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Related Links

There are a number of other websites which analyze the music recommendation services I have discussed and expand upon the general issues with music discovery presented here.

In late May 2006, Pitchfork Media ran a featured article by Chris Dahlen entitled Better Than We Know Ourselves. In this article, Dahlen revisits the history of music recommendation and cites a number of past, present, and future personalized music recommendation services. These services include Ringo, Last.fm, Pandora, MusicIP, Magnatune, Audiobaba, and The Echo Nest. The article studies these sites from a historical perspective, analyzing their pros and cons and shedding light on the direction in which personalized music recommendation is heading. Here is the article.

Also in late May 2006, ExtremeTech ran an article by Jeremy Atkinson entitled Free Music Recommendation Services. The article analyzed and rated eight free music recommendation sites based on five factors: navigation and usability, library, media, community, and quality and quantity of recommendations. The eight sites reviewed were MusicStrands (Rating: 8), LivePlasma (7), Upto11 (7), Audiri (8), Pandora (9), Mercora (7), LAUNCHcast (5), and Last.fm (9). Last.fm was singled out as ExtremeTech approved, due to its streaming radio player, multitude of genres and tags, huge community, vast number of recommendations, preview albums, artist information, and easy navigation. Here is the article.

A third relevant website is a blog written by Paul Lamere entitled Music, Speech, and Java. In this blog, he highlights various developments in the world of digital music, and specifically personalized music recommendation. This site was valuable in teaching me about some of the newest, most cutting-edge trends and topics in digital music discovery. Here is the link.

Finally, for those who truly want to stay on the cutting edge, the website for the The International Conferences on Music Information Retrieval and Related Activities (ISMIR) will connect you to hundreds of articles about various topics related to music information. The conferences are held each year in September or October, and the next is scheduled for October 8-12, 2006 in Victoria, Canada. To quote the website: "The annual ISMIR Conference is the first established international forum for those involved in work on accessing digital musical materials. It reflects the tremendous growth of music-related data available either locally or remotely and the consequent need to search this content and retrieve music and musical information efficiently and effectively." The articles are highly academic and in-depth, and cover a wide range of topics related to music information retrieval. Here is the link.