Discovering, sharing and experiencing music in the machine age
Interesting podcast with Lucas Gonze, founder of Webjay, on the evolution of music recommendation from a critic-based system to a machine-based one:
http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3655.html
Among other things, the conversation touches on whether it is possible for a non-human (e.g. a network, or series of algorithms) to curate recommend music in a meaningful way. The interviewer makes the claim that automated recommendation systems like Pandora seem too mechanical, and both agree that “the voice of the curator animates the playlist.”
In my mind, this debate has less to do with whether machines can make meaningful music recommendations, but whether a networked group of people–enabled through software, the social web, algorithms, etc–can serve this function. Pandora employs musicologists to create the connective tags between different pieces of music, Jango uses the networked effect of passive and active music ratings, as well as editorial content and other things, to do so.
We have been accustomed through history to see the role of the curator inhabited only by an individual; with the social web enabling the creation of “taste” networks of scale, there is no reason why this should continue to be so.
