Everyone loves finding new music, films or books. Typically, authors and artists are recommended to us by friends and family who share our taste in literature, cinema or music. These days, however, we don’t even have to leave our homes to get advice on what to listen to or read – the Internet is at hand.
Inline selectors recommend music, books and movies on the basis of works you already like. The idea is that if you enjoy, say, Bob Dylan, you might be interested in other music from that time or in folk or protest singers. Most of these websites offer clips, previews or even full versions of material you might like. And if you don’t like the recommendation, another that may be suitable is not far away.
Listen up
Amazon has long featured recommendations for its users. The Page You Made section lists products that the website thinks might be of interest to users based on items they have browsed or purchased recently Itunes offers a similar service, but the suggestions in its Just For You section are built only on previous purchases from the Itunes Music Store.
Pandora is one of two examples of a new kind of personalised online radio station. Once registered, you can create up to 100 radio stations, all based on your choice of artists and songs. Along with its rival, Last FM, they are the next step of a taste-shaping revolution.
Once the Last FM and Pandora subscriber has named their favourite artist or song, each site selects its recommended tracks in slightly different ways. Last FM’s playlist is based on feedback from other subscribers, while Pandora takes a more technical approach, grouping songs of similar musical qualities.
We started our search with soul legend Stevie Wonder. On Pandora’s website, a personal radio station is created based on song titles or artists that the user has entered. For example, we entered ‘Knocks me off my feet’ by Stevie Wonder, and one of the results was Stay Gold, also by Stevie. We were then informed it has ‘classic soul qualities, meandering melodic phrasing, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation…’. Not usually defining ourselves as having a love of meandering melodic phrasing, it was certainly an education. This service is available in two forms – free or a subscription-based. The content is identical, but the free version carries advertising. If you can’t stand ads being played in between tunes, then it’s worth considering the $36 for an annual subscription.
Express yourself
Last FM works in a similar way to Pandora – it creates personal music profiles and from them makes recommendations, matches you up with people who like similar music, and generates custom radio stations for each user.
This site also proved to broaden our musical horizons. Entering our soul legend in the search box, we were presented with a list of artists that other Stevie Wonder fans like. Artists such as Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield and Billie Holiday all showed up, but, surprisingly, bands such as 1980s rockers Def Leppard and indie band Radiohead appeared too.
There is an inherent problem with both these sites, however; they obviously know their onions but have no way of catering for the fickleness of musical taste. Some searches are too broad. An interest in The Beatles is obviously deemed akin to an interest in nothing less than popular music. Because we like 1990s rockers The Pixies, Last FM classed us as an old-school indie kid who only wants to hear Pavement and Sonic Youth. Likewise, Pandora has no way of knowing that we can’t stand David Gray, so his ubiquity can be annoying.
You can’t record music from these sites because most of the material is under copyright. On Last FM, users can only download songs that their collaborating labels have enabled for free download. The rest of the music is only streamed, and there is currently no pay-for-download service. If you find a new song that you really like using Pandora, you can’t buy it directly from the site – but there are handy links to both Amazon and Itunes from where you can purchase it.
Words and pictures
Liveplasma.com does pretty much the same as the sites already mentioned, with the added extra of movies and directors thrown in for film buffs. The data is grouped according to style, interests, era and connections between the performers. The closer the search results are to the main artist or actor, the better the chance that you will like it. However, Liveplasma does not feature any audio or video content – it is purely a service for discovering new names. We would have appreciated little snippets of songs, if nothing else, to be able to hear what the artists sounded like.
If music is not your thing, Whatshouldireadnext.com works in the same way as the music selection sites, but with literary works instead of music. We’ve discovered some new favourites by using this site, but a slight drawback is that users need to enter a specific book by an author before any results are displayed. Entering an author will only trigger a response asking if a suggested title is what was requested. But still, the results are of good quality with a multitude of titles similar to the style of the author entered. In some cases, especially with non-English authors, results seem to flag up all kinds of non-English titles, without any particular similarities to the suggested author.
Suits you, sir
Clearly, there is some fine-tuning to be done, and more user-feedback can only make them better. But still, Pandora and Last FM provide radio where you can skip tracks that you dislike. There will be no bad jokes from desperate DJs, and no adverts – just tunes, suited to your taste. For music fans, this is a truly luxurious age.
Library/record shop
If you prefer personal recommendations to those your computer can churn out for you, why not pop down to your local library or record shop? Librarians and other experts in their fields have years and years of experience about books and music and will be able to suggest new authors and bands based on your preferences. They can consult both their personal taste, what they have read or listened to themselves, or search relevant databases for similar titles.
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