Are Music Recommendation Services Working?
April 30, 2011

April 30, 2011 by Pat McCarthy

http://blog.guideme.com/are-music-recommendation-services-working/

Back in March the tech blog Mashable discussed the results of a recent survey commissioned by music research and development company Orpheus Media Research. The survery was about how consumers are using music recommendation services. Here’s a quick snapshot of the results:
500 people over 18 surveyed in February of 2011
54% use a music recommendation service, 40% multiple times per week
77% who used one found music they liked, 92% became fans of that music
40% said that more than 50% of the time recommendation services gave bad results
22% said it was almost impossible to find new music
57% said they rely on word of mouth/radio to find new music
14% said they rely on mainstream media to find new music
43% said they would go to one website if they could that matched new music to their tastes
These results seem to show that music recommendation services are helping people, but that they aren’t leaving them completely satisfied. People are still getting more recommendations through word of mouth, and a big portion still don’t think there is one place they can go to get good music recommendations based on their taste.
It would have been interesting to have a larger number of people participate and see different slices of the data based on which recommendation service they were using (Pandora, Last.fm, Hype Machine, The Echo Nest, etc.).
One of the most interesting things to see would be if people had different satisfaction levels based on whether it was an algorithmic recommendation service like Pandora compared to a more of a social word of mouth service like the Hype Machine.
The bottom line is the survey shows that recommendation services are far from perfect in music right now, and we think the same is clear in local and in other categories. There’s a long way to go, and a lot of interesting ways to get there.