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The things I think Last.fm has going for them: * Charts (of course) * Recommendations: I use last.fm for two kinds of recommendations: (1) where it uses liste

The things I think Last.fm has going for them: * Charts (of course) * Recommendations: I use last.fm for two kinds of recommendations: (1) where it uses listener history to figure out similar bands and albums, which in some ways is inferior to feature-based recommender systems like Pandora, and (2) where it uses neighbor listening history (e.g., neighbor radio) -- I can't count the number of times I've been introduced to awesome bands in genres I wasn't looking for just because a neighbor had it on their charts. * Shoutboxes for each artist, album, and song: I can't count the number of times I've just instantly "loved" a song and needed someplace to shout something out with others who like the song. Last.fm has a huge user base and should try to be a one-stop shop for music, like Netflix is for video. Here're some tips * Revamp your business model: copy Grooveshark's business model if you have to, but get anyone who wants to listen to a song come to your site and not go to Youtube for a low-quality version. * Increase avg. time on site: If you implement the suggestion above (where I can play any song I like), then you have a wealth of _real_ related song/album/artist to offer the user. You may be able to remove annoying audio ads and just rely on click ads. It also helps if you implement a site-wide list like youtube's playlist. * Improve recommendations: Netflix had a decent algorithm, but conducting the Netflix prize got them a lot of publicity _and_ a much better algorithm. You could do the same with the ton of data that you have. Yahoo! is already ahead of you in this: see this year's KDD cup: http://www.kdd.org/kdd2011/kddcup.shtml http://www.kdd.org/kdd2011/kddcup.shtml

nervechannel 16y ago
It's actually pretty debatable whether this year's KDD Cup will really help the science of music recommendation: http://musicmachinery.com/2011/02/22/is-the-kdd-cup-really-music-recommendation/ http://musicmachinery.com/2011/02/22/is-the-kdd-cup-really-m... Because it's entirely anonymised, not just the users but the artists too -- c.f. Netflix's problems with deanonymization: http://33bits.org/2010/03/15/open-letter-to-netflix/ http://33bits.org/2010/03/15/open-letter-to-netflix/ This means you can't use any interesting characteristics of the music itself, or the associated metadata, to aid the recommendations. All the interesting domain knowledge is stripped out, which likely means the best solutions still won't work as well as algorithms that use metadata (like Last.fm's) or content analysis (like Pandora's) or both, and certainly won't lead to any particularly interesting insights about what drives people's tastes. Disclaimer: I work at Last.fm
- oakenshield 16y ago
  Very interesting; thanks. I had only taken a cursory look at the KDD cup page. I didn't know the dataset was crippled, because I doubt the netflix attack would work with music.. there's no IMDB for music that acts as an independent dataset. Unless they intersect the set with last.fm, of course :)

nervechannel 16y ago

It's actually pretty debatable whether this year's KDD Cup will really help the science of music recommendation: http://musicmachinery.com/2011/02/22/is-the-kdd-cup-really-music-recommendation/ http://musicmachinery.com/2011/02/22/is-the-kdd-cup-really-m... Because it's entirely anonymised, not just the users but the artists too -- c.f. Netflix's problems with deanonymization: http://33bits.org/2010/03/15/open-letter-to-netflix/ http://33bits.org/2010/03/15/open-letter-to-netflix/ This means you can't use any interesting characteristics of the music itself, or the associated metadata, to aid the recommendations. All the interesting domain knowledge is stripped out, which likely means the best solutions still won't work as well as algorithms that use metadata (like Last.fm's) or content analysis (like Pandora's) or both, and certainly won't lead to any particularly interesting insights about what drives people's tastes. Disclaimer: I work at Last.fm

oakenshield 16y ago
Very interesting; thanks. I had only taken a cursory look at the KDD cup page. I didn't know the dataset was crippled, because I doubt the netflix attack would work with music.. there's no IMDB for music that acts as an independent dataset. Unless they intersect the set with last.fm, of course :)