Apple's iTunes Radio is a Mess. They Need a Community of Music Curators.
By
Staten Island, NY Posted: 11/23/2014 1:00:00 AM
WKRP In Cincinnati was a lousy radio station until they brought in Andy Travis, the new Program Director to help them pick better content. iTunes Radio needs people like that, because it's a mess right now.
Full disclosure. I love Pandora Radio. I've used it from the first day it popped up in the iPhone App store mainly because I love music and it does a great job of finding music that fits my mood.
When Apple introduced iTunes Radio, I had high hopes. I picked a few of their hand picked "Stations" and I was impressed by the songs it played. The trouble is, in spite of the huge catalog of music in the iTunes store, the songs it picks are sometimes completely out of the genre I was trying to listen to, and they repeat the same songs within an hour or so. If I wanted to hear the same songs I just heard, I would've played a 45 minute CD for a couple of hours on shuffle.
For some of the most popular genres, Apple does a fine job of picking songs that fit, mainly because it's easy finding matches for the artists who are currently in the top 40.
A lot of people are turning to Internet radio because they are looking for diversity. They can get top-40 anywhere, including traditional radio. So, to make Internet Radio work, they need to be able to think about music the way they think about technology. They need to show us something we love, before we even know it exists. That's what music curation can do for them.
Make no mistake about it. Internet Radio is not a passing fad, so the stakes are very high. As more people turn to Internet Radio for their primary source of music, the companies that become the leaders today are going to be the very cornerstone of the music industry. iTunes put Apple at the center of the digital / MP3 universe, but that universe is changing very quickly.
Music Curation is the only way to improve their chance of survival. To me, that means real people, not just algorithms.
An algorithm is only useful when you feed it information that was based on the input from real people, including both objective and subjective opinions about virtually every song. Since two people can listen to the same song and have two entirely different opinions, the opinions and classification taken by a community of curators will guarantee that the songs they play aren't just random selections, but songs that will stimulate and inspire listeners to seek out new artists and genres of music.
Opening up the job of curation to a community can be a challenge, but as history has shown us with sites like Wikipedia, if the community is large enough, it will allow greater diversity and above all, better results.
With proper curation, when somebody gives a thumbs up to a particular Paul Simon song, that features South American drummers or African Folk Music, that's a perfect opportunity to introduce the listener to international artists like Ladysmith Black Mambazo, but not with just a random song, but something curated specifically to share the essence of the song they were just listening to. In order to have that kind of personalization factored into their algorithm, songs need to be classified and cataloged by people who have a passion for music.
Joe Crescenzi, Founder
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Posted: 11/30/2015 11:27:24 PM
From:
Joe Crescenzi, Founder - Staten Island, NY
Apple spent billions to fix the problem
Several months after writing this, Apple purchased Beats Music and they launched a totally new music service called Apple Music, featuring hand curated music and even a live radio station featuring live DJs.
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