Pandora isn't designed to help people find known items, like Ron
Carter recordings (you can already do that on Amazon, iTunes, etc).
Rather, it's there to help people discover new music that they might
like, based upon known items. Think about it less like using a
library catalog, and more like browsing the library stacks.
Pandora's purpose is to say "here's some other stuff that's similar
to what you already know you like." And you couldn't do *that* very
well with MARC records alone.
Cody Hennesy
California College of the Arts
On Jan 25, 02008, at 10:13 AM, Charles Ledvina wrote:
> Greetings friends:
>
> After waiting a long time for the flash to load over a T1
> connection, I
> felt like I had no control over what I was listening to. I
> searched for
> jazz bassist Ron Carter-- who's on over 2000 recordings-- and got two
> results with him on it. Subsequent results not being related to to
> R.C.
> at all-- other than they were jazz recordings. I would sooner have a
> list of his works which could be sorted by recording date or main
> author
> (session leader). I suppose something like this will suffice for
> folks
> who don't mind the quality of the results as long as they get results.
> It is a cool concept and just think how accurate the output would have
> been had they used MARC records...
>
> Later,
> Charles Ledvina
>
> Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
>> To see how another way the description of content coupled with a
>> easy-
>> to-use interface can be implemented on the Web, give a go at a music
>> site called Pandora*:
>>
>> http://www.pandora.com/
>>
>> Apparently a number of a years ago a few music buffs got together and
>> started describing recorded music this way, that way, and every which
>> way but loose using about 400 distinct characteristics (blues,
>> guitar, acoustic, solo, rhythmically challenging, etc.). They didn't
>> do it all by hand. They had some help from computing techniques.
>>
>> They then created an Flash interface to the collection. It lets you
>> enter a song or artist you like. It finds the songs and addresses the
>> issue, "Find me more like this one" to create "radio stations". It is
>> amazingly accurate. Users can then give thumbs up or down votes for
>> the music it recommends. You can write reviews, blogs, and see what
>> your friends have played.
>>
>> Naturally I looked at the thing through my Librarian Glasses. We
>> describe things this way, that way, and the other way too. We have
>> many more than 400 distinct characteristics. What we haven't done is:
>>
>> 1) exploited computing techniques to "catalog" bunches o' stuff
>> 2) integrated social networking functionality into our system
>> 3) presented our tools complete with "bling"
>>
>> Increasingly these sorts of features make for useful and widely used
>> systems. I believe we have something to learn here.
>>
>> * Thanks to Ralph LeVan who invited me to use Pandora via Facebook.
>>
>> --
>> Eric Lease Morgan
>> University Libraries of Notre Dame
Received on Fri Jan 25 2008 - 14:02:13 EST