Comment by colortone | Hacker News Reader

Comment by colortone | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

You're being pretty dogmatic about what music is...

You may be right that, in some respects, "cultural objects are substantively different than news articles", but not in ways that are germane to this argument:

"The news is largely valued for its accuracy, timeliness, and topical relevance to a reader. Music and other cultural objects are valued for their enjoyment, which is contingent on individual personal preferences."

I addressed this in an earlier response..."personal enjoyment" of music is inexorable from "timeliness" and "relevance."

I get more "personal enjoyment" from John Zorn than anyone else, but I don't wanna hear it when I'm making out with my girl, or at a club.

Think about the success of mood/circumstance specific mix CD's like "Ibiza Club" or "Ellington for Lovers"...

Musical preferences have a lot more to them than "people like you also like"...

Also, with all the choice available, it's easy to overestimate people's desire to even HAVE choice.

Finally, I am imagining a more sophisticated metadata model that is not just about creating categories for things. I don't really have the details on that, though ;-)

The examples you use as counter-arguments to my approach are not really counter-arguments, but deal with a different issue than what I was talking addressing in my last response. I was talking about finding music based on personal preferences. Your counter-examples of "making out with my girl" or dancing "at a club" are group situations where group preferences are most important.

You are right when you say that compilations like "Ibiza Club" or "Ellington for Lovers" make a lot of money: so does selling Muzak (the background music in supermarkets and most commercial spaces with music). Background music is the ultimate "genre" that is compatible with group preferences: no one is offended... but at the same time, nobody really cares.

I agree with you that musical preferences have more to them than "people like you also like"... this would disregard the reality that people sometimes do categorize music by situation/mood, categories like listening to music to dance, exercise, study, make-out, host cocktail parties etc.

But as I suggested before, domain specific categories of music do not have to be mutually exclusive to personal preferences (currently they are). Let's say your goal is to have romantic music. Why not use a "people like you also like" function bounded by the category of romantic music? This way you could get romantic music, i.e. music everyone thinks is romantic, and romantic music that you like as an individual. Even better would be to use a "people like you and your girlfriend also like" function within the specific category of romantic music :)

"Also, with all the choice available, it's easy to overestimate people's desire to even HAVE choice." This is pretty fatalistic don't you think? I think the explosion of choice online frustrates people because they KNOW something is out there that they will really love, but they can't FIND it. This screams opportunity for a website to act as a choice agent to direct people to the music, video, merchandise etc. that they want but can't find themselves among the infinite choices. Infinite choice results in infinite search costs without a decision agent.

Okay, I think I have identified a central reason why we disagree on some of this stuff, and it basically stems from views on art criticism.

The phrase "personal preference" to me makes a case for relativism:

"If I think something is good, then it is good."

WRONG.

As Bruce Sterling and others have argued, just because you like something [or just because you can make something, like a mash-up] doesn't mean it's good.

I don't have time to parse this much more right now, but the fact is that it behooves technologists to develop a robust art criticism within these applications.

Another reason I am high on the idea of people making decisions about what to listen to vs. algorithms [if there has to be a choice] is that, while there is a LOT of choice in the music world, it's not even CLOSE to infinite.

I believe that among the 10,000-50,000 (a pretty random number of people i picked), "legit" (whatever that means) music aficionados could parse out the vast majority of great music in all genre/mood/styles, from Britney to Bach, in a fairly short amount of time.

Also, this paragraph:

"You are right when you say that compilations like "Ibiza Club" or "Ellington for Lovers" make a lot of money: so does selling Muzak (the background music in supermarkets and most commercial spaces with music). Background music is the ultimate "genre" that is compatible with group preferences: no one is offended... but at the same time, nobody really cares."

Is utter bullshit. Do you honestly think I'm thinking of it that way?

Finally, let the record show that in all my hundreds of hours listening to last.fm and Pandora [PURELY for research reasons] I have NEVER EVER heard anything that I wasn't already aware of that was half decent. EVER.

So, my perspective on this is skewed. Like everything else, 95% of people don't know shit about music, so these incremental algorithmic solutions are a panacea to them.

Your idea of weighing "influential" people heavier in an algorithm has a lot of merit. I just think that pure human-powered peer production would get to the solution of better music for every occasion a lot faster.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com