Sites tap into social networks for music discovery
Several new online services have emerged with their own takes on digital music discovery.
These services take the form of social networking sites, music blogs, search engines and more. They are largely a response to the perceived lack of quality recommendation tools on the larger digital music services such as iTunes, Yahoo and AOL.
“The iTunes store is not a discovery tool,” says David Hyman, CEO of MOG, one of the notable newcomers.
Launched June 20, MOG is a social networking site designed to give music fans a forum to express their musical interests and find others with a similar bent. Whereas MySpace member profiles can include virtually anything, MOG profiles are focused on the users’ musical inclinations — favorite artists, albums, concerts, etc.
According to Hyman, former CEO of music recognition firm Gracenote, the goal is to bring word-of-mouth music recommendations to the digital realm.
“Where do most of my music decisions come from?” he says. “It’s my friends. Trusted voices.”
Most algorithm-based recommendation engines make suggestions based on similar genres or purchases. But these are not always accurate. Just because a user once listened to a song by Kanye West does not mean he will also like Ice Cube, even though they are both hip-hop acts.
LIBRARY SAMPLES
Instead, MOG reads the music files stored on users’ hard drives and analyzes which have been played the most, on the computer or a portable MP3 player. It then posts this information in users’ profiles. Members can then examine not only the contents of their friends’ music libraries, but also what they have been listening to lately.
Here is where the discovery part comes in: Members can sample 30-second clips of each song. Soon, MOG will incorporate links to the free trial versions of Rhapsody and
Napster for the full song as well.
Another music discovery service growing in popularity is Pandora.com. Visitors to the site submit a song they like, and the service will build an entire playlist of similar music.
But rather than link songs based on genre or user recommendations, the service relies on the Music Genome Project, a system built by dozens of musicians and music analysts who listen to every song and create a profile for each tune based on 400 musical attributes. These profiles are then organized into a database, which provides the recommendations based on matching profiles.
Despite the ability to expose new music, neither service operates a digital store. Instead they link to iTunes or Amazon and take a small cut of any resulting sale.
For these services, ad sales provide the primary revenue stream. While selling music could result in additional revenue, MOG’s Hyman says the thin profit margins are simply not worth the effort.
“You can be a much bigger company today with an ad-based model than you can with a sales model,” he says.
Digital music services should hope that such sites do not eventually develop their own stores. A May report by Jupiter Research analyst David Card found that even though music services like AOL and Yahoo have such social networking features, MySpace is by far the most effective channel for promoting music.
Right now the main impediment preventing MySpace from launching a serious challenge to iTunes is that it can’t sell music compatible with the iPod.
Reuters/Billboard
