Audioscrobbler/last.fm finally calculated my “musical neighbors” (people with similar taste to me, as judged by the tracks they play), and now my profile radio is running. It’s pretty good at guessing songs I’d like, even though I’d never seek them out on my own. (Of course, it also plays a lot of tracks I already have, but for someone without a large music collection, it’d be a godsend.)
There are other systems similar to Audioscrobbler’s for news and movies, but none seem very polished yet. But the day is fast approaching when everything - Flickr pictures, Web links, TV shows - is retrieved for you automatically based on what you’ve downloaded in the past. You’ll just flip on your set-top box, and something you (probably) want to see/hear will be there waiting for you.
Of course, spam could easily prove a problem. Audioscrobbler already had to set up throttling to stop people from artificially inflating the rank of their favorite artist. One could imagine a spammer building a profile identical to yours (hey, look how similar our tastes are! you should listen to some of my music!), then inserting a link to their own Viagra ad. We’ll need trust networks to go along with these recommendation networks…
mr_mooph | 26-Jul-05 at 2:54 pm | Permalink
The top played songs is rather wonky there I’ve noticed. I mean, I’ve noticed it’s always been, but yesterday it went nuts! My highest played song (according to the sight) was (I think) Anita Kelsey singing Sway at 7 plays. See, these were never quite right I believe. something was popping certain songs to more often than they actually had been played. Yesterday, the thing went ape shit! Now I have things that I listened to yesterday, that weren’t even previously on that chart, popping onto that list with plays in the double digits now. I know I didn’t listen to these things more than once yesterday. Hell, I won’t listen to any given song more than once a week due to the playlist I use here at work. I’m not sure what’s causing it to register these eroneous blips. Hiccups in the network? Pauses and play cycles (though even that wouldn’t account for the high numbers reported yesterday)? But clearly, this list at the very least is not a reliable report.
nephariuz | 26-Jul-05 at 9:09 pm | Permalink
Well, I noticed this on the front page just today…
> A bit of a strange happening here this week… No, you
> haven’t all listened to your favourite tracks 2147483647
> times… A small “hiccup” seems to have occurred in the
> generation of the charts, and so it’s all gone a bit Pete
> Tong.
> Have no fear, your single plays of those tracks you wanted
> to keep a secret will soon disappear again as the problem
> is being fixed, and the charts will be regenerated.
The adjective “Pete Tong” doesn’t appear in the dictionary, so I have no idea what that’s about. But the gist seems to be that everything will be normal again soon.
mr_mooph | 27-Jul-05 at 7:38 am | Permalink
Damn brit’s and their kooky slang.