As the amount of competing forms of media continues to increase, and the time a consumer has available to devote to media consumption stays the same, the problem of how to discover new content becomes increasingly important. This problem reveals itself most prominently in music. Significant advances in technology concerning music creation, distribution and consumption have left consumers with the benefit and the curse of endless amounts of music from which to choose. Music discovery services and methods have recently come to the forefront of industry discussions in an effort to increase awareness and consumption of multitudes of music available to all consumers.
The recent developments in music discovery services prompts an analysis of the past methods and services used to locate new music. To begin, radio has always been the promotional wing of the music industry. In the 60’s and 70’s, besides the top 40, radio’s main function was to promote new artists and their music. Today, radio competes with many more forms of media causing them to cater to the lowest common denominator. Radio is no longer concerned with connecting users to a wide range of new artists and genres music. However, a study conducted by Bilboard in 2005, still contends that radio is the “primary source for learning about new music” for 48% of people. This came in “way above word of mouth, television, internet radio, retail music stores, satellite radio, online word of mouth, purchased CD’s, online music stores and file sharing.” This data clearly shows that there are issues concerning the discovery of new music because if radio is only playing a small portion of the music available, yet almost half of the music listening population uses radio as their primary source of music discovery, there must be a problem. Gone are the days of influential and trend setting DJs playing their favorite music on the radio, introducing new genres and artists to troves of listeners. Now it appears that the limited playlists of conglomerated radio are informing the music public, meaning a plethora of music is being ignored and underappreciated.
However, with bleak circumstances in the music discovery arena, comes great opportunity. The decline of radio as a reliable source of music discovery prompted the emergence of online music discovery services. This situation provided the perfect opportunity for companies like Pandora, and Last.fm. These services have brought new perspectives to the music discovery process and represent the beginnings of the future of music discovery.
Pandora’s unique structure and story begins with the Music Genome Project. Started in 2000, the music genome project boasts itself as the “most sophisticated taxonomy of music information ever collected.” Pandora uses the music analysis data provided by the Music Genome Project to recommend songs and artists to listeners based on musical elements. By cataloguing the “melody, harmony, instrumentation, vocals, rhythm, and lyrics.” Pandora can use this information to allow users to discover new music and artists similar to their search term. Last.fm operates a little differently from Pandora. Instead of relying on the Music Genome project, Last.fm recommends music for you to listen to by voluntarily downloading a program which spies on your music listening habits. The service is dependent on the fact that you listen to a lot of music on your computer, otherwise it will be unable to measure your habits and recommend properly. Both programs have a social network component to them, but Last.fm’s social networking component is more comprehensive and more pivotal to its recommendation service.
The trend in the past year or so in music discovery has been the inclusion and development of social networking components into music discovery services and the other way around. Sites like Facebook and MySpace have introduced music recommendation services and applications into their frameworks. This is an important innovation because now music discovery can be achieved in a community setting, which plays upon some of the greatest strengths the radio of the past had in regards to music discovery. This social framework allows for trendsetters and taste leaders to emerge as well as an easy solution for anyone to search and find new music. These music discovery services and methods are merely helping people sift through the massive amounts of music and content in an efficient and enriching manner.
Yet, even with the great innovations in music discovery in the past three years, people still aren’t utilizing the services in as overwhelmingly as fashion as one might think. However, this leaves room for improvements and enhancements to what is currently being offered. One depiction of the future of music discovery is through the development, creation and posting of playlists. Dave Kusek of Future Music explains in his March 2007 article that music retailers and distributors should look to playlists as the “way to guide listeners through catalogs of millions of songs.” While this phenomenon is catching on in subscription services, it won’t be long until it works its way into the web based music discovery systems and elsewhere.
Additionally, as people are collecting more and more music digitally, music discovery techniques should not only be created for discovering new music, but for rediscovering music within the massive digital catalogs that individual have collected and own. There is a huge opportunity for playlist generators and music analysis programs that will quickly organize music and help listeners rediscover music they haven’t listened to in a while.
The methods and services for music discovery have come a long way since the radio DJs of the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. The innovations in the past few years have created the beginnings of growingly important part of the music listening experience. Further development of the technologies and services could yield gains and increase music consumption across all demographics and help make the troves of music content readily accessible and listenable.
