Thanks for the insightful post. One question though: don't you think your highlight about last.fm and approach to HN is a little too homogenous?
While I can appreciate music suggestions that are in line with my taste, that is easy enough to find on my own (through the methods you suggested). What isn't easy to find are bands that sound nothing like what I've heard, but could be just as brilliant as the bands I know and love. This is where I think the suggestions in this thread are most useful.
And I would go even further to argue that because music is subjective and immeasurable it would make an even more interesting discussion.
Thanks too for North of America - I haven't heard them but will definitely check them out.
It may be a little shortsighted, but it's hard to sum up all my thoughts in one textarea.
The long story short of it is that in my experiences, a real life discussion about music among 5 knowledgeable people always turns into a festival of egos. I think if you put it on the internet, it's going to magnify that worse than what you could see in the hacker community because everybody who loves music thinks they like the music they do because their perception is unique and more insightful than yours (I'm guilty of this too). We could talk music for hours but as soon as you namedrop that band that I think is trash, I no longer believe your opinion counts.
If you can solve that problem, then by all means, I'll be a believer. I think that's why last.fm is so good. Yes, there's alot of echo, put in a band like Mono into the 'radio station' feed without logging in and you'll see there's not a whole lot of variety. However where it excels is if you listen, for example, to a lot of classical music, when you put in a post-rock band, it will find the post-rock music that appeals to you as a classical music fan and will inspire you to dig deeper into the genre.
This is what I think news sites need. The problem with them is that as more people sign up, you see the lowest common denominator trickle to the front page. What would be better is if, for example, I'm a big rails fan and I upmod an article that shouts the greatness of PHP, I'd like to then start seeing more php related articles on MY (not THE) front page. Initially they would start off being very rails influenced, but as I upmod more php articles, the system would wean me away from the ror crowd and more towards the php crowd, unless I'm the type who only upmods articles titled "php is great when it's like ruby", in which case I don't really care for other opinions anyways, so who's losing?
An analogy: when I want to meet new people I usually go to parties that my friends are having because I figure that if my friends like the guests then chances are I will too. However, every now and then I go to completely random bars and gatherings because I want to be exposed to a completely new circle of people who have no common relationships with me or my friends.
Similarly in music, there are times when I want to discover things that are similar to what I have liked in the past, but also times when I want to discover things that are completely random and unrelated to anything I have ever heard or liked.
If anyone is interested in chiming in further while we are here, I'd be really curious to know the top ways people are discovering new music right now.
For me it is: Sirius XM U (formerly Left of Center); Hype Machine; Pitchfork; Songkick (for finding shows in my area); URB Magazine; Fader Magazine; OHHLA Top 25
I love the game and love the idea. The only issue I have had thus far is pulling off combos. Not sure if I am just too slow or if something about the keyboard is prohibiting me from moving from note to note fast enough. Has anyone else had this problem?
What would be really interesting is if you could build this into a facebook app.
This site is the first place I go every day because it offers enough interesting things about my industry in addition to a smattering of other eye-opening intellectually stimulating items. If anything I think the standard should just be a little higher for anything non-hacker/cs.
