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Music Recommendation Engines Compared

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the stuff-to-stick-in-your-ear dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The music recommendation/music discovery space seems to be heating up this year. Two big recent features on music recommendation engines: ExtremeTech has a round-up and reviews of eight leading services. Of the eight, Last.fm emerges as the winner: "Last.fm is by far the best out there, possessing a huge library of music, a great community, and a recommendation feature that will blow you away." Meanwhile, Pitchforkmedia.com just ran an in-depth feature about the hows and whys of music recommendation software, that tells the story going back to the '90s, and interviews people at Last.fm, Pandora, MusicIP, and the startup Echo Nest: '"Our hope is to answer every possible question about music that ever existed. If we can pull that off, then I think we're doing very well," says [Brian] Whitman.'"

8 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. But can you answer this one? by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Funny

    Can you answer "Why do radio stations predominantly air really bad, overhyped crap nobody wants to hear?" without using the words "bribe" or any synonyms?

    Or rather, will they actually recommend music? Or just the hypecrap?

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:But can you answer this one? by mypalmike · · Score: 3, Funny

      Results of your query:

      We found no entries in our database for the artist 'hypecrap'. May we suggest Mariah Carey, Hoobastank, or Celine Dion?

      --
      There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
  2. Features, Features, Features by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    "When we tuned into "artist fan radio" for Johnny Cash, the first song that played was from Megadeth, a huge contrast from Cash."

    That's just a feature. It obviously does that beacuse Megadeth kicks ass.

  3. My review.. by GillBates0 · · Score: 4, Funny
    I suggest they rate these music recommendation services based on how rarely they recommend Brittany Spears, Jessica Simpson and Celine Dion. It'll be too soon if I don't hear one of them sing their guts out ever again.

    An inverse metric would work nicely for ranking a video recommendation service.

    --
    An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
  4. Slashdotted my Music by lucifig · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm sitting here listening to Pandora at work and just as I notice a new Slashdot article, it craps out.

    Curse you!

  5. Re:Clinko by kfg · · Score: 2, Funny

    1.Britney Spears
    .
    .
    .
    5.Mariah Carey

    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=187227&cid=154 47749

    KFG

  6. Every Last Question by Kozar_The_Malignant · · Score: 4, Funny

    >Our hope is to answer every possible question about music that ever existed. If we can pull that off, then I think we're doing very well,

    What is the brand of guitar string that you can hear break in the mono lp version of "Help Me, Rhonda"?
    --
    Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
  7. Sorry by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 2, Funny

    That is a hardware issue. The question is out of scope.

    --
    This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.