Perhaps this technology isn't the future of digital music, and maybe not even digital radio (although it certainly could be) -- but I believe it will play an important part in music discovery.
And it might not be iRate or Gnomeradio in particular, but the idea behind them.
Even when just applied to indie artists, I've found dozens of bands who are fantastic using iRate. In the process I've thrown out even more music that I didn't find enjoyable at all, but in a reasonably short time I was discovering music that would have taken me ages to find in any other way.
Could this be applied to mainstream music? I don't see why not. How far away is the technology that allows me to have a custom radio station in my car and at home. I streams music, I rate it and a profile is built for me that is compared against other listeners from around the world. Seems better to me than listening to the various radio stations play the same songs every day, occasionaly adding something new . . . maybe even something I enjoy listening to.
Chris. (And I do help with iRate development, so I'm somewhat biased.)
I help in developing iRate and I agree to some degree that merging the different projects in some fashion is important. Maybe not tomorrow, but somewhere down the line.
We've found that music discovery with this kind of technology really seems to work, and without even having a massive user base. Quite a few people use iRate regularily, but the knock against collaborative filtering is that it needs many people making valid ratings to make it go. I can only image how great it would be if a truely large mass of people began to use it.
Knowing that the technology really works, it would be worth looking at some kind of standard way for these type of projects to talk with each other. As well as similar technologies like IMMS.
I know that if someone sat down and came up with a reasonable proposal, the iRate folks would certainly consider it. But right now we're just a handful of projects trying to do what we think is best to harness a cool technology.
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Perhaps this technology isn't the future of digital music, and maybe not even digital radio (although it certainly could be) -- but I believe it will play an important part in music discovery.
And it might not be iRate or Gnomeradio in particular, but the idea behind them.
Even when just applied to indie artists, I've found dozens of bands who are fantastic using iRate. In the process I've thrown out even more music that I didn't find enjoyable at all, but in a reasonably short time I was discovering music that would have taken me ages to find in any other way.
Could this be applied to mainstream music? I don't see why not. How far away is the technology that allows me to have a custom radio station in my car and at home. I streams music, I rate it and a profile is built for me that is compared against other listeners from around the world. Seems better to me than listening to the various radio stations play the same songs every day, occasionaly adding something new . . . maybe even something I enjoy listening to.
Chris. (And I do help with iRate development, so I'm somewhat biased.)
I help in developing iRate and I agree to some degree that merging the different projects in some fashion is important. Maybe not tomorrow, but somewhere down the line.
We've found that music discovery with this kind of technology really seems to work, and without even having a massive user base. Quite a few people use iRate regularily, but the knock against collaborative filtering is that it needs many people making valid ratings to make it go. I can only image how great it would be if a truely large mass of people began to use it.
Knowing that the technology really works, it would be worth looking at some kind of standard way for these type of projects to talk with each other. As well as similar technologies like IMMS.
I know that if someone sat down and came up with a reasonable proposal, the iRate folks would certainly consider it. But right now we're just a handful of projects trying to do what we think is best to harness a cool technology.
Chris.
A few of us north of the American border are putting in some muscle too.
The project is coming along well. And when the next stable release happens, we'll see a number of features that make the program more pleasant to use.
But, in any case -- the program works. I'm getting a library of great music, free and legal.
Chris.