Participation Literacy

About text:

Last.fm is the flagship product from the team that designed the Audioscrobbler system, a music engine based on a massive collection of Music Profiles. Each music profile belongs to one person, and describes their taste in music. Last.fm uses these music profiles to make personalized recommendations, match you up with people who like similar music, and generate custom radio stations for each person.

I have used a music service called Last.fm. It is a social, folksonomy, music application and radio. The first thing I did after having created an account was to install the plug-in for Itunes - which is the music player of my choice. I have my computer connected to the stereo so you could say that my stereo is an advanced music player containing all of my music. In Itunes, I installed the Last.fm plug-in. When I play something on my stereo (from the computer), Itunes’ plug-in sends the music to Last.fm’s Web site. When the music is received by Last.fm’s engine, their algorithms start to execute tasks like aggregating everything I play and building top-lists like: “Weekly top artists, Top artists overall, Top tracks overall”:

The screenshot above displays the top list on an old user of mine - my real profile is here. These lists are published on my profile page and they are public. It is also possible to tag music and from the tags reach other users with the same music taste. You can also reach other people if they listen to the same artists, and you can participate in communities with people who have the same music taste.

One night when I was visiting my Last.fm profile I clicked on a link to one of my neighbours. I understood that the CI machine had made this person my neighbour because of our mutual interest in the Swedish jazz-rock band Esbjorn Svensson Trio. When I saw this person’s top list I recognized some musicians from my own favorites, some not. I was a little bit curious when I saw that a group called Goldfrapp was in second place on the “Top Artists - Overall”. I know of that group, but I saw it as an electro trance group, played on the discothèques, and danced to by teenagers – not at all my taste. But had I really listened to their music or had I just formed an unfounded, uncontextualized view?

I went to the music store and bought the latest Goldfrapp album with the intention of really listening to it – and I did. I recognized the heavy sound, a perfect match to a high-quality stereo or headphones, and still it was the electro thing I expected, and yet… The more I listened, the more I liked it. But where was the connection? I was certain, there was no connection between E.S.T and Goldfrapp, I thought. It could be that this person’s wife or husband or children had listened to something, and the question was therefore out into the blue. And still, on my list Vivaldi is second, and is there really any relation between E.S.T and Vivaldi.

I could try to answer that by listening to another music project called Pandora. Pandora is driven by the Musical Genome Project:

Pandora about text:

For almost six years now, we have been hard at work on the Music Genome Project. It’s the most comprehensive analysis of music ever undertaken. Together our team of thirty musician-analysts have been listening to music, one song at a time, studying and collecting literally hundreds of musical details on every song. It takes 20-30 minutes per song to capture all of the little details that give each recording its magical sound - melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics … and more - close to 400 attributes! We continue this work every day to keep up with the incredible flow of great new music coming from studios, stadiums and garages around the country.

Pandora is the equivalent of the human genome project, but in music. The task they have before them is to describe music as rational parts, which together can create a whole, like musical DNA.

Pandora is a radio. It has no social functions. I can create my own radio station by naming an artist like E.S.T. The station then plays a lot of music I like, based on the structure of E.S.T’s songs, such as Jan Garbarek and Pat Methany. The problem is that I already listen to these artists. Pandora is excellent as an analysing machine, but it is predictable. When I listen to the radio station of Last.fm, it plays a lot of music I can hardly stand, but it seems like it learns and becomes better and better each time I listen to it. Last.fm is social software, a Web 2.0 service. It is participatory and gets better the more participants there are. Pandora is Web 1.0 when it is at its best. What I would like is something in between, something with the power to address both the music in itself and the connection between music listeners.

And finally to answer the question in the header: yes, there is a connection between Esbjorn Svensson Trio and Goldfrapp. This connection is me, and the person I got the unintended recommendation from, and probably a lot of other music listeners. I am the junction where the different music styles come together and form a whole.