Paz on 8/1/2007 at 14:36
Quote Posted by fett
I don't see much difference between this and buying a new album b/c someone from your favorite band produced/played on/toured with the unknown artist. We usually discover new music by association whether it be on Pandora, through friends, or through liner notes.
The difference I see is that the first options involve at least a small degree of thought or effort ( :effort: ) on the part of the listener. Ultra-consumable music on LE INTERNET has been great for people discovering new stuff, but I think we're suffering as *listeners* - this kind of gladiatorial THUMBS UP THUMBS DOWN is super-disposable, but perhaps it means you miss out on things which actually require a bit of dedication to get into. Exposed to someone like Bark Psychosis via this method, I'd probably go "uhhh ... what's this?" and bin it. Over the course of an album, I love 'em.
Anyway, I've tried Pandora before and it wasn't for me. However, in the interests of fairness let's try this again LIVE and see how it does:
I put THE SISTERS OF MERCY in the magic box. It sets off playing "Floorshow," which I must say is quite impressive - I was expecting it to throw some bigger hits at me. This is a good thing! Not so good is the atrocious sound quality - but the original recording hardly helps in that regard. I don't offer a thumbs up, because much as I love the Sisters I want something new/different.
Pandora bizarrely thinks I'd like to hear some VELVET REVOLVER now. Pandora is badly mistaken. Thumbs down thumbs down thumbs doooowwwwnnnn.
Ok, back to the SISTERS. "No Time To Cry," not bad, but it's the crappy mix from the old, badly mastered version of
First & Last & Always. Also, I wanted something different. I let it play through anyway.
TONES ON TAIL arrive. Jolly good, they're decent. Again though, I know of their work already so I let it pass without positive or negative input.
It's THE CURE! "Charlotte Sometimes." Again, I like the selection here (jumping to something like "Lovecats" would have been odd), but I'm more than familiar with the band again so let it drift onnnnnnn.
Fair doos, some NEW ORDER ("60 miles an hour"). Same deal, it's perfectly fine but not new to me.
It now presents me with the groundbreaking new band MAKE AN ACCOUNT. Which I don't fancy.
So, I've heard six tracks in relatively average quality. I've heard of all six artists. Five I know I like and have various records from. One I know I don't like. Nothing new popped up.
It did very well aping my taste, but rather poorly in any efforts to expand it.
Maybe I should sign up and listen for about two or three hours, you might say? That might work. I'm fairly sure I could investigate some new artists under my own steam in that time, though.
THIS HAS BEEN A TTLG SCIENCE PRODUCTION
The Alchemist on 8/1/2007 at 15:48
Holy crap, the following "paragraph" is horribly run-on and cluttered with parenthesis and commas. Tread lightly.
I listen to a wide range of genres (I grew up and continue to live in a ghetto hispanic metropolis (spanish music, rap, oh jeez raggaeton) but I also listen to god awful metal (I cant stand most of it honestly, but Opeth and Tool etc), dnb, stuff I grew up with because of my aunts (Duran Duran :L), all sorts of electronic music like noids stuff (and Shatten <3 and Bob), and all sorts of unusual stuff such as Moonlight (Polish? Malygris? Marecki?) and the usual stuff that is widely praised. Myspace, believe it or not as vile as it is has introduced me to a few rare talents thanks to how easy it is for local bands to post their stuff. Some free labels such as SoulSeek Records and some other places I don't remember have introduced me to even more unique stuff as well. A lot of the music I listen to tends to blend genres, as well. So Pandora becomes pretty useful for me because of the sort of stuff I listen to, I usually skip through most of the stuff it gives me and often it just doesn't work in giving me anything good but if you work with it and feed it the right suggestions every once in a while it gives me a good suggestion. But yeah, it's no miracle. I do all sorts of things to find good music though (as you've probably noticed), one thing that tends to work for me is when I find someone who has a lot of music I like on a p2p network, I'll browse all their stuff and see what other names they have and I might grab something at random to see if it's good. Unfortunately people around here (Miami) listen to a lot of crap, but thanks to the net I can get good advice for musical recommendations. It was Noid 4 or 5 years ago, for example, who introduced me to Lost Prophets thanks to those old horrible irc "np" scripts. But yeah, I think in retrospect it was mostly TTLG where I've discovered some of my favorite bands, such as Godspeed. There's a lot of music out there, a lot of good stuff by small groups that doesn't get heard because it's not very popular, which is why I try pretty hard to seek out those sort of bands, life would be less without them.
henke on 8/1/2007 at 16:56
Paz, even
I'm familiar with those artists(besides TONES), even tho I don't particularily like any of em. I find it works best when you search for (old) artists in genre's you're not very familiar with. Try looking up that one country/blues/jazz/whatever artist you like, y'know... Johnny Cash, John Lee Hooker, Frank Sinatra or whoever it is, and you'll get plenty of (good) stuff you haven't heard before.
Quote Posted by icemann
Yahoo music is so much better.
How is it better, exactly? I'm already signed up at Pandora, and would rather not sign up anywhere else unless they've got something unique to offer.
And oh yes,
Eels is good. Bacon, listen to "Trouble with Dreams" or "I'm going to stop pretending that I didn't break your heart" :thumb:
Turtle on 8/1/2007 at 17:06
Or watch the video for Last Stop: This Town.
Who doesn't love singing carrots?
fett on 8/1/2007 at 21:01
Quote Posted by Paz
I think we're suffering as *listeners* - this kind of gladiatorial THUMBS UP THUMBS DOWN is super-disposable, but perhaps it means you miss out on things which actually require a bit of dedication to get into. Exposed to someone like Bark Psychosis via this method, I'd probably go "uhhh ... what's this?" and bin it. Over the course of an album, I love 'em.
Hope I didn't take that too much out of context, but this DOES actually make sense to me. How many times have I recommended a band to the response, "Oh, I've heard song X and didn't like them,"? To which I reply, "No, you just don't like the song - you haven't heard THEM if you've only heard one song - you don't know whether or not you like them." I do find that Pandora tends to play deep album cuts instead of singles, and dredges up pretty decent live tracks once in awhile, and lots of stuff off of older albums.
Quote Posted by Paz
Maybe I should sign up and listen for about two or three hours, you might say? That might work. I'm fairly sure I could investigate some new artists under my own steam in that time, though.
True, but to really get the results you're looking for (or want to be surprised by) you should try inputing a wide spectrum of artists on the same channel - I get results very quickly that way (i.e. I've got one channel that ranges from Willie Nelson to Dream Theater with The Cure thrown in the middle). I think people also make the mistake of rating everything on the first listen - I wouldn't thumbs down a band until I've heard about 4-5 different tracks and have a strong opinion since that's about my threshold with new pop or metal stuff (much longer in other genres). Honestly, I spend about the same amount of time crawling the web looking for new stuff on my own, but a lot of times Pandora is the jumping off point.
