The Book Seer. @ SXSWi: Is music recommendation broken? Music recommendation is not doing its job, says Paul Lamere, director of developer community at 'machine listening' specialists The Echo Nest.
However long the long tail of music, mechanical recommendation is biased towards what the majority of listeners do because brand new bands have very little audience and little related data. It means that if you listen to the 'short head' of music - the mainstream, most listened to artists - you are likely to be referred to similar artists that are also in the short head, like Britney Spears to Christina Aguilera. He said 48% of short-head recommendations push back to the short head, and that in 2007 music retail data on 4m sold tracks showed 13% were either American Idol or Disney artists.
"We still haven't seen the promise of the long tail. It's not that [The Long Tail author] Chris Anderson was wrong but the music recommenders aren't doing their job - they are pushing people towards the short tail. " The Guardian Open Platform.