Music Recommendation Survey Shows Some Interesting Results…
March 23, 2011
Orpheus Media Research, creators of the Myna music recognition tool which I covered a while back here on ASL have today revealed the results of their recent survey into music recommendation tools. The survey, which polled 500 US consumers (and presumably one European one since I participated in it too) reveals some interesting insight into how music recommendation services are perceived and what users expect from them in the future .
Fifty-four percent of the respondents have used a music recommendation tool and, of those, 40 percent use it either daily or a few times per week. Notably, 77 percent have discovered new music while using a recommendation tool, and 92 percent continue to listen to that new music, often recommending it to others. Yet, these respondents feel that the accuracy of available recommendation tools is lacking with 40 percent saying that the results are accurate 50 percent or less of the time. Other challenges identified were the time it takes to search (27 percent) and receiving too many results from a search (24 percent).
Anyone for pie?
Of the 87 percent of respondents who actively search out new music, 22 percent find it difficult or nearly impossible to discover new, unheard-of music that they like.
When asked if they would go to a single web site and match their current favorite songs to new artists and music that they have not heard before, 43 percent of the respondents said that they would likely or very likely use that web site.
“People clearly expect more from music recommendation systems,” said Dr. Greg Wilder, founder and Chief Science Officer at OMR. ”Current search technology is expensive and limited to subjective descriptions of music, which are often just not good enough. We are focused on changing that.”