sleepydisco.co.uk

25.1.07: Rediscovering last.fm

Confession: I don’t actively visit the last.fm site. My biggest gripe was always that the recommendations engine was always a bit so-so, and it didn’t really tell me much that I didn’t already know. I wanted directed discovery - something that could pick up on new trends, and new artists that would float my boat from the edges of the musical plains - and what I got was a not particularly musically clued up mate recommending me Arcade Fire, six months after Funeral topped the end of year polls.

It got me thinking about obscurity - and how much of a factor that plays in the general equation of what makes me interested in finding out more about a band. It’s not that I don’t like ‘popular’ music; nor do I desperately seek out unknown acts still playing gigs to three men and a dog. More that the chance is I will already have formed an opinion about whether I’m going to like an artist that I have already heard of - not necessarily heard - without last.fm’s help in doing so.

So I was chuffed to find that they seem to have updated their recommendations algorithms, and installed a feature to dynamically filter recommendations from ‘obscure’ to ‘popular’. It doesn’t really hint about how the recommendations have been sourced - but it’s incredibly impressive.

All I really need now is something to pick up on things that I might like that bear no real resemblance to my current music tastes. While there’s a definite place for recommendations based on similar tastes, the evolution of my musical palate has always happened by expanding into something completely different. So maybe that could be the next feature - a ‘different < -> similar’ slider to go alongside their shiny new obscurity one?