With the constant burgeoning of new music bands and music sites, it is not easy for users to find the music which they want. A recent study has attempted to measure how successful music recommendation sites are at helping users discover good new tunes.
Several music recommendation services such as Pandora and The Echo Nest have sprung up recently, to help users to find the music of their choice. Orpheus Media Research conducted a study in February 2011, which was reported by Mashable, to find out how useful these services are.
The study was conducted a across a sample of 500 users over 18 years of age. Of the people surveyed, 61% were casual listeners of music, 35% were music enthusiasts and only 4% were indifferent to music. 40% of the respondents had over a 1,000 songs in their personal music library, and 59% felt that music played a key role in their social lives.
The study reveals that 54% of the respondents had used a music recommendation service, and 40% of them use such services quite regularly, ranging from a few times a week to daily.
While only 15% (77 individuals) of the total number of people surveyed said that they found the type of music they liked while using music recommendation sites, 92% of these people had gone on to become fans and had even recommended the music to their friends.
However, 40% of the participants said that the services proved to be accurate less than 50% of the time, and 22% even said that it was nearly impossible to find the music of their choice.
57% of the users said that they still refer to the radio or word-of-mouth method to find the right kind of music. 14% use main stream media, while 10% use music streaming services.
Room for Improvement
No single service provider is a clear winner in this market. Most users create profiles across a number of services and use a combination of sites and apps to find the music of their choice. 43% of those surveyed, wished it was possible to discover new music through one website.
This could be good news to both current players in the market as well as aspiring new entrants, as there is obvious scope for someone to develop a good service that gains widespread approval and goes on to command the majority of the market.
Dr Greg Wilder Chief Science Officer at OMR said, “People clearly expect more from music recommendation systems. Current search technology is expensive and limited to subjective descriptions of music, which are often just not good enough. We are focused on changing that.”
