After reading a press release about the new Owl Music Search, created in conjunction with Creative Commons, I thought I'd take it for a test drive. The search engine works like this: Upload a song, highlight your favorite part of the song, Owl examines the clip and offers "hundreds of songs similar to yours" based on sound similarity. The search engine results pull from an index of over 10,000 songs from ccMixter and Magnatune.

Looks good on paper. In practice, Owl Music Search is a disappointment bordering upon the comedic. Recommended songs were rarely similar to the referenced song. Outside of a similar time signature, most of the site's recommendations bore no similarity to my test songs. Nor was I impressed by the songs' quality; I would go back and listen to only one. At best, one could say Owl Music Search is a victim of its youth -- its catalog is too shallow to result in good matches. At worst, and more accurately, Owl Music Search fails music fans with even the slightest level of savvy. Until it achieves far better performance, people should opt for better recommendation engines such as Last.fm or Pandora.

I listened to the first page of results of every query. Following is the title and description of the uploaded song, and a description of the songs on the first page of query results.

• Sonic Youth's "Reena," a midtempo, guitar-driven post-punk song. Results: A gothic/industrial song; a run-of-the-mill Radiohead soundalike; a nu-metal song; and a trance-inducing world-fusion track with a soloing sitar. Grade: F

• The Whigs' "Technology," a punchy rock song. Results: One hard rock/metal song; one experimental electronics/breaks song; one slow, exotic electronic track; one jazz-heavy guitar pop song; and one straight-up pop/rock song. Grade: D

• Tito Puente's "Oye Como Va," a perky salsa song. Results: a guitar rag; a classical song; an electronic-heavy hip hop song; a solo acoustic guitar song; and a straight-up hip hop song. Grade: F

• Gillian Welch's cover of Radiohead's "Black Star," a quiet song with only voice and two guitars. Results: two classical songs; one traditional Irish folk song; a song that crossed trance with hip hop; and one standard signer-songwriter song. Grade: D

The press release refers to Owl Music Search's as the "world's first true music search engine." It boasts and makes revolutionary claims. The truth is a different story. The technology holds promise, but Owl Music Search does not deliver. A better index of music is needed, and search results with at least a basic level of correlation is required.

Posted by Glenn at 10:20 AM | Link
|Music Recommendation|

EMI and music recommendation engine Last.fm have announced an "extensive online music mapping mechanism" called Tuneglue-Audiomap. The site makes recommendations artists, websites and retailers based on the comparison of the user's listening preferences and profiles of other users. Additonal content such as artist bios and site links will be given for EMI artists. (EMI artists really stand out. Other artists are represented by black circles while EMI circles are glowing with rainbow colors.)

Tuneglue uses a visual map to express connections between similar artists. Related bands -- or nodes -- are connected through spokes. Each related band can be expanded to show its related bands, which then show interconnections with other bands on the page. Users can scroll through artist albums and purchase each at Amazon.co.uk.

Music recommendation and social networking is poised for big growth in 2007. Music recommendation in particular is coming out of its early phase and can add value to existing services. MSN Radio is now being powered by music recommendation engine Pandora. Microsoft may offer commissions for sharing music. Nokia has a music recommendation based on the picks of independent record stores around the world.

Extra credit reading:

• BusinessWeek.com profiled Last.fm last month. "With 15 million unique users a month, 150,000 band biographies, and an amazing 65 million songs listed in its database, Last.FM has attracted the attention of big money. Last spring, Geneva-based Index Ventures made an investment in the company that it will describe only as 'less than $5 million.'"
• Today The Guardian has an article on Last.fm and other Web 2.0 music services.

Posted by Glenn at 1:37 PM | Link
|EMI||Music Recommendation|

• Pictures and commentary from the Blip Festival in NYC, which brought together artists and musicians who use low-bit video game consoles as instruments. (Read/see at News.com)

• A shopper noticed a used CD for $11.98 and proclaimed, "Amoeba in LA now blows." (Read thread at The Velet Rope)

• Pandora founder Tim Westergren took his town hall to UC Berkeley on Monday. One main issue discussed is that Pandora does not currently cover classic music. The company's music recommendation engine now powers MSN Radio. (Read at Daily Californian)

• Humor: I got an advance copy of the upcoming Mooney Suzuki album, Have Mercy, its V2 debut full length. The back of the jewel case has the following quote from The New York Times: "Loud, boring and utterly charmless. If you've been searching for a reason to hate garage rock, this Mooney Suzuki is the band for you." After skimming through it, I can safely say producers Kevin Shalem and Niko Bolas did better than did The Matrix on the band's Columbia misfire. Take a look at the album art here...it's an homage to Soft Machine's Third.

• Jay-Z almost topped 700,000 with Kingdom Come in its debut week, but the latest "Madden NFL" video game sold over two million copies in its first weekend of release. (Read article at Washington Post)

Posted by Glenn at 3:16 PM | Link
|Music Recommendation|