Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Music Reviews

How do people find new music today? I mostly find music through my friends, but how did they find their music. Gwen found a lot of music when she was working at the college radio station. It sounds like that was primarily because she had access to tons of music. So she could just listen to thinks until she found stuff she liked. On top of that, she was communicating with others that had the same kind of access and interest.

I'm thinking of how music reviews might be part of the value add of the system. Similar to how netflix/amazon has user reviews and "critic" or editor reviews, perhaps the system needs a mechanism for authoritative opinions on the music. Since the system gives access to everyone, anybody who writes well and has good opinions would qualify as an authoritative writer. I'm thinking of two ideas.

1) Scout for music reviewers that would be willing to contribute to the system for a fee.
2) Reward artists and fans that write good reviews.

I'm thinking in practice it would take a combination of the two. But imagine, if you're a good writer, and can write good reviews, you could get your access to the system paid for by the reviews that you write. What exactly makes a good review is subjective, but perhaps a mechanism can be put in place. Sort of a download the song and see if you agree with the review, if so, the reviewer gets points.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey Gary. It would be good to point out that Amazon.com lets readers review the reviews, and that's how they become to 500 (or 1000, or whatever) reviewers. Another site I would recommend checking out is allmusic.com There is a wealth of information out there. I used it to find info on lots of jazz groups.

Brian