therein lies the problem, no?Angstrom wrote:It's a buyers market out there, and what the casual listener really needs is to find content they might enjoy. The want to filter the bazillions of awful tracks down to the few they might like, "collaborative filtering" by using thousands of other dudes similar to you to vote up/down the music you might like requires an active social network of 'consumers'. Soundcloud completely omits that user feature - because it's an ego playground designed for 'music producers', it was designed by producers for producers. Not for end-customers.
with myspace (for example) the poor site structure wasn't the biggest problem... the spamification and random other band onslaught became the issue.
all of these sites start off fairly pure of heart. they provide a service that people want. then the wolves and buzzards come out and take this service and find ways to sidestep and abuse it. the next thing you know you're being SPAMed several times a day as described by other posters in this thread.
the filtering that you're talking about becomes so important (like having the most "friends", hits, views, plays etc,) that you have people (and eventually bots) skewing the numbers. how many times has someone posted at this forum requesting that we give them votes at this contest or that? did those who voted actually listen objectively and then vote or did the popularity contest mentality contribute to the outcome? he who has the most followers wins we all lose when the following is done blindly. BMG, Sony, iTunes et al are counting on it.