One of the great dynamics of the digital music age is word of mouth. The sheer inter-connectivity of the internet and the ease of which information flows from people to people makes the spread of opinion from one person to another far easier than even before. Be in viral emails, the domino effect of bloggers picking up on what others are writing, a tweet or a trivial conversation on a messaging service – information, and opinions, spread almost without effort.
Today we want to talk about one way in which word of mouth is being used, albeit quite surreptitiously, to organise and filter music. We want to talk about the AudioScrobbler, and what it means to scrobble. Before proceeding, lets dispense with the “word of mouth” label and call it “recommendation”, since the communicating is not actually done through speech (how old fashioned!). “Scrobbling” in itself is quite straightforward. When you scrobble music on services like Last FM, the information about what artists you are listening to is transferred to the Last FM database. Now what does this have to do with Recommending? Well, the clever chaps at Last FM can use this data in quite cunning ways. By using all the collected scrobble data, they can get a pretty detailed understanding of peoples listening tastes. They can create personalized radio stations, recommend playlists by other users, and chose the tracks which, by looking at what other people listen to, there is every chance that you will like.
The dynamics of this way of profiling music tastes lends well to music discovery. It helps artists because their music will be played to people who have similar listening tastes to people who listen to it already, their fans. Also, by enabling people to view and exchange playlists with other users who share their tastes, it can invoke curiosity about bands on their play list which they haven’t heard. Overall, the Audio Scrobbler is an archetypal example of how the digital music environment is using collective wisdom of individual taste to better how people can engage and consume new music.
