Anthony Volodkin // Music Recommendation Systems
Anthony Volodkin
The Hype Machine’s founder Anthony Volodkin recently posted some fascinating tidbits from his SXSW panel discussion with Paul Lamere, director of developer community at The Echo Nest.
Author – Anthony Volodkin:
WHAT IF THERE IS NO DISCOVERY ALGORITHM?
Current music recommendation systems have tons of serious issues: they don’t properly incorporate long tail content, fail in offering anything close to serendipity, and get even more confused by divisive content (see the ratings for Napoleon Dynamite on Amazon for an example). Smart people with good funding have been working to solve all of these issues, but the progress seems limited at best. What if we are working to solve the wrong problem?
WHERE ARE WE TODAY?
Pandora’s popular music characteristic-based method offers listeners a “give me more of the same” experience. Last.fm’s social listening analysis leads you from one popular act to another with limited opportunity to stumble into the unknown as a by-product of attempting to filter noise and satisfy the greatest number of people possible with recommendations. Echonest’s hybrid recommender incorporates audio analysis, blog content and traditional collaborative filtering techniques for a seemingly promising mix, but the results have yet to be fully available in a significant consumer offering. These approaches are valuable if audience size (Pandora’s millions of listeners) and business acquisition prices ($280M for Last.fm) are considered, but their cultural impact & influence pales in comparison with destinations producing editorial, such as Pitchfork, select music magazines and music blogs.
TASTE IS IRRATIONAL
These issues exist because the ultimate nature of human taste is irrational and depends on factors impossible to capture with computer systems. Interpersonal relationships, social pressures, locales, context in which music is encountered, meaning that individuals assign to a music encounter (has a girl you liked ever introduced you to music you just happened to also like?) all make a huge difference in how people respond. Much of this happens outside of the clean social graph of Facebook or the neatly recorded playback logs of music sites. All of these factors affect each individual differently at various stages of their lives, further complicating things.
ACCEPT IRRATIONALITY
The way to drive genuine discoveries without a significant reliance on collaborative filtering or recommendation algorithms is to intelligently select and present information that captures the context of a particular piece of music and creates meaning for the person interacting with the system. Use computer systems to connect people, spotlight individual voices, then have voices and social connections define what music everyone interacts with.
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