Ableton Forum

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.

therein lies the problem, no?

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.

Interesting read that somebody (other than us types) thinks Facebook's music integration is crap and Google+ can make a serious impact if they improve that element of social networking.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.med ... index.html

Given Google's awesome commitment to music and musicians on their Android platform, I'm sure they will do a STELLAR job.

I agree with you.I feel great being here. Am a music lover. This will be good for music lovers.

Important to recognise that for google/apple/Facebook the users are the product.
They have a large stock of us which they sell access to - they sell the user access to corporations.
Apple can sell the access to a bazillion iTunes users to Sony/EMI/bmg, etc. and elsewhere.

Punters and musicians often get this idea the wrong way around and imagine the system is designed FOR them. In fact these systems are merely honeytraps for any general public member to wander into, for their eyeballs to then be sold to advertisers.

This is why Facebook won't assist low level musicians. Why should they? We are equivalent to any other 'consumer' to their real customers - the advertising and retail industry

Take myspace for example...when Facebook was not the biggest social media site, most musicians used myspace to promote their music.

right now it takes a combination of youtube and face book to grab attention. so anyone starting out really needs to be a video producer and a music producer along with musician. i really dont have the time to wear all those hats so i just give up for now.