Comment by ep103 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ep103 | Hacker News Reader

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That's the way music-map.com works, and it is absolutely fantastic.

But no, that is NOT the way these other services recommend things.

Spotify, for example, recommends music that it thinks is related, but not necessarily liked by both groups of people.

For example, a person who likes Black Sabbath, and really technical instrumental metal, probably doesn't like the comparatively simpler slipknot. While some people who like slipknot may like black sabbath, but even less will be aware of really technically advanced instrumental metal.

music-map.com will take that into account. When you say "my three favorite bands are", you're not going to see slipknot show up in the result list, because people who mentioned those technical bands tended not to like slipknot.

But if you go to spotify and listen to sabbath, you'll see slipknot recommendations, because there is overlap, right?

I just went over to music-map right now, and sure enough, black sabbath and slipknot don't overlap, even when you do searches of the bands individually, let alone if you enter multiple bands.

> For example, a person who likes Black Sabbath, and really technical instrumental metal, probably doesn't like the comparatively simpler slipknot

That's just thinly disguised metal snobbery. Almost all metalheads adore Black Sabbath, because they wrote fantastic songs. Sabbath's music caught on because it's so accessible. They were certainly good musicians, but by no means anywhere near the top of the Technical Sophistication Food Chain.

I myself am a cretin, and thus have little patience for technically advanced music, but I'm happy to accommodate a vast world of music where everyone finds something they like, so I'm not going to denigrate anybody's favorite Super Technical Metal Band with twin guitar solos and the 75-piece drum kit - it's all good to somebody. But you've gotta be kidding if you think Sabbath is that kind of act.

> Almost all metalheads adore Black Sabbath

This implies that, if there are many different subgenres with little overlap in audience but they all agree on Black Sabbath (and little else), drawing conclusions from "listens to Black Sabbath" is doomed to fail. "Listens to Black Sabbath" simply isn't particularly specific, and those subgenre-heads are all about specifity. Same as that you can draw a lot more conclusions from "likes listening to Number Nine" than from "likes listening to Yesterday"

> That's just thinly disguised metal snobbery. Almost all metalheads adore Black Sabbath, because they wrote fantastic songs

I think you might have misunderstood the parent a bit. They're not saying Black Sabbath is really technical instrumental metal but that someone who listens to Black Sabbath AND ALSO likes really technical instrumental, is probably not looking to listen to Slipknot (though I suppose that could depend on the technical to Black Sabbath ratio).

The point is more that Spotify supposedly recommends without taking into account what people actually listen to. Spotify says "oh this person listens to Black Sabbath which is a popular metal band. They also listen to a lot of Blotted Science, which is also a metal band. They most likely will like Slipknot, another popular metal band" instead of "This person listens to Black Sabbath and Blotted Science. People who listen to both Black Sabbath and Blotted Science also listen to Nile, so this person will most likely like Nile"[0].

[0] Blotted Science and Nile are the only technicalish bands I know off the top of my head. If those bands don't work, try Blind Guardian and Stormkeep

Metal snobbery is a legitimate taste, though. It's the sort of thing a recommendation algorithm should consider.

Spotify recommends me tracks that I have already added to my playlists. It knows me really well.

I dunno, if I was writing the Spotify recommendation engine and wanted to trick people into thinking it was good, I'd do the same thing.

So I put in Silver Jews, and expected to get probably the #1 result "Purple Mountains" which is also David Berman, and then pavement and some Malkmus as recommends. So I don't know how well that works.

Coheed and Cambria seemed fairly good. I was expecting Thursday as a top result and got it.

I put in "Mom Jeans" and a totally very different sounding band but on the same label who tour together and got "Just Friends". That's an unexpectedly nice connection.

Yeah, Last.fm is really good for playing a playlist from a single scene. It's not necessarily a single genre, just bands who tour together, or guest on each other's tracks.

They used to go pretty deep too, like bringing in bands from 20 years before that influenced the current one.

It's not necessarily the greatest for bands that are selling out stadiums as there's too much interference from Clear Channel, but it's great for small to midsize scenes which tend to have shows from 100-1000, since those tend to be more defined.

You have to now wonder how much of last.fm has since become tainted by faulty recommendations coming via Spotify and co though.

did you catch a Pavement reunion show?

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