The Third Leg

matt-kiser:

We like to talk about “social music” as it pertains to music shared with our friends across social networks. Spotify and Rdio’s integration into Facebook being the obvious example of social music. But, that’s not social music. Nor is Facebook’s “Listen with” feature. Even Turntable.fm for all it’s interestingness is close, but not an actual social experience. 

This is social music:

Imagine a venn diagram. In one circle is music I like. In the other circle is music a friend likes. The overlap is the sweet spot where music crosses over from being an individual experience to music as a social one. In the vastness of the canon of recorded music, this is the spot at which the two of us intersect — this is where our musical compatibility and relationship begins. That’s powerful knowledge. Now take that concept further and extend it to music recommendations: music you like that your friend might also like. 

Think about it for a second: we don’t actually know what our friends will like. Do you really have a good answer to “what should I listen to?” for every single one of your friends? I’m an outlier and spend an extraordinary amount of time listening to music, and as good as I am at recommending it, my success rate is pitifully low. A “normal” person would have an even lower success rate. 

The ability to make recommendations “smart” and personalized on a person-to-person level is what I love about working at the intersection of music, media, and technology. 

If we could take this concept of social music and apply it to entire friends circles the results would be incredibly interesting since it would highlight the natural affinity groups centered around particular artists and genres, and further reveal the sub-sub-groups we form when we listen to music communally. Which, in reality, is what being social is about. 

Agreed. So what we’re talking about, then, is a recommendation engine that is person-focused, in the sense that it chooses correlations based on a much broader set of data than, simply, “this guy has been listening to a lot of Nickelback lately,” right? By learning who I am, who I’m friends with, and where my tastes intersect with my friends’, it builds a new set of potential likes?

As a marketer of music, I am, of course, fascinated and excited by the prospect of true recommendations. But as a music fan, when I read the term “social music,” I think about a shared musical experience. Like sitting around the record player. Here’s where I think TT.fm has a lot of (partially realized) promise…