I like this. In the new beta version of Last.fm, you can now share different playlists with others via an embedded Flash player, like this: That playlist is my ‘loved tracks’ on Last.fm, but you can also hear all the artists and tracks I’ve tagged as ‘french’ or those any of my other most frequently […]
Radio
BBC Music web resources updated and integrated
It’s been a long time (2.5 years) since I wrote much about the BBC’s online music resources. Though I still use these resources fairly frequently, I don’t always do so particularly attentively (if you know what I mean), so I don’t know if the changes I noticed today are very recent or months old. Previously […]
UK survey of digital music and discovery
I’m posting here a duplicate of something that first appeared on my Net, Blogs and Rock’n’Roll book blog, just as a reminder to regular readers that, if postings here appear to be thin on the ground, it’s worth checking there as well. What I’d like to do is provide an RSS feed for the two […]
Spoofing music recommendation services and personalised radio
Music recommendation services and personalised radio stations like Last.FM depend on tracking the behaviour and preferences of their users, and building personal profiles on the basis of this. So what happens if the data you feed into these services isn’t a human’s preferences, but something else, like the programming of a traditional radio station or […]
Satellite and internet radio recording: ‘could’ versus ‘should’
After nearly three years of blogging, I’m beginning to appreciate one of the ways it keeps you honest: your past projections and predictions are still there to haunt you when (to mix metaphors) the chickens come home to roost. I don’t think what I wrote about ‘martini media’ one or two years ago was wrong […]
Music recommendation data spread about
Having written last month about Pandora apparently opening up, and having drawn comparisons with Last.fm, two music services have licensed some of the Last.fm data to add recommendations to their sites. Download store and magazine site TuneTribe.com is perhaps the less interesting example. Their home page now has a search facility “powered by Last.fm”. Provided […]
Musicube sharing of BBC listening profiles
Through Radio 1, the BBC has introduced a Flash interface to its on-demand ‘listen again’ feature, which enables listeners both to personalise the user interface they use to access radio programmes, and to share this interface with their friends. My personal ‘musicube’ is shown below. The elements I got to specify are the genres included […]
Is Pandora opening up?
There’s an interesting press release about Pandora and Friendster hooking up together to bring a social dimension to Pandora’s ‘personal radio stations’. (The press release currently appears on Friendster’s site, but not on Pandora’s — not sure if there’s any significance in that.) Bringing Friendster and Pandora together takes the experience to another level: Friendster […]
Is the dust settling on podcasting?
Is it just me or are all the bubbles in the podcasting lather turning into a thin layer of slightly manky detergent on the surface of internet pond life? There was a spell last year, after iTunes first included podcast subscriptions, where the response to everything seemed to be “The solution is to start podcasting […]
Online radio revisited and updated
It’s almost two years since I argued here that online radio is the model for listening to music in the future. I know there aren’t many who mark this anniversary as a national holiday, but to me it felt like a point where several things clicked into place in my mind. There’s a fascinating article […]