Street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm ([info]tritium) wrote,
@ 2008-02-27 13:52:00
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What I listen to at work
last.fm is great. Just punch in your favorite artists, or download a plugin, and it'll give you a "custom radio station" that, because it uses collaborative filtering, is pretty good. I've found that the best work radio station is "similar artists to Animal Collective." (unless I'm feeling aggressive, in which case I pick McLusky.)




Enjoy!

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Thanks, Dave
(Anonymous)
2008-02-27 07:51 pm UTC (link)
This is great. Love, Mom

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Hey, it's my Mom, everyone! Hi, Mom!
[info]tritium
2008-02-27 09:08 pm UTC (link)
You'd think after thirty years, I'd have some idea of what you might or might not like. But, Mom, you continually surprise me.

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Re: Hey, it's my Mom, everyone! Hi, Mom!
(Anonymous)
2008-02-28 02:32 am UTC (link)
I put in Lucinda Williams. We all love her here.

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[info]lester22
2008-02-27 09:53 pm UTC (link)
Have you ever used Pandora? I love it so much more than last.fm.

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[info]tritium
2008-02-27 10:18 pm UTC (link)
I hate it. I think it does a terrible job -- they attempt to classify all music, and do recommendations based on that. These classifications make huge assumptions about the way the human mind works, something we in general have no clue about, and thus I find their recommendations are rarely worthwhile. For example, I told Pandora that I liked Blonde Redhead and Björk. Pandora concluded, "this person likes female vocalists!" and sent me Natalie Merchant. Wrong.

Last.fm, uses collaborative filtering: a class of algorithms that makes no assumption greater than "if two people like several of the same artist, they will probably have others in common as well." A pretty safe assumption, and it works pretty well.

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[info]lester22
2008-02-27 10:21 pm UTC (link)
I don't know algorithms from polyrhythms, but for whatever reason, Pandora gets me better than last.fm does. Maybe because I have such a diverse musical palette. I inputted about 30 different artists, ranging from Tchaikovsky to Dr. Dre. My only complaint is probably that they play too much of one genre in a row, but other than that, I don't really find that I dislike many of the songs they choose. I suppose it is an entirely subjective experience.

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