Just How Helpful Are Music Recommendation Services? [SURVEY]
March 23, 2011
According to a new survey commissioned by music research and development company Orpheus Media Research, more and more people are using music recommendation services, but those users are not wholly satisfied with the results.
As we have noted time and time again, the web has made it much easier for bands to get their music out there (what what Soundcloud, Bandcamp, etc) — the other side of that observation being that it’s becoming harder for consumers to find music that they like.
OMR conducted a survey of 500 people aged 18 and older (via research firm Zoomerang) in February 2011 in order to ascertain just how many people utilize music recommendation services. Of the respondents, a good portion were at least partially musically inclined: 61% were casual listeners, 35% were enthusiasts and 4% were indifferent to music.
On the whole, OMR found that a rather sizable portion of respondents — 54% — had used a music recommendation service, with 40% of those folks using those tools daily or a few times a week.
Seventy-seven of those who have used a tool have found jams that they liked, and 92% have become fans of that music, sharing it with friends.
However, there is, in fact, “a rub”: Survey takers were not entirely happy with the tunes provided. Forty percent said that results were accurate 50% (or less) of the time. In fact, of those folks who actively look for new music, 22% said it was almost impossible to find entirely new music that they were into.
In fact, many respondents still rely on old standbys like word-of-mouth/the radio (57%) and mainstream media (14%) to find new jams. Ten percent use music streaming services.
Yes, there are a ton of awesome music recommendation services out there, but we can see how it can be exhausting for the average listener to wade through them all — personally, I subscribe to a ton of listservs and music subscription services, have a Google Reader packed with blogs, and often solicit friends for recommendations. Sometimes the fragmentation can become tiring.
In fact, 43% of OMR’s survey takers said that if they could go to one website to discover new music (via matching their current music to new artists), they would do so. (SuperGlued and some other apps do this to a certain extent, FYI.)
Yes, we have a long way to go before one can plug one’s brain into one’s iPod and generate rad playlists — although services like Pandora and companies like The Echo Nest are working on it — but it seems as though people are increasingly turning to the web when it comes to wading through the musical marsh.
What recommendation services would your ears languish without?