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Every time I'm tempted to buy a CD, I think about first finding a store that lets me listen before I buy, then thinking about spending at least an hour going through albums aimlessly as I have no good way to find what's related to things I already like,/i>.

Pandora would be a big help there. Seriously. Free access to streaming music, with a pretty good algorithm for finding music that has lots in common with the music you already know you like. Plus the ability to create stations and share them with others...

Not sure what religion has to do with this economics question.

Then you didn't read my post. I was pointing out the flaw in your argument, where you said that Imaginary Property was something that we made up, and so it did not need to be "believed in" in order to be considered real. In case I didn't make myself clear:

I disagree.

As for your questions...

Do you have an alternate proposal for incentivizing content creators?

If not, do you believe that software/books/movies/songs/etc. will be created by individuals for no compensation? Or by companies for no compensation?

When I was growing up, artists and musicians did what they did for the love of the music/art. Metallica went on MTV and said they would never make a music video because they "weren't in it for the money." Now they've alienated their fanbase by suing them for giving away their music, and they're pissed off about the lack of money in the equation. Nevermind that they went on TV in front of millions of people and lied. Seems to me that the artists need to figure out which way they're trying to be, and stick to it once they've chosen. This, of course, is just anecdotal evidence and meandering ranting, and is also totally off topic. Get off my lawn!

Back to the issue at hand.

Yes, I have an "alternate proposal" for "incentivizing content creators". I like to call it "cut out the middlemen who do no work, maximize your profits without raking your customers over the coals, and stop pinching everyone's wallets while whining about how you don't make any money because you only get 1% of the profit of each CD sold". It involves content creators posting their content for the world to enjoy, and asking for (non-specific amounts of) money.
(As an aside, I'm typically insulted when people tell me I have to donate a specific amount of money. If I want to give you 50 cents for a single song, I should be able to. Don't tell me I have to give you $5 and take the whole disk!)

If this "economic model" seems surprising to you, then it would seem I need to point out to you that several big names are already doing it, as you can see with a little googling on the subject. To get you started, allow me to offer the following as potential search terms:
"Nine Inch Nails", "Radiohead", "donation", "free music"
It may interest you to learn that the results from these attempts have been successful (or at least, that's what I read). You may also be interested in Jonathan Coulton, who seems to be making quite a decent living by giving his stuff away for free.

Despite answering in the affirmative (and with proof!) and thus excusing myself from the "bonus questions", I will continue in this monologue, answering your second and third questions, too. Please note that the emphasis is mine.

The answers are simple and undeniable. Yes, I believe that software, books, movies, songs, etc. are being created by individuals for no direct financial compensation. Yes, I believe that software, books, movies, songs, etc. are being created by companies for no direct financial compensation. As proof, I offer up open source software (Linux, for example; The Apache Software Foundation, for another), free books (check out the Baen Free Library, or Project Gutenberg), free movies, free music, and the beginnings of an economic model that depends on having products and services that have more than just a financial value to the consumers and producers... which raises the questio

The original of Pub with No Beer was written by Gordon Parsons, but the hit was made by his pal Slim Dusty.

http://www.pandora.com/
http://www.last.fm/

Enjoy.

I don't know about that. While the big music companies are entrenched and, well ... big, they are still losing their viability as a business. Look at how hard RIAA picks fights with p2p clients. The role of having some physical medium for your music is diminishing as electronic copies are far more convenient and cheaper to distribute/share. If all of the big companies left music, Apple could always adapt by consolidating all of the Indie musicians available through the internet and offer a convenient method customers with their favorite (substitute) genre; see Pandora Radio and music genome project. Having the latest album of B. Spears or 50 cent on a dinky piece of silicon for 20$ from the RIAA isn't as appealing as it sounds. If anything, the big companies NEED Apple's vision right now before they become extinct.

The industry will undoubtedly go down kicking and screaming, but down it will go - of that there can no longer be any doubt.

DuoDude,

If you liked Yahoo! LaunchCAST (free or Plus version), you will love Pandora. You can create custom stations by entering an artist's name (e.g., Steely Dan). The service then starts sending you music its matching algorithms think is similar to Steely Dan's music (a sound so unique to this day that this is a real challenge for their back-end algorithms).

I dumped LauunchCAST Plus about six months ago because they were releasing buggy versions of the player on a regular basis and their customer service never responded to problem tickets. I now have serveral custom stations on Pandora. I would say about 10% of the stuff they play for a given station is "new" (some indie stuff even gets in there). A simple click of the mouse allows you to give a song "thumbs up" or "thumbs down." You can also "tweak" your custom stations by entering other artist (or song) names.

Even though, initially, your custom station will be named after the artist you gave as an exemplar, you can easily change it to something more generic. For example, I have a station originally named J.S. Bach. Right after Pandora built the station for me, I simply opened my account and changed the name to Baroque Classical. Initially, Pandora was sending me too many pipe organ performances on this station. I can only take so much of that stuff. So, I went into the station edit page and added Andres Segovia to the station's exemplar artists list. All of a sudden, the pipe organ stuff diappeared and I started hearing some really cool classical guitar and lute performances. You have MUCH MORE control of your custom stations in Pandora than you did with Yahoo! LaunchCAST.

The sound quality is excellent (they use the Flash player -- go figure). It's at least equivalent to 128Kbps MP3. There are many other great features in Pandora. But, this response is already too long. Give a try. I think you'll love it.

Did I mention Pandora is ABSOULTELY FREE (although donations are always accepted).

WidgetGuy

Well, if you're looking for a replacement, I've tried out two streaming music sites recently that are pretty good:

http://www.imeem.com/ - Like youtube, but for music I guess. It has a lot of good playlists, even for my doom metal tastes.

http://www.pandora.com/ - Streaming internet radio, dissimilar to imeem in that it randomizes what it will play for you - though it tries to play music similar to what you like/tell it you like through some sort of algorithm. Good for finding new stuff. I found Electric Wizard here.

I haven't listened to the radio in years. Virtually 100% of the new music I find I get through word of mouth (usually a thread on a forum) or from sites like Allmusic or Pandora. Both are awesome, and free.

I'm a big fan of Pandora. You can type in a band name or song name that you like, and it'll start playing similar music. A lot of the music will come from non-mainstream bands.

Why on earth has no one mentioned Pandora? There's a surprising amount of music on there that isn't part of a big name recording company. It does a damn good job of introducing you to music you actually *like*. Toss in something you already enjoy, RIAA affiliated or not, and it will start playing similar music. Note the stuff you like, and give it a pass through riaaradar. While it's not intentionally aiming for indie/non-RIAA music, it's definitely a solid way to get started. And from what I've found, it really can branch out into the fringes a bit.

That being said, this is obviously just my personal experience. It's entirely possible that my particular style of music (Metal & Industrial) has a better non-RIAA showing on Pandora. So I guess your mileage may vary.


--LordPixie

Here here! I have tried and tried to find the "cool" part of Amarok to no avail. Let me know when you find out what all the hype is about...meanwhile, I'll be listening to Pandora.

I agree. I'm no fan of anything that benefits the RIAA, but I don't find Apple or Amazon's business and legal maneuverings any less chilling. Turning people's $600 iPhones into bricks? Lobbying and otherwise pressuring beltway lawmakers to support crap like one click shopping patents? They all suck.

Lately, though, I do all my music listening through Pandora. Of course you don't have the same control, but I kind of like the fact that I'm hearing a lot of new stuff, or things I wouldn't otherwise think of putting on. I don't need any of the rest of these schmucks at all.

One word: Pandora
Best thing ever. I've found and purchased 4 albums from artists I never would have heard of otherwise.

The biggest problem in music is the end of independent ownership and management of everything related to music on any kind of large scale

I disagree. I find that the internet has personalized my music experience more than ever. I don't have to listen to sputum from Clear Channel. I don't have two or three radio stations I can stand to listen to. I have myriads of options. Lately I've been trying out Pandora, which makes an effort to personalize my internet radio to match my tastes. It's not perfect (tell Pandora you like a single song by the Scorpions and be prepared for an onslaught of really bad 80's hair rock), but it's definitely a step in the right direction: it's mostly music I like, plus lots of artists I would probably never otherwise have tried listening to. Oh, and the play songs from albums, not just singles.

Maybe Elton isn't the phenom he used to be, but it's not fair to blame the internet. The internet just made Elton's little pond a lot bigger, that's all.

Of course, he doesn't use technology so he doesn't really know what's out there on the internet!

Look at Priestbird ( http://myspace.com/priestbird ), Mono ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_(Japanese_band) ), Godspeed! You Black Emperor ( http://www.pandora.com/music/artist/a205af6552256a 1b ), Miasma & The Carousel of Headless Horses ( http://www.pandora.com/music/artist/miasma+the+car ousel+of+headless+horses ) .... all highly creative bands that myself (a fan) would have never found or listened to without the internet. Godspeed! I first heard in 28 Days Later - but never would have found out who they were if not for the internet. All the others I've found via Pandora - and bought albums of from iTunes - and have even seen one live, since (Priestbird, formerly Tarantula AD).

Without the internet, these artists could never have expanded their fanbase to a varied population.... it's just not the type of stuff that gets played on the radio at all! (I mean, really - go listen to The Peacock & The Heretic by Miasma et. al. and tell me which station would play that..? )

Two other miscellaneous points: the blogger used "irregardless" - argh! .... also, is it just me, or is it strikingly ironic that a blogger is writing about Elton John ragging on bloggers -- and (mostly) agreeing with him?

Of course, he doesn't use technology so he doesn't really know what's out there on the internet!

Look at Priestbird ( http://myspace.com/priestbird ), Mono ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_(Japanese_band) ), Godspeed! You Black Emperor ( http://www.pandora.com/music/artist/a205af6552256a 1b ), Miasma & The Carousel of Headless Horses ( http://www.pandora.com/music/artist/miasma+the+car ousel+of+headless+horses ) .... all highly creative bands that myself (a fan) would have never found or listened to without the internet. Godspeed! I first heard in 28 Days Later - but never would have found out who they were if not for the internet. All the others I've found via Pandora - and bought albums of from iTunes - and have even seen one live, since (Priestbird, formerly Tarantula AD).

Without the internet, these artists could never have expanded their fanbase to a varied population.... it's just not the type of stuff that gets played on the radio at all! (I mean, really - go listen to The Peacock & The Heretic by Miasma et. al. and tell me which station would play that..? )

Two other miscellaneous points: the blogger used "irregardless" - argh! .... also, is it just me, or is it strikingly ironic that a blogger is writing about Elton John ragging on bloggers -- and (mostly) agreeing with him?

I agree - I can browse through and LISTEN to music on Amazon on iTunes and then, if I like anything, either buy the CD or just get the tracks I want from iTunes or similar.

Internet radio offers far more variety than the local radio stations here in the UK - I've lost count of the number of CDs I've bought after hearing them through Pandora or other more traditional online stations. I can easily find a station playing the music styles I want to listen to, rather than .

Maybe Elton should consider the benefits the Internet can offer, rather than concentrating on the negatives such as illegal p2p filesharing that the record companies spoonfeed everyone.

As a musician myself (piano/keys in a jazz quartet and also a corporate/party band) I really appreciate what the internet has done for us: we get lots of our gigs through people finding our website (or being directed there from other sites / recommendations / business cards) and downloading / listening to the live demo tracks. Granted, the site needs a major update, but without the internet I'd be stuck running off demo CDs and leaflets and posting them to agents / venues.

I subscribe to Pandora, which has really helped me find new bands and music, and they send out a message every so often about this, asking for our help. They give phone numbers for local congressmen, as well as some places to find half-canned scripts to mail in. I would like to see Pandora stick around, even if it meant I did a paid subscription (which I am willing to do, if they can move it into its own client), but I really can't see any action I could take affecting it.

This kind of issue seems too "localized" and small scale for any Congressman to give a shit about, not that know what the hell is going on in the first place. I could call or mail, only to have some intern glance over or listen to what I said, and in return give me the closest canned script that works for this situation. Then of course are those Congressman who are being paid off, and would turn a cold shoulder to it, anyway.

If I believed in market forces more, I would say that this is something that the market would take care of; sadly, the greed and conspiring of large companies coupled with the stupidity of most consumers guarantees that this would stay in effect for quite a long time without a high-level intervention. So what, exactly, could I do without a complete hopeless feeling? I'm sure common answers would be to donate to the EFF, UCLA, or some other activist group, which is not a bad idea at all, but I lack funds.

More aside from the point, even more sad is that it seems that I would have about the same effect on any issue with a congressman, from internet radio fees to the use of taxpayer money in regards to education. Perhaps it's a current bout of depression talking, but I can feel nothing but a sense of hopelessness for this country in the future, looking at the way things are turning now.

Thanks for the recommendation. Khonnor sounds pretty sweet (from the 30 second samples at least!)

Electronica and (non-vocal) post-rock are both sort of coming back into the limelight thanks to the internet, for the simple reason that their audiences are somewhat smaller than for mainstream music. Pink Floyd sort of played around with the genre way back, but it wasn't until the past few years that bands like Mogwai, Amon Tobin, Boards of Candada, Explosions in the Sky, or 65daysofstatic really found the sort of fanbase to establish themselves.

If you want to poke around and look for music that suits your tastes, I highly recommend Last.FM, which is a gigantic music recommendation engine that is pretty good at finding stuff that matches your tastes. Likewise, (although on a more limited scope), Pandora is great to find new music.

Pitchfork Media is often regarded as being the bible for independent music. Be warned, however, that they're extremely pretentious, and somewhat persnickety when it comes to their reviews. They've completely panned some of my favorite albums. However, an album that gets an extremely favorable review on Pitchfork is something that is definitely worth checking out. (Also be warned of a inexplicably huge pro-Radiohead bias)

Stereogum is also another great blog for keeping track of the indie scene.

Of course, don't let this be your only guide. Friends are a great way for finding new music, and occasionally you just stumble upon something relatively unknown, and yet extremely awesome.

why haven't you?

http://broadcaster.pandora.com/dm?id=C22D77F98E9EB 354BD09C1661C048825050542759970026E

Perhaps one reason behind the decline in music sales is due to easy ways on the internet to find niche artists. Some years ago, I liked the stereotypical, popular bands, but after discovering new material through sites such as Pandora and last.fm (and perhaps from becoming more mature) I now like much more niche bands. I suspect that this happening on a large scale is the reason that the 'safe bet' strategy is not working for the music industry any more.

They have a horrible system for recommending similar music to users. They need to adopt the Music Genome Project from Pandora or something similar that they can create with their large and pretty active user base.

I use last.fm all the time and I love it, but not for what it is billed for. I am able to track my listening, which is cool because, dude numbers.... right? Also they have information on artists a click away from my page along with a calendar for events coming to my area. They use their database well in many ways, but they have yet to come up with a system for recommending new music that is good. Currently, it boils down to, if you like Artist A and these other 1000 people like Artist A, then you must like some of the other stuff they like. Then the bring in tags and produce some list that is bogus. Given they make money from selling CD's and getting a cut, you would think a large focus would be put on a system where people would actually find stuff they like when searching for similar sounding stuff.

As for the music videos - I do not care to much for the idea, but I see the draw for others. They have improved their site a great deal over the last few years and it shows no sign of slowing down, which is good. I just wish they would revisit the core elements of the site for a change and give us a system that works... it is, after all, what the site was meant to be about in the first place.

They have a horrible system for recommending similar music to users. They need to adopt the Music Genome Project from Pandora or something similar that they can create with their large and pretty active user base.

I use last.fm all the time and I love it, but not for what it is billed for. I am able to track my listening, which is cool because, dude numbers.... right? Also they have information on artists a click away from my page along with a calendar for events coming to my area. They use their database well in many ways, but they have yet to come up with a system for recommending new music that is good. Currently, it boils down to, if you like Artist A and these other 1000 people like Artist A, then you must like some of the other stuff they like. Then the bring in tags and produce some list that is bogus. Given they make money from selling CD's and getting a cut, you would think a large focus would be put on a system where people would actually find stuff they like when searching for similar sounding stuff.

As for the music videos - I do not care to much for the idea, but I see the draw for others. They have improved their site a great deal over the last few years and it shows no sign of slowing down, which is good. I just wish they would revisit the core elements of the site for a change and give us a system that works... it is, after all, what the site was meant to be about in the first place.

This is a repost of an e-mail I posted in a previous /. thread. I urge everyone to follow the link and get a hold of your local representative. You can read more on their blog, including the following message: http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/

Hi, it's Tim from Pandora,

I'm writing today to ask for your help. The survival of Pandora and all of Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora. The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays and broadcast radio doesn't pay these at all. Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora.

In response to these new and unfair fees, we have formed the SaveNetRadio Coalition, a group that includes listeners, artists, labels and webcasters. I hope that you will consider joining us.

Please sign our petition urging your Congressional representative to act to save Internet radio: http://capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/issues/alert/? alertid=9631541

Please feel free to forward this link/email to your friends - the more petitioners we can get, the better.

Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception. As a former touring musician myself, I'm no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians. The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of the range of ANY webcaster's business potential.

I hope you'll take just a few minutes to sign our petition - it WILL make a difference. As a young industry, we do not have the lobbying power of the RIAA. You, our listeners, are by far our biggest and most influential allies.

As always, and now more than ever, thank you for your support.

This is good news for services like http://pandora.com/.

Pandora: there is some user interaction to shape the channel with seeds for artist and/or songs to play similar to or avoid.

An interview with the founder of Pandora.com indicated that

(Pandora.com's) Westergreen: [] But there’s another piece of the story. Half of the money we pay to SoundExchange each month goes to the labels, and half goes directly to the artists. If these new rates do stick, then the only way webcasters will stay alive is to start striking direct licensing deals, at lower rates, with the major record labels. If those deals are struck, then all of that money goes directly to the label, and goes under the umbrella of traditional record deals, where only a very small percent ends up going to artists.

(TruthDig's) Sinnreich: So you believe that one of the strategic reasons the RIAA has for supporting these higher rates is so labels can offer a competitive lower rate directly to webcasters, which would mean more income overall for labels and less income for artists?

Westergren: That’s exactly right.

Sinnreich: That sounds pretty nefarious.

Westergren: It’s business. These are businesses that are struggling, and they’re trying to maximize revenue.

Sinnreich: Have you seen any evidence of labels making direct deals with webcasters?

Westergren: SoundExchange just announced that they’re happy to let the RIAA deal directly with webcasters. Labels, throughout this process, have also been soliciting deals on the side. And they’ve already signed some—[popular webcaster] Last.fm signed a couple.

Sinnreich: Some have argued that the labels might also negotiate lower rates in exchange for promotional concessions from webcasters—the kind of thing that’s sometimes referred to as “payola” in terrestrial broadcasting. Would Pandora consider such an arrangement?

Westergren: Pandora has never, ever taken money to play music, and we never will. Labels have certainly offered, and I don’t think that’s nefarious—it’s the same as buying a billboard, or an end-cap [a type of display] in a record store. I think that is undoubtedly part of the motivation for direct licensing deals, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a promotional element to many of those deals. And that’s just business.

So I'm guessing the copyright owner or even a consortium of owners can cut individual deals with individual internet stations thus cockblocking SoundExchange, but on internet stations they don't cut deals with, SoundExchange will be there.

Actually it is: http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/

I got the mail too, but all I had to find it on the website was click the "Blog" link at the bottom on the page.

Call me suspicious, but hey. I AM suspicious of anything that looks like an email chain letter, even one espousing a good cause.

C'mon Tim, if you're out there: prove me wrong :)

They clearly have no idea how much Pandora has done to sell me their product. I have actually purchased CDs I would never have known existed were it not for internet radio. They're killing the goose that lays golden eggs.

Ever consider seperating your business account from your personal one? Of course, Amazon could also incorporate aspects, profiles or whatever into individual accounts that would solve this problem. I think everyone encounters it in some form or another - whether you are buying gifts, changing jobs or changing as a person.

With that said, I don't think the central concept is screwed. If we can agree that the central concept is about effectively making suggestions to new things based on what we like, then there are many places that do this well. A few examples:

Say you were listening to All Music Considered and you really like the Mavis Staples tune "Down in Mississippi". If you go to AllMusic, you can find similar artists - many which you may already know and like. However, you might discover a few new ones you didn't know anything about and get recommendations of which of their many albums might be most likely to be worth your money - although I don't always agree with Allmusic's assessment, their recommendations are worthwhile when I don't know enough about a group to have an opinion.

Or you could go somewhere like Pandora and put in her name and listen to similar artists right there.

Personally, I like the idea of Pandora better but it is their execution (the inability to select which similar artists you hear, track back to recommended albums, limited fast-forward, iPod centricism (I prefer to buy CDs), etc.) that keeps me going back to Allmusic.

So we have a Podcast that recommends music; a music reference that provides information on artists, albums and songs; and a service that plays similar artist's songs based on your preference for a particular artist. All of these can be useful - which is why they exist. They are each also an example of the central idea - that people want good recommendations and exposure to new things they might like.

Now, I don't particularly care for Amazon's way of going about making recommendations. But, the fact they do it poorly doesn't mean the concept itself is bad.

What you are describing already exists and as of this writing costs $0 to its end users. The downside is that it isn't an on-demand service like the paid for services and is more like a dynamic radio.

The thing about Pandora is that it becomes more effective at finding music that you really like the more often you use it. It takes a while, but eventually you start to hear music that more closely matches your tastes - from bands that you've never heard before. The Music Genome Project (http://pandora.com/mgp.shtml) is a fascinating idea to me and is what appeals to me more than a site like last.fm.

Er, nothing like audioscrobbler/last.fm then?

No, I think it is more on the lines of Pandora . But from TFA seems you would be able to download music (dont know what internet do they use where that is legal). Now of course Last.FM is kind of OK, or at least it was until the last player update which disabled the only differential thing (at least from the other zillion projects that suggest you music) which was the ability to choose two or more artists and create a radio station out of them. According to the people at last.FM it was because some record company did not liked that feature. But it seems they are going to enable it for subscribers only. And as other people said in their forums, nothing stopped them from streaming and displaying all the artists minus the ones from such stupid record company.

Anyway, I stopped used them because they gradually became more and more commercial. And although I see nothing bad on that, The service as it is now is not worth the price they ask.

Pandora lets you set up virtual and customized radio stations. Basically you type in a band you like and they start playing music, some of which is from that band and the rest of which has been human-judged using numerous metrics to be similar to what you like. One of my core bands is Boston so that was my seed band -- I was very impressed with the bands they suggested and I've only stopped listening because it involves constant downloading and I don't want to annoy my ISP.

There are probably other services like this...

You might have some fun with Pandora, but you do need decent broadband. Create a channel for each type of music you like, enter the artists you feel represent that channel, and Pandora plays songs by them AND by other artists that share their characteristics. Then you "tune" your channel by thumbs up and thumbs down to the individual songs. I have it playing in the background all day and have discovered a bunch of new artists I would have never heard of, many from small indie labels, from Pandora. Perfect for the person who doesn't have time to ferret.

Soundclick... and Pandora...

The best filter I've found to figure out what you'd like from emusic is to use Pandora. Just put in something that you like from a major label band and keep filtering your "station" to find more music you like. Once you find something you REALLY like go and download it from emusic, either just that track or the whole album if the previews catch your ear. Plus Pandora was already featured on /. so it must have some geek cred!

50 free downloads?? Where? I'm in the middle of my free 25-song download trial, and I only have a few songs left. Damn. Even if they do 50-song trials, I'm sure I'm now ineligible.

I got the trial because I was interested in a particular artist who has a couple of albums only available at various download sites, including Emusic. I got the stuff I wanted, but I can't find any more that interests me. I feel like I should get my money's worth out of this trial. ;)

The primary problem is exactly what was mentioned in the article summary and a few comments already: there's just too much unknown stuff to sift through. I'm not listening to 100 previews to find one gem. And if I find that one gem, what are the odds that it'll be part of a whole album I'd want? I don't have enough free downloads left to get a complete album. Of course I could actually pay for a subscription, but that's only assuming I'd find enough other music there to justify it. So far I haven't.

There's one record label that I really like on Emusic, but all of their stuff is readily available on CD. I'll take the physical CD over lossy download any day -- save the downloads for stuff that's out of print or the rare individual songs I want (I prefer complete albums for the most part).

What's a music lover like me to do? I even tried Pandora, but found that while its recommendations were on the right track, the quality just wasn't up to the stuff I'd actually pay for. I'm sure there's enough good music I'd love to increase my collection (~600 albums) by an order of magnitude, but how do I find it?

And how did you find out about Zeppelin, exactly?

Why don't you just keep doing that?

It's ok if you want to get off the find-new-music train, but don't blame it on the music. Blame it on your unwillingness to put a bit of effort in your search technique. One of those streaming recommendation services like http://pandora.com/ should be within the means of even a lazy old fart such as yourself....

If you want to find new music, you should check out http://www.pandora.com/. It's a website that chooses songs to play for you based on artists and songs that you say you like. I find it works pretty well, although their license makes for unusual restrictions. It's all free (at the moment).

Clearly only available if you're listening from your computer with an internet connection, which you may already have another source for.

I've been meaning to look into last.fm, thanks for the reminder. For me, Pandora has been a good pointer to music that I've later sought out on iTunes or at the local used music stores.

put out a remix album awhile back

i found some info on it

those tracks blew me away, and i would have NEVER have found that music had i played "legit" and not pirated

i didn't even know what the armin van buuren/ ayumi hamasaki album was until i looked for it just now, even though i've playing songs from it for years and i deeply dig those remixes. i'm utterly beyond the notion of albums. i haven't bought a cd since 1999, and i never will again

i don't think i'll ever go to itunes either, because i'm too into the idea of "following my nose": start with a track i like, find out what else is related to that song/ what else is hosted by whomever is sharing it, and download hundreds of those songs, throwing out 98% of them. this shotgun search approach gets very expensive on itunes, but not on emule. after a few rounds of "following your nose", starting with a song very familiar to you that you love, you "fall down the rabbit hole" as the original poster says, and you wind up in a universe of foreign recorded/ underground music you hadn't the foggiest idea existed, and yet you absolutely are ecstatic about

however, i recently found a "legit" way of the shotgun approach i've mentioned above: http://pandora.com. i read an article about them and they apparently hire people to listen to music all day, categorizing it. besides being notable as what sounds like a dream job for a music lover, it's kind of sad that pandora has to do manually what the internet can do automatically, as i've already discovered, years ago

say what you want about piracy, but in terms of a music lover's experience, it is the garden of eden compared to being "legit". i don't know how to be legit anymore, i don't think i ever will again. the experience as a music lover renders it impossible for me to consider something so stone age as the itunes paradigm of buying individual tracks. i want to inhale 1000s of tracks based on search words, throw out 900 of them in rapid succession, and find bizarre gems of world music/ underground music there is no way in a million years i would ever have found through any legit copyright addled mode

i'm a lifer, there's no way i'll ever buy music again, and before you holier than thou a@@holes lecture me on stealing from starving third world musicians, consider the fact that if it weren't for piracy, i wouldn't have been listening to them in the first place. solve that paradox, then get back to me with your attitude. i'm not downloading justin timberlake and beyonce knowles. i'm going after esoteric (to me in new york city) tracks i can't get my hands on any other way. i'd like the music industry or copyright wankers to address what i really am interested in (foreign and underground esoteric and exotic tracks) before they find some way to consider me an enemy. they can't

i wrote an article about it a long time ago, in 2003, that, bizarrely, i keep find being cited around the web

It is unclear whether you are asking about my statements in the post you replied to, or if you are asking about my statements in my other post elsewhere. If the former, you should have noticed that I put a link in my post and you should have checked it. If the latter, it would have been more clear had you replied to the post that you were questioning... and to breifly answer you you can directly confirm the existance and operation of Pandora.com under US law or check the Wikipedia page on Pandora.com, if you want to verify the US law I discussed you can go directly to the official US government copyright webpage on CARP law, if you were asking about Russian law and ROMS here is the official ROMS website but I would have to Google for an "authoratative" english reference on ROMS, and if you were questioning the RIAA contracts for their artists... that would be odd... but I'm sure I could Google several artist websites explaining and ranting about the evil contracts the RIAA members impose.

Is that adaquate? If not, could you be more specific about what points you are questioning?

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Working with metadata from a non-trusted community is a few orders of difficulty harder than working with trusted metadata. All the examples from non-trusted user groups that I've seen are either 1) only able to track fairly simple data or 2) ambitious but disappointing. I'd put Slashdot's moderation and metamoderation in the first category. Relevance, quality, and a few kinds of description are possible, but these are fairly simple things to track. Most internet resources would require metadata that is much harder to validate to be useful.

A primary example of this that comes to my mind is the current crop of music recommendation services. The idea behind these sites is that they can, through one of various methods, recommend music to you based on what you like. I've experimented somewhat extensively with Pandora and Last.fm, and the difference in the quality of their suggestions is amazing.

Last.fm uses community data for recommendations. It tracks tags that users attach to songs and the collection of artists that each user listens to. Based on what artists you have listened to or which tags you select, it attempts to point out other artists you might like.

Pandora makes recommendations based on musical qualities. The data the service uses comes from the Music Genome Project, which paid people who have studied music to catalogue the musical qualities of songs in their database. Employees listen to songs and select which attributes are applicable to the song from a list of hundreds of attributes. To use the service, you enter some songs and artists that you like, and based on the musical attributes of those songs and artists, it recommends other songs you might like.

The results that the services provide, at least in my case, are like night and day. Last.fm's recommendations are heavily influenced by what's popular and how a common user would categorize an artist or song. They sort-of hit the right areas, but it doesn't get much better than Amazon's recommendations. Pandora's recommendations always seem to be more on target, even though it uses only a few artists or songs that you enter at the start, in contract to Last.fm, which can use my entire play history.

I guess a lot of this can be chalked up to the difference between association and relation - without some type of new innovation, it seems that community-based metadata can only be based on association, which is a far cry short of relation. Yes, it is a type of relation, but a set of data has qualities that a few simple tags from users are not going to be able to touch. It seems to me the next generation of metadata will only be possible when we can figure out a way to get the sort of data that Pandora uses from a community group. It's a daunting challenge that tagging and simple user activities like the Google Image Labeller have just started to slightly touch.