrands does and really fast so i wonder how last.fm can personalize a sequence of music that you like just dealing at the artist recommendation level. In fact its radio is really bad compare to pandora. I love Radiohead. I consider that some of their tracks are great but others are really bad. So I guess that many people really like last.fm only because they really like popular things (i.e., last.fm is popular because it gives away popular music).
Posted by: drmusic | March 9, 2007 9:02 PM
I've used Pandora and Last.fm with mixed results. I'm a big pop fan and a bit of a know-it-all and don't really like being told because I like X i'll like Y - often they get it really wrong.
However, The Filter is a cool tool because it works with my iTunes collection so never a naff song played (matter of opinion obviously!) Sounds like some of you would be happy with something like this or iLike (which is easy to use but and like the free music but the playlists are a bit lacking in creativity - choose an artist get 3 other artists and all their songs mixed together - bit limited)
T
Posted by: Terry | March 12, 2007 2:45 AM
I've used Pandora and Last.fm with mixed results. I'm a big pop fan and a bit of a know-it-all and don't really like being told because I like X i'll like Y - often they get it really wrong.
However, The Filter is a cool tool because it works with my iTunes collection so never a naff song played (matter of opinion obviously!) Sounds like some of you would be happy with something like this or iLike (which is easy to use but and like the free music but the playlists are a bit lacking in creativity - choose an artist get 3 other artists and all their songs mixed together - bit limited)
T
Posted by: Terry | March 12, 2007 2:45 AM
I've used Pandora and Last.fm with mixed results. I'm a big pop fan and a bit of a know-it-all and don't really like being told because I like X i'll like Y - often they get it really wrong.
However, The Filter is a cool tool because it works with my iTunes collection so never a naff song played (matter of opinion obviously!) Sounds like some of you would be happy with something like this or iLike (which is easy to use but and like the free music but the playlists are a bit lacking in creativity - choose an artist get 3 other artists and all their songs mixed together - bit limited)
T
Posted by: Gazbaps | March 12, 2007 2:46 AM
I've used Pandora and Last.fm with mixed results. I'm a big pop fan and a bit of a know-it-all and don't really like being told because I like X i'll like Y - often they get it really wrong.
However, The Filter is a cool tool because it works with my iTunes collection so never a naff song played (matter of opinion obviously!) Sounds like some of you would be happy with something like this or iLike (which is easy to use but and like the free music but the playlists are a bit lacking in creativity - choose an artist get 3 other artists and all their songs mixed together - bit limited)
G
Posted by: Gazbaps | March 12, 2007 2:47 AM
Hey, no one mentioned LAUNCHcast, Yahoo's music radio service, which provides a custom radio station based on your ratings decisions. I've used it for many years now and am very satisfied with the music it has steered me towards.
I while back I wrote an article (which may be a little out of date)talking about their algorithm: http://www.giantpath.com/news/20050214_LaunchcastAlgorithm.html
Posted by: Andy Breeding | March 12, 2007 4:22 PM
Any new editions about the launch of songs online that contributes a lot to music industry is important and advantageous for me. So whether it is music coming from MyStrands or other directories, I'd still love to gather music from it.
Posted by: Music_Lover | March 13, 2007 6:37 AM