On Thu, Jul 03, 2003 at 10:15:16AM +0200, Maarten de Boer wrote: > > product. I can find higher quality music being given away by the artist > > for free than its possible to find in all the archives of major labels > > I'd like to agree, but personally, I have a hard time finding good music > for free. There is also a lot of, how shall i put it, lesser quality > music around, and I don't really know where to look. I find it already > very difficult to find something that I really like among known music or > publicly advertised/broadcasted music. How do you go to a record store > and pick a CD of an artist you don't know yet? By the cover? Sure, but thats just because new models of recommendation haven't been worked out enough. Things like mp3.com one way of finding good, unpublished bands, but to me its not that useful as it appears the the public actually likes the bulk pop fodder they get handed by the labels. > Now, what I would really like, is a website dedicated to free music, > that offers a search engine not unlike allmusic, but much more > "intelligent": keeping user profiles, matching user profiles with tastes > so it can make suggestions, an advanced rating system where users can > rate not only the music itself but also similarity to other artists, > etc. (RFC) There have been a bunch of light-AI backed recommender websites (mostly produced by university CS departments), I think they tend to fold because the cost of running them is a bit too high. Maybe someone like MP3.com could support it, now there getting bigger. I've had a reasonable ammount of exposure through mp3.com, and even some cash, even though my music is quite a ... specialised taste ;) But the recommender algorithm they use is deeply b0rken and tends to cause a positive feedback, rich get richer, effect. - Steve
