5. Radio
Terrestrial radio is dying, being replaced by satellite and internet alternatives. Pioneers like Pandora and Last.fm have set the standard and others have intelligently followed. Myspace is one in that number, introducing their own personalized radio stations. Starting from any song, artist, or genre a user can quickly start listening to related music. Now this is far from perfect. Myspace isnt using a musical genome to dictate what is related to what. It seems to instead draw from a genre and play histories of other users. For testing purposes, I started with Frank Oceans radio channel, first listening to the instrumental track White. This moved to Mario, which was followed by a T-Pain ballad, which was followed by Monica, Drake, and Fantasia. Not bad. Next, I tried starting a radio session with a song, specifically Anberlins Self-Starter. The results for this example were not as well matched as the previous. As related tunes, Myspace chose to play VersaEmerge, Cady Groves, and The Ready Set. Not exactly what I would expect from an alternative rock station. There are obviously bugs and adjustments to be made to the radio feature. There is also no rating system (thumbs up or down) to indicate that a match isnt suited for a channel. These issues aside, positives can be found by the optimistic eye. For example, there are no limits to the number of skips that you make. The channels you make are also automatically saved and easily accessed by clicking the radio button.
Terrestrial radio is dying, being replaced by satellite and internet alternatives. Pioneers like Pandora and Last.fm have set the standard and others have intelligently followed. Myspace is one in that number, introducing their own personalized radio stations. Starting from any song, artist, or genre a user can quickly start listening to related music. Now this is far from perfect. Myspace isnt using a musical genome to dictate what is related to what. It seems to instead draw from a genre and play histories of other users. For testing purposes, I started with Frank Oceans radio channel, first listening to the instrumental track White. This moved to Mario, which was followed by a T-Pain ballad, which was followed by Monica, Drake, and Fantasia. Not bad. Next, I tried starting a radio session with a song, specifically Anberlins Self-Starter. The results for this example were not as well matched as the previous. As related tunes, Myspace chose to play VersaEmerge, Cady Groves, and The Ready Set. Not exactly what I would expect from an alternative rock station. There are obviously bugs and adjustments to be made to the radio feature. There is also no rating system (thumbs up or down) to indicate that a match isnt suited for a channel. These issues aside, positives can be found by the optimistic eye. For example, there are no limits to the number of skips that you make. The channels you make are also automatically saved and easily accessed by clicking the radio button.