The Recommendation Engine of the Future: Still Blogs?
For my money, there isn’t a better sound in the world than James Mercer and The Shins. Their music resonates with me unlike any other band and I am always on the lookout for bands that make music that will become a part of me the way The Shins have. Have you ever loaded your favorite band into a search engine hoping to find something comparable? If you have, you have probably been disappointed. Despite advances in recommendation engines like the ones used by Amazon and iTunes, it is still really hard to find great music.
The idea of recommendation engines is a wonderful concept. Netflix used to do a pretty descent job of recommending movies for me based on my rankings of past rentals. Unfortunately, after a couple years of Netflix it has gotten to the point where all the obvious recommendations have been exhausted. All that remains are the 3.5 star options. A recommendation of 3.5 stars is pretty much saying, “you might like this one, but don’t blame me if you give it 2 stars.” Thanks, for nothing Netflix. So I watch these 3.5 star movies hoping to find the gems and occasionally I find one.
A similar thing happens with music recommendation engines like Amazon and iTunes. Since I have a pretty large music library I am not interested in recommendations that are more mainstream, I am looking for the rare gems that I have never heard of before. If you tell Amazon that you like The Shins it will give you suggestions that point you in two dead end directions: either deeper into The Shins discography (which I already own), or toward more successful better selling musicians. Since I already own (or don’t care for) the albums they suggest, Amazon can’t make a single good recommendation for me. For example, Amazon will suggest Arcade Fire, The Postal Service, and maybe Death Cab for Cutie. Good bands to be sure, but you could get this same advice by consulting the top sellers at Target. Amazon’s goal is clear and the strategy is surely effective: the purpose of their recommendations is to sell as much as possible. They point consumers at the most popular options because they know they can sell more of those products more easily. This is bad news for a serious music treasure hunter.
So after you have exhausted the surface level recommendations of Netflix/iTunes/Amazon, how do you uncover great new music or movies? The only place to turn is to the people with similar tastes as you who also have a much deeper catalog of experience. If you are lucky enough to know someone like this, they might recommend lesser known artists like Great Lake Swimmers, Rogue Wave, or Nada Surf if you tell him/her that you love the Shins. And because this recommendation come from a trusted source you are more likely to take a risk on these “unknown” options because you respect this person’s opinion. Unfortunately, we don’t all have a friend like that.
The next best source is to go is online. There are so many music blogs out there that you should be able to find someone out there that shares your tastes. This person’s passionate praise and revelatory rants will be an amazingly more accurate recommendation engine than any automated system in existence. But how do you find the right music blog? That’s a tough question.
The best advice I can give you is to plug a band that you really like into Hype Machine. This will generate a list of music blogs that have posted music by this artist. Follow the links one at a time and spend some time surfing the various sites you land on. Chances are you will stumble upon some blogs with similar taste to you. Add these sites to your RSS reader and start following them. After you have followed the blogs for a while you can keep the good one’s and weed out the rest. Lather, rinse, and repeat.
With the end of the decade in sight I have enjoyed browsing the best-of-the-decade lists that are starting to circulate. I love discovering a new album that sends me down a new vein of musical exploration. Unfortunately, most of the lists contain largely the same albums, just with the rankings slightly jockeyed around. The exception came earlier this week when I stumbled upon a really great list from a music blog called RawkBlog. David Greenward ranks the top 100 albums of the 2000s and the list is amazing not because of the order, but because he has the guts to pick the albums that meant the most to him. There are so many albums on his list that I haven’t heard of that I feel like I have discovered a goldmine. Unlike Amazon where you get pushed to the bestsellers, a great music blog takes you deep down the rabbit hole.
I suppose the magic of RawkBlog’s list comes from the fact that he has similar taste as me. He describes his tastes like this: “I like acoustic guitars, scrawny dudes and odd voices; songs about girls; songs; girls; cymbal-heavy percussion; major 7th chords; harmonies; emotions; dynamic range; the production style of Jim O’Rourke; the early 1970s; the late 1990s.” I think I may have found my musical soul mate.
Perhaps someday the automated recommendation engines will improve to the point that they can make deep suggestions as well as the obvious, but for now, the blogs are the best place to discover new music. Even if the computers advance to that point, the blog will still win out because it is personal. And that’s really where the joy of music comes from – sharing the experience with people like us.
