Quote:
The only way I can think of to find new bands that you like that is to compare them to bands that you currently like.
I absolutely agree- I am soo glad to hear you say it because this has been a major part of my thinking. The only site that REMOTLY does this well is msn music, and there are two fatal flaws with their implementation. First off, you have to pay for it (kills the concept right there), and secondly it favors popular music. It’s a good start though- you can tune into a “radio station” that plays music rated highly by fans of a certain artist. I tried it for a month and found a couple of bands I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

My thinking is to expand on this and create almost personalized playlists for users, taking into account both the songs they favor and those they don’t. So if you’re a fan of Pearl Jam but not Creed (describes me well!), you’d get the same sort of suggestions as others who have similar tastes. And as you interact more, the more refined the suggestions become.

But the cool thing about the way MSN Music does it is that they just start streaming the songs to you, which is more of a passive process than amazon.com. You can just set it up to play in the background, and then if you hear something you like (or hate), you can pause to rate it- or even buy it.

Quote:
It seems to me that the way you'd have to do it is to have ratings for all the bands from each user, both positive and negative. And I think I'd classify them that way. Not just one star to ten stars, but negative five to positive 5. And make sure to keep in an "I haven't voted for this band" flag so that that result won't have any effect. That way, if you take all the PopularBand fans and see that of those that voted for them, UndergroundBand has a rating of 4.5, then the fact that they're unknown wouldn't be an issue.
This is EXACTLY what I was thinking (well, ok, not the negative stars thing, but definitely keeping positive and negative scores and “I haven’t voted for this band”). Additionally, I’d think there would be a place for unrated songs that haven’t received enough votes. That way someone doesn’t end up at the bottom of the barrel because one person didn’t like the song. It’d also keep a part of the site fresh with new music.

Quote:
And the site can't only promote the bands they have. They need to have all bands in their database.
I hadn’t thought of this, but I think you’re probably right.

Quote:
Also, I'd like to see why I've been recommended an artist. What was the suggestion based on.
Yeah, I REALLY like that feature of amazon.com.
_________________________
-Jeff
Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.