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Your taste can(not) be reduced to an algorithm

Last week brought the news of the relaunch of Peter Gabriel’s TheFilter.com, a service that vows to ‘filter all online media habits… and offer advice about all of their entertainment and information options.’

This got me thinking about what I like…

With sites like TheFilter, Pandora, Last.fm, Myspace, TheSixtyOne, Virb, Mog and FameCast all vying to be the number one purveyor of the things you like, in the end, what’s the point? If the things you like are the same things everybody else likes, won’t all the sites end up looking the same? And if you tend to like things that aren’t as popular with other people, it’s all just a vain effort.

I Haven’t Heard Of Your Band, Nor Do I Want To

I have accounts at MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pandora, Virb, Muxtape, TheSixtyOne, and many more that I probably forgot about a day after signing up. There is 1 band that I discovered directly from any of them (and it was Pandora). That band is Architecture in Helsinki, and they’re awesome. But think about that - every friend request from some shitty metal band, every deep cut on my Postal Service Pandora channel, every Tumblr post featuring some live video of some band - they’re all pointless.

I can’t stand that Pandora puts a limit on how many tracks I can skip (I know, it’s not their fault, but it still cripples the service they’re trying to offer).

I don’t listen to bands on MySpace because, chances are, they’re not very good, and I don’t have the will or patience to pull weeds.

Coincidentally, if you put any stock in the number of plays a band has, you’re being seriously snookered. Wired is reporting that TuneBoom Pro has been making money off of major labels by artificially inflating the play counts of artists, to the tune of $747 per every 300K plays. Payola for the social-networking set, and it’s absolutely meaningless.

Is My Time More Valuable Than Your Music?

I get that I’m not normal - I don’t have the same knowledge, or appetite, or technical savvy of the “average joe” - but I am pretty similar to the average Idolator commenter, or Tumblr user. Are there enough of us to create revenue for every single “music recommendation” start-up that cons a venture capitalist (whether CEO’d by Jakob Lodwick or not), or are we all getting a little sick of it as well?

Personally I’m torn, because while I get tired of waiting for the next big thing, my job requires that I be at least somewhat familiar with the current landscape, both musical and technical. I sign up for accounts, receive the invariable underwhelm-ment, and never visit again.

Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe we expect something that a web page could never deliver. The MySpace and Facebook experiences, say what you will about them, but they are what they are because of the time spent developing their respective environments. Pandora is what it is because of the time spent teaching it who you are, and frankly, I just don’t want to invest more of my time. I already waste too much time with Peel.

Peel, if you’re not familiar, is basically an aggregator for music blogs - a sort of software Hype Machine. It scans all of the blogs you’re following and looks for any new MP3s at the site, which you can then preview and download. Great, right? Well, there are currently 383 songs I have yet to listen to… since yesterday.

The Only Filter Worth a Damn is You

The fact is, there will always be more bad music than good, and by extension, more songs you don’t want to listen to on whatever music recommendation site you use than song you do. Furthermore, the fact that I like “Sunday Bloody Sunday” doesn’t mean I’m willing to sit through Zooropa, and the fact the I enjoy Bright Eyes doesn’t mean I’ll dig just any guy with a shitty voice and guitar. The intangibles in human taste are what make everybody’s different, and are why I can’t believe anyone can write a line of code that accurately deciphers them. The only filter I trust is me, and I just don’t have the mojo to keep up. [ms]