Comments on: How Last.fm fails to work for non-Western music http://www.simoncolumbus.com/2009/11/18/how-last-fm-fails-to-work-for-non-western-music/ Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:28:39 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: simoncolumbus http://www.simoncolumbus.com/2009/11/18/how-last-fm-fails-to-work-for-non-western-music/comment-page-1/#comment-1630 simoncolumbus Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:22:45 +0000 http://www.simoncolumbus.com/?p=275#comment-1630 @Florian I don't think the problem is that the crowd is too small: The tags are quite consistent (the same tags are used for similar music, that is). If there was a lack of users, the problem would rather be tags that vary too widely or are too individual, but that's not the case here. So how is this a problem of last.fm's functionality? It is a problem caused by the service's user base. But as last.fm has incorporated user-generated "content" (the tags), user behavior contributes to its functionality. @Florian

I don’t think the problem is that the crowd is too small: The tags are quite consistent (the same tags are used for similar music, that is). If there was a lack of users, the problem would rather be tags that vary too widely or are too individual, but that’s not the case here.
So how is this a problem of last.fm’s functionality? It is a problem caused by the service’s user base. But as last.fm has incorporated user-generated “content” (the tags), user behavior contributes to its functionality.

]]> By: Florian http://www.simoncolumbus.com/2009/11/18/how-last-fm-fails-to-work-for-non-western-music/comment-page-1/#comment-1628 Florian Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:25:00 +0000 http://www.simoncolumbus.com/?p=275#comment-1628 How is what you describe a problem of last.fm's *functionality*? It seems to me like it's a crowdsourcing problem: Too few people listening to "non-western" music and those who do are too ignorant to apply good tags. Florian How is what you describe a problem of last.fm’s *functionality*? It seems to me like it’s a crowdsourcing problem: Too few people listening to “non-western” music and those who do are too ignorant to apply good tags.

Florian

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