OT? > the very feature that made such services as Spotify and Pandora so popular: a “songs like this” button
Just a personal view... I'm totally in the minority when it comes to this kind of thing. Obviously this new way for people to find music is going to become the way. Nothing can stop it.
but this feature to me is so anti-music... the way I think about music I really hate it. Its like a snake eating its tail.
For me expanding my ears into new areas is the key to long time musical enjoyment. Right now on my iPod I have The Stanley Brothers, NIN, Mechanical Music boxes, Duke Ellington, Gene Vincent, Gun Club, Sid Barret era Pink Floyd, Howlin' Wolf, Beethoven, Hovaness, Tito Puente, Beny Moré, Charlie Feathers, Humpe Humpe, Les Rita Mitsouko, Little Walter, Dandy Warhols, Joe Zawinul, Sun Ra, Herbie Hancock, Fletcher Henderson.
Some of the bands I'm listening to are in the evaluation stage like Parquet Court. Parquet Court is probably not going to fly with me because its not that unique. But most of them are progenitors of genre or pushing out of genre rather than polished imitations of progenitors.
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This recommendation thing might be described as the way the music business likes consumers to think. For example:
Finding great new music among the mountains of banal standardized music is hard. The music industry is really bad at doing it and they don't want consumers to be picky.
So if there is a new band that establishes a genre, for example Nirvana... tons of lesser musicians immediately form bands to mimic Nirvana. These bands are not creative, they polish the genre they mimic and dumb it down. But the record companies jump into sign them to make money off the people who Nirvana blew away. Then the new Grunge fans think the way to find great music is find more grunge mimic bands.
Boring.
Those are the bands Spotify and Pandora are going to recommend. Clone bands. You will not gain a horizon, you will gain horse blinders. But its a lot easier for the recording companies to sign the clones, advise them on the rules to sell records, and sell you on the lesser quality non creative mimic/clone bands than it is to find great new creative band that don't fit in a genre. Record companies understand demographics not music. Its one step above recommending tribute bands like Rain or Fab Four (Beatles) or Led ZepAgain. Pathetic.
Eventually you will become bored by the music because mimics are boring. You will stop buying music out of your comfort zone and probably stop buying music at all.
Great Music pushes you out of your comfort zone and challenges your assumptions and expands your ability to hear new and radically different types of sound.
This is why the recording industry has always concentrated on immature musicians and fans. They haven't heard much, therefor can be easily impressed and sold. Old people stop buying music, because they are no longer excited by it. |
