←back to thread

226 points cloudfudge | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
freedomben ◴[] No.41882074[source]
I think this is great, but I do hope thought is being put into solving the hardest problem of all IMHO: Music Discovery

I have bought a lot on Bandcamp, but would have bought 10x more if I could just find stuff I liked. The existing system makes discovery nearly impossible unless you happen to like the stuff being mainly bought and curated or are in a lucky genre.

Discoverability is especially hard because 99% of the music people create sucks. This may not seem true if you mainly listen to "radio" and playlists, but if you ever get access to a large catalog of independent music, try picking stuff at pseudo-random and take notes. As much as I love good art (and I do), most art is not good art. You can't go on popularity because some of the great artists (especially on Bandcamp) are relatively unknown and therefore are not popular. For example, Thousand Needles in Red is a phenomenal band with great albums, and almost completely unknown. These Four Walls is similar (but at least they are on Youtube Music/Spotify/etc). I'd buy the crap out of similar albums, but discovering them is very challenging. I mainly found those two out of random luck.

Anyway I'm rambling, but I do hope you can figure out a good means for discovery. I think finding and grouping people with similar tastes is among the best ways, and also having artists that a person likes recommend other artists can be super valuable.

replies(13): >>41882220 #>>41882254 #>>41882413 #>>41882664 #>>41882844 #>>41882884 #>>41883148 #>>41884081 #>>41884158 #>>41884351 #>>41884652 #>>41885908 #>>41886016 #
r1b ◴[] No.41884351[source]
> Discoverability is especially hard because 99% of the music people create sucks

This - as a listener, quality is the hard problem. It is encouraging that the proposal affirms the value of curative functions (like labels).

As an artist, I actually don’t really care about music’s commercial problems - I’m more annoyed by the constraints on musical art objects inherent in all music platforms.

Like, experiencing art objects in a gallery hits different vs scrolling through bandcamp. The internet is, already, the gallery but it’s like we replaced all of the paintings with tiny prints, eclipsed by the placards.

The thing I would really love is a music platform that feels like a hosting platform, not a marketplace. Where a user can simultaneously act as a listener, an artist, a curator or a critic.

replies(1): >>41885419 #
1. glompers ◴[] No.41885419[source]
I think I have seen folks use rateyourmusic.com to get partway there already...

> The thing I would really love is a music platform that feels like a hosting platform, not a marketplace. Where a user can simultaneously act as a listener, an artist, a curator or a critic.