A recent set of technologies have been devised to help websites learn
about their users and take intelligent actions accordingly. These
technologies, called “recommendation engines” or “collaborative
filtering,” examine a user’s past viewing habits and compare them with
other users who have similar interests. If your interests were found
to parallel another group of users, then the system could start making
suggestions: suppose you normally never listened to any country music,
but you liked bands X, Y, and Z, a whole lot. Now if a whole bunch of
other people who don’t normally like country and also like X, Y, and Z
suddenly all are listening to (and loving) this one country band, the
system might suggest it to you and be relatively confident that you’ll
like it.
This technology is neither brand new or obscure: Amazon.com uses it
extensively on their website to recommend books to buyers. Indeed,
Firefly applied recommendation engine technology to CD purchases on
the web many years ago. Unfortunately for them, they took too long to
license out their technology (they wanted to be the only people on the
‘Net with that technology) and were subsequently steamrolled over as
companies like Net Perceptions came to market swiftly with
sophisticated engines. Microsoft quietly picked Firefly off with what
was rumored to be a humiliatingly cheap acquisition.
But the fact that no online digital music providers have yet to openly
embrace this technology seems surprising to me: this technology is
absolutely key to the success of online audio. Why? Because new
publishing and distribution infrastructures will make it very easy for
artists to publish profusely on the web. Like the 500-channel
television, the diversity of content is appreciated, but the sheer
quantity of music on the Net could prove so overwhelming as to
discourage listeners (and potential buyers) from seeking out the music
they would enjoy. Techie geeks refer to this as “the signal-to-noise
ratio problem:” if you only hear one band you like (signal) for every
twenty you don’t (noise), you won’t want to spend your time poking
around for that one band.
The record industry had a fairly effective technique for increasing
the signal-to-noise ratio for music: the original point of those
practicing A&R, or “Artists and Repertoire,” at record labels was to
seek out the good bands that the majority of the population would
enjoy. But the Internet offers us what no A&R man could – the
potential for individuals to have access to the bands they love both
big and small, from all around the world. Recommendation engines make
this possible, and reduce the signal-to-noise ratio by presenting
music that, based on your prior listening tastes, you’re likely to
enjoy.
Ultimately, this obviates A&R: once somebody has heard a band that she
deems pleasant to listen to, it will be recommended to those of
similar taste – if they like it, it may get recommended to their
friends, etc. In this way, the popularity of music is decided on more
by the taste of the people than the marketing push of a major label. A
small folk artist in Oklahoma could become vastly popular in Northern
India; who knows? Everybody benefits from this technology: artists,
who get better exposure; consumers, who hear more music that they
enjoy; and sites, which have more satisfied customers than before.
To date, people have argued that online audio sites have not yet
adopted this technology because of a paucity of content: when there
are only 15 artists on a site, a recommendation engine is hardly
appropriate. But with the rising tide of acceptance of online
distribution, floods of artists have been flocking to centralized
music portals like eMusic, MP3.Com, and Audio Explosion. This newfound
influx has left the sites unable to provide tasteful experiences for
their users, leaving them instead awash in a flow of “exotic” (to
phrase it kindly) amateur music from around the world. They have
reached the size and maturity to move to collaborative filtering.
And move they must: the stakes are large in this brave new world and
the listeners plentiful. The winners will quickly adopt and manage
these new technologies, and those less nimble will be left wondering
why more people didn’t come listen to their 15,000 artists.