I don’t know if this thing actually works, whether it will become the next big thing, or whether it is simply just another load of hype. It certainly looks interesting and do-able. What I do know is that this is the kind of thing we need here in Europe, and much, much more of it. I also know that half of these people are working just round the corner from me, here on the outskirts of Barcelona.
A Spanish Internet start-up that tracks how people listen to music on computers and other devices hopes to profit from enhancing the success of the online music business, its chairman said on Tuesday.
MusicStrands aims to grow by using its exclusive new technology to delve into listeners’ computers, mobile phones or i-Pods to help determine their preferences, not just what they purchase, and make recommendations. “You can have fairly crude forms of recommendation technology, which is just if someone picks A then you recommend B,” Chairman Derek Reisfield told Reuters. “We are going to the next level. We can personalize the recommendation.
Whilst we are on internet topics, this is what I am anxiously waiting for, cheap mobile broadband, and whilst we are on Spain, this promises to be hilarious.
Hilarious indeed.
The PP may not realize that it has fellow-travelers on the extreme ‘queer’ left. A couple of weeks ago, some folks calling themselves ‘Queeruption’ held an anti-capitalist (and anti-marriage) demo in the ‘Gayxample’ that ended in the arrests of several protestors. One of the graffiti I saw read, ‘Better Dead than Married.’ Another one, spray-painted on an ad hoarding, was ‘Queers Against Everything.’
They even went so far as to raid a gay hotel, the Hotel Axel. This action seemed a bit extreme to me, but after checking some of the prices on the merchandise in the hotel boutique (e.g. a Sonia Rykiel polo shirt for ?230) I have to wonder whether they might have had a legitimate point.
Who in their right mind would let some company poke around their hard drives and mobil devices to see what they are songs they are listening to?
Hmm, sounds kinda like an evil commercial versions of audioscrobbler: http://www.audioscrobbler.com/
Without the iPod, Amazon has been doing this for the past ten years or so.
“Amazon has been doing this for the past ten years or so.”
Yes, I was thinking about that, which is why it is surprising that no one has actually got down and done this before, it’s a kind of ‘collaborative filtering’ isn’t it? (Mind you, I doubt even amazon have been doing it for *ten* years). Doesn’t time fly on the internet?
Also, I guess this is the point about having the former Amazon chief scientist.
The real issue is that you need more than a lot of bright people to be successful in something like this. You need a lot of people to take up what you invent and use it. Often successful ‘inventions’ are surprisingly simple.
I think the big issue about music (literature, films) is how you discover new things that you might like. With music (in my case) it has been the ‘trusted’ music shop, the radio, or ,of course ,cinema. When the new ‘sharing’ programmes came out, I found that the most interesting function was presisely the one that let you look in someone else’s hard drive (someone who liked *similar* music) to see what they had. This company seem to be simply applying AI algorithms to this issue.
‘Better Dead than Married.’
These would be the ‘anti-system’ people. This has a history. Back in the 1930’s anarchism was quite strong here, and there was an early anarchist feminist movement. They had the slogan – ni marit, ni amo, ni deu – which roughly translated runs (and you will remember that Spain was a deeply religious country at this time) “Neither husband, nor boss, nor god”. The people you mention may or may not realise this, but they seem to be following in well trodden footsteps.