Archive for October, 2009
Music discovery in mixed up, muddled up, shook up world
As a game, Herd It’s purpose is to connect fans, share music and make fun! But Herd It is also part of a bigger picture that’s making it possible for everyone to find the perfect song for every occasion.
When you play Herd It and tag songs with words, we learn from you how to find songs with similar descriptions. Google makes it possible to search billions of web pages and, even though you don’t know the exact page or URL you’re looking for, describing what you want with words gives pretty good results. In the same way, Herd It powers a music discovery engine that makes it possible to use words to describe the music you want, search through millions of songs (over 10 million on iTunes and now add MySpace…) and find the perfect tune!
Stay tuned – Herd It search will soon be entering a private Beta testing release. In the meantime, there are other cool, interesting and odd ways of finding the music you want though. Here are just a few that we like:
Search by similarity – “I like this song, give me more like it”. Examples: pandora.com, iTunes Genius feature.
Search by emotion – “I want a song that is dark and calm”. Examples: musicovery.com, AMG Tapestry
Search by genre - “I like hip-hop, yo!”. Examples: AllMusic.com, any record store (if you remember what they are)
Search by color - “Gimme pink songs”. Example: guitarati.com (Herd It’s color minigame will find out if this method makes any sense!)
Search by song/artist name – “I want to hear the new song by Franz Ferdinand”. Example: iTunes
Search by singing/humming – “Naahh nah nah nanana naahh, nanana naaah, hey Jude”. Examples: Shazam, MiDoMi
What other music discovery methods do you like / use?