On-line social network systems and user-curated music services have created a new way for individuals to share their thoughts, their favorite music, their random travels. But they’ve also created something else — a trail of evidence about what people actually choose, not just what they say they like. And any respectable market researcher will tell you the absolute value of observing actual choice over stated preference.
Case in point: iTunes. Those of us who use the software to burn or buy our music libraries have created a personal archive of stuff we like. If we really like an artist, we’ll have multiple songs from them. If our tastes tend to cluster in certain genres, the archive will provide direct evidence of that, as well. Even if we’re all over the map, there are patterns and connections within our aggregate choices ripe with opportunity for discovery.
Another case in point: Pandora. The on-line music service allows its registered users to build customized ”radio stations” that play only artists ”like” the requested artists. Further, they allow the user to craft and hone those stations over time by flagging songs that suit them, and downgrading songs that don’t.
As a result, through two software services, I don’t have to tell you who I like. You can actually observe the aggregated evidence of my music choices. And if you offer me a service that can get me more of what I’m passionate about, I’m happy to share that evidence with you.
Which brings us to systems like SonicLiving, a live concert database that draws on my iTunes library and Pandora radio stations to suggest upcoming shows in my town. In a few short steps, the system flagged three upcoming concerts by favorite artists that I didn’t know about (because I honestly wasn’t looking). Then it let me flag my interest in those shows, share that interest with all my Facebook friends through its Facebook application, and buy tickets if and when I felt like it.
Instead of me diving into the mass of options in my local paper, on Ticketmaster, or in other oceans of random listings, SonicLiving draws on the choices I’ve already made to curate opportunities for me.
This particular system lacks a comprehensive events database (as does the larger world). But it holds enough events to immediately serve its purpose. More importantly, it shows what’s possible in a world of on-line social systems and user-influenced web services. There are new tidal waves of audience preferences and passions out there — in playlists, blog posts, user-generated music reviews, share-this-with-a-friend networks, and the like. The artful manager will be finding strategic places to ride those waves.
Although these technologies are quite innovative and convenient, they disconnect audiences from experiencing the artist(s) actual performances. We all know listening to a track on our mp3 player in our car or while walking to class is the norm, but it is a completely different experience to see a live performance by an artist. The same applies to viewing images of art online versus taking a trip to a museum to view the exhibits in person. This generation is extremely reliant on the internet to experience all forms of art, rather than actually putting forth effort to go to a local museum to view an art gallery or a performing arts center for a concert.
Technology is but a tool, and all depends on how it’s used, of course.
The problem as always is when, through lack of education or experience, or sheer laziness, ignorance, or arrogance (thinking anyone who doesn’t use them is a luddite or unimportant) one mistakes the tool for the thing or goal itself. This is already evidenced in our culture.
In anticipation of possible assumptions being made about me, I do use the tools you mention, and many tools available on or through the Internet, including social networking — and have been an early adopter of many.
But I am judicious in their use, and understand that they represent merely several of many roads I can take to achieve my artistic, educational, or communicative goals. Not everyone operates from that same standpoint.
Some unintended unhappy consequences of touting the tools you mention here are:
1) Reinforcing to the point of ossification one’s predicated tastes in music, art, etc.
2) Opening up the inevitable door to manipulation of the markets — by those who control or usurp the technology
3) Encouraging more of the “group think” tendencies already evident in our society, while fostering a false sense of personal empowerment in the individual
(This troubles me a great deal as an educator.)
4) More things I haven’t thought of yet, since I’ve only had one cup of coffee so far and I need to get going on my day 😀
These “tools” drive me nuts. Generally because they ossify one’s musical tastes – reinforcing what one says one “likes” rather than working to expose one to the incredible variety of music that is out there. It never occurred to the designers of these “tools” (or should I say the “tools” that designed these tools) that some of us (and I think folks who’s musical tastes emerge from a foundation of classical training are probably the archetype of this) are enormously open to all kinds of music. Just because I say I “like” Palestrina, doesn’t mean I don’t “like” Stockhausen or Stephen Foster or Sophe Lux or Kanye West. Or maybe the “tools” that designed these “tools” are so bigoted in their musical tastes (mostly non-classical and happily sliced and diced into designations like Alt-Pop-Garage-White Rap-Album Rock, YECH!) that they can’t imagine that the the world is not peopled with similar musical bigots.
But I digress….
I-Tunes put me off from the start because
1. you have to download their software which then starts to behave like it really is a virus,
2. it keeps calling a movement of a Bruckner Symphony a “song” which borders on the sublimely ridiculous,
3. it can’t seem to understand the difference between a Composer, Composition Title, Movement Title, Soloist, Conductor, Performing Group, etc; and that all of these are important to know!
Pandora has put me off because it seems incapable of recognizing that just because I like one period of classical music, I might enjoy something from another.
I’ve always wondered why these services never reached out to the classical music community and hired folks who know something about the genre to help set up and program the services.
Thanks all for the thoughtful comments. I’ll admit that I’m neutral on whether these music sharing and aggregation services are good or evil. I think they exist, and that they increasingly will become arbiters and gatekeepers of aesthetic experience. We can’t stop it, but we can engage the challenge as creative professionals.
There seems to be an underlying assumption in some of the comments here that music-sharing systems tend to LIMIT the range of engagement of their users (focusing on artists or eras that the listener claims to like). However, you could also argue the opposite. Pandora, for example, has introduced me to artists I would have never discovered by radio, by iTunes, or by other traditional means. They may have qualities similar to the artists I already know I like, but they are different artists. The programming engine behind Pandora threw them into the mix. And then SonicLiving can let me know when they would be performing near me, so I could go experience them live.
I agree that there are generations of improvements still necessary to make these curatorial engines work with more elegance, nuance, and diversity of sound (perhaps throwing in a radically different artist among the same old same old). But those of us with a passion for diverse artistic voices and ensuring a rich and healthy cultural ecology should be diving in to play a part in that development, not standing off to the side, or hovering above it.
Personnally, while I find it, at times, very nice to have my technology think for me it also makes me rather unneasy to know that all that information about my pesonal preferences is just floating around out there. Even if it is just my music choices. My question regarding the whole thing is who is really benefitting from this and what information regarding my preferences are being sold to markets, stores, research companies, etc. So while these sites and programs are nice and helpful is there anything we should be concerned about as far as privacy goes?