#sprotify

machine knows what kind of music you love

How do people explore the music in the old days before the popularity of Internet? To me, it's the several magnetic tapes and CDs bought by my mother from music shops. After we had a computer in our room, searching music via engines like Baidu MP3 (I didn't know Google at that time), but now, some music recommendation system and tools like Spotify and Music-Map helps people to get access to more music they like by accident. 

Spotify is the best place to discover music. Your Discover page will constantly suggest new music for you, based on what you’re listening to. Your next favourite songs are waiting.

It's very surprising if you find the music it recommend really lovely and interesting, and the more songs you starred, the better the system will work for you next time based on the data the machine has collected. The data could base on what other people who like this song like, and maybe the website also introduce you to that user because the social function is another critical way to keep users active on the website.

However, how would the company make money when they are providing so amazing service to the users? As we can see it is the commercial advertising or upgraded software fees. In the area of advertising, I found an article about how another Internet radio service website Pandora which is not available in the UK.

“It’s becoming quite apparent to us that the world of playing the perfect music to people and the world of playing perfect advertising to them are strikingly similar,” says Eric Bieschke, Pandora’s chief scientist.

That do remind us a lot about people's taste on music, books, films and other cultural products will not only stay at the fields where they are, but also tell the organizations who own the data what every specific user is like, including their using habits of various devices, their values according to the lyrics of their favorite songs might have expressed, even their stances on almost all of the issues related to their daily and political lives.