Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Not a freak, just another rant...*grumble*
I'm so whiny today, i can't even stand myself.
Amazon is a crappy place to find new music. I've spent a couple hours over the past few days looking for music i might like, via Amazon's many "similar artists" and "people who bought x also bought y" features. Yeah, more like people who bought this also made several random one-click purchases by letting a chimp handle the mouse for a while. Seriously, i looked up just about every cd that i own and like at the moment to see what other cds they recommended, and i listened to sample clips from a bunch of them, none of which sounded half as good as the cd i owned that led me to the recommendation. I got frustrated. Then it dawned on me. When i looked at the "people who bought x also bought y" thing, there was never another cd that I "also bought," unless it was by the same band. In theory, they should have recommended at least a few cds i already have, because that's kind of the point. The system is bunk, i declared, and went on searching anyway.
Oh, and there's another thing: the customer reviews. At first i thought these were great, a whole bunch of perspectives from people who had listened to the album. Then after a while i realized that almost every album i looked at was rated 4 and a half stars out of 5 by the customers and given largely favorable reviews. The second dawn dawned on me (if you're keeping track, i've now stayed up two nights in a row): the only people who write album reviews on Amazon, for the most part, are fans of that album. There are far more fans willing to put in a good word for an album than there are dissenters who will take the time to warn you against buying it. I mean, if you don't like an album, why waste your time? Unless you really, really hate it, (which some people did) in which case your review will be clouded by anger and very subjective. So the customer reviews are worthless.
All that to say that it's a bad way to look for new music. I'm out of good ways. Someone with similar musical tastes needs to come along and introduce me to some stuff i haven't heard before, because the only one who closely shares my tastes is my girlfriend, and she's out of ideas too.
I'm so whiny today, i can't even stand myself.
Amazon is a crappy place to find new music. I've spent a couple hours over the past few days looking for music i might like, via Amazon's many "similar artists" and "people who bought x also bought y" features. Yeah, more like people who bought this also made several random one-click purchases by letting a chimp handle the mouse for a while. Seriously, i looked up just about every cd that i own and like at the moment to see what other cds they recommended, and i listened to sample clips from a bunch of them, none of which sounded half as good as the cd i owned that led me to the recommendation. I got frustrated. Then it dawned on me. When i looked at the "people who bought x also bought y" thing, there was never another cd that I "also bought," unless it was by the same band. In theory, they should have recommended at least a few cds i already have, because that's kind of the point. The system is bunk, i declared, and went on searching anyway.
Oh, and there's another thing: the customer reviews. At first i thought these were great, a whole bunch of perspectives from people who had listened to the album. Then after a while i realized that almost every album i looked at was rated 4 and a half stars out of 5 by the customers and given largely favorable reviews. The second dawn dawned on me (if you're keeping track, i've now stayed up two nights in a row): the only people who write album reviews on Amazon, for the most part, are fans of that album. There are far more fans willing to put in a good word for an album than there are dissenters who will take the time to warn you against buying it. I mean, if you don't like an album, why waste your time? Unless you really, really hate it, (which some people did) in which case your review will be clouded by anger and very subjective. So the customer reviews are worthless.
All that to say that it's a bad way to look for new music. I'm out of good ways. Someone with similar musical tastes needs to come along and introduce me to some stuff i haven't heard before, because the only one who closely shares my tastes is my girlfriend, and she's out of ideas too.
