Fascinating experience that just turned me on to a new band and a great demonstration of the unintended consequences of allowing user comments and ratings of products…
Listening to a song from Owl City (Adam Young)’s latest CD, I was wondering if there’s a newer one on the way. What better way to find out than ask on Twitter (I’m @DaveTaylor)? So I sent out:
The response was, no surprise, “Who is Owl City? What kind of music is that?”
I figured the best thing to do was link to an MP3 so I did a quick Google search and saw amazon.com listed. I clicked thru to the Amazon.com downloadable MP3 of “Fireflies”, Adam’s biggest hit so far. A link to that page in a responding tweet and I’d shared the meme:
While I was on that page, however, I scrolled down to the user reviews, always interested in what other people think about music I like, just to find this:
It was only a click or two to preview some of their tracks and ascertain that, yes, The Postal Service is pretty similar to Owl City.
The result? I just bought a new CD in a very 21st Century version of musical discovery. Cool.
Dave, You are going to love The Postal Service. Might I also suggest Death Cab For Cutie, who are a closely related group sharing at least one member with TPS.
In this digital age, these bands simply appeared on my Winamp list one day. Upon closer scrutiny I discovered it was one of those ‘digital natives’ we’ve read so much about, who put them there.
Dave,
Cute little inside joke for you. You know those UPS TV ads with the artist drawing and morphing images as he talks? The song playing behind all those ads is by The Postal Service. Hah. A little inside joke lost on most!
Jim
You should check out last.fm or Pandora (the music genome project), both are very good at suggesting music based on the bands and songs that you like.
Tina