iLike

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Have you seen this?

http://www.ilike.com/

It's basically Last.fm, but with a few more features and better integration with iTunes. It's not an Apple product, and currently works with Windows Media Player as well. (Hopefully they'll add Winamp before it gets out of beta.)

The big-upped feature is the ability to download mp3s from "similar" artists, for free, from garageband.com. And of course to recommend similar artists to you from its own currently limited database. I'm also optimistic that in the future they will include other free mp3 sites. For now I'm sure they're letting the bands tag their own songs with "similar" artists, because some of the free mp3s I've downloaded have had nothing whatsoever to do with the artist I was listening to. That's gonna happen.

And also, it's a social-style site, like last.fm, that matches you with people of similar music tastes and lets you IM them.

― Charlie Brown (kenan), Sunday, 21 January 2007 19:30 (eighteen years ago)

I wonder what their process is for selecting similar artists, though, even out of their own database. Last.fm goes totally on what other people are listening to, while Pandora does some weird (and usually unwelcome) thing where it analyzes the harmonies and bpms and such and matches totally dissimilar artists, in spirit if not in sound.

A minute ago, when I played "Wolf Like Me" by TV on the Radio, it recommended "Spin the Bottle" by the Juliana Hatfield Three. wtf.

― Charlie Brown (kenan), Sunday, 21 January 2007 19:33 (eighteen years ago)

iLike did, I mean. Not Pandora. Though that's just the kind of thing Pandora would do.

― Charlie Brown (kenan), Sunday, 21 January 2007 19:34 (eighteen years ago)

My only big problem with sites like this is that they match you on your musical tastes. I know, I know... that's the whole idea, and I think it works great when you're somewhere in your 20's. But you know, I love Captain Beefheart. Does that mean I want to hang out with either the acid casualties that knew him back when, or the youngsters that have adopted him as a fancy new cultural bedpost notch? No on both counts. I love Motorhead, but do I want to hang out with people who REALLY love Motorhead? God in hell no.

― Charlie Brown (kenan), Sunday, 21 January 2007 20:24 (eighteen years ago)

The concept of recommendations, though, is that it takes those two points you toward other people in the Beef/head camp - so you're not lumped in with the casualties or the unwashed 15-year olds.

― milo z (mlp), Sunday, 21 January 2007 20:26 (eighteen years ago)

The larger the community gets, the better. That's true.

― Charlie Brown (kenan), Sunday, 21 January 2007 20:28 (eighteen years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.