« bob dylan + merle haggard on tour | Main | bright eyes :: digital ash in a digital urn »
February 17, 2005
liveplasma music recommendations
Liveplasma is the latest in a line of toys that claim to map a recommended music universe based on wha t you like. These things usually work only if you like stuff that everyone else does.
We tested our most recent review subject, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, and got results for some artist called 'The Student Prince'. It also inferred that we'd like Sarah Brightman, some dude called The Boy From Oz, and Andrew Lloyd Webber. It also suggested Rod Stewart, but we suspect the wrong period.
A search for Fiery Furnaces basically returned a list of approved college bands (Radiohead, Fountains Of Wayne, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) who are all fine but have nothing to do with the Furnaces whatsover - except for the Fountains Of Wayne, who aren't fine at all. "We see you like creative music. Here are some examples of marginally creative music that are liked by a homogeneous enough population to be in our database."
Useless for thoughtful music fans. Someday technology will be able to determine the sound characteristics of a recording and match based on that. Then people who have discovered the Fiery Furnaces will be sent to the Soft Machine, or possibly Teletubbies soundtracks.
Posted by borrowed_tunes at February 17, 2005 12:21 PM
Comments
I was surprised to find they don't have Franz Ferdinand at all, but pleasantly surprised to get "Leonard Nimoy" when I looked for Denim.
It's also a clunky navigational interface.
Posted by: Max at February 17, 2005 01:04 PM
I'm surprised Franz Ferdinand wasn't in that irrelevant list that came back with the Fiery Furnaces.
Posted by: borrowed_tunes at February 17, 2005 02:03 PM