Random personal notes on this “article” in the New York Times on how people use playlists and randomization:

• This entry is an excellent instant reaction to the piece. Why are such simple functions (shuffle, smart playlists) so unknown and mysterious?
• Mr. Angus (although somewhat fruity) is creating playlists for specific purposes. Good!
• Smart playlists will not solve the randomization or conspiracy theory problem. Smart playlists are based on completely objective data. The only way you could never have an “incorrect” song play is by providing/accessing metadata about uses and meanings of particular songs.
• Saving the uses and meanings of songs is, oddly enough, exactly the kind of stuff that I am doing with Mixmatcher. As people add songs to playlists, it is relating that song with some sort of subjective metadata. Over time, you will be able to get an understanding of what a song means, along with its possible uses based on the playlists it has been added to, without having to know the song beforehand.
• I really like the idea of TuneTags, which is basically creating adhoc metadata (ala del.icio.us) for songs. Let people tag them however they want to describe them, and let the aggregation sort out what is the most popular way of tagging. (“Kill them all and let a Norse God sort ’em out!”) I think the missing link with this idea is how to use this newfound data: What is the best way to make a mix for Mr. Angus bike workout? Create a smart playlists based on songs tagged with “upbeat” and “biking”? Are people really tagging things that way?
• I really like the possibilities of Mixmatcher or TuneTags for disovering new music. There are literally millions of songs that are published every week. There is no way to even begin picking the relevant (although not necessarily always “good”) songs out of that haystack. Even if only a small percentage of people tagging or sorting songs, I think it would still be providing enough data to make the songs useful to rest of the population. It would at least level the playing field, instead of 99% of those songs being obscure in a month.
• I think tagging ala del.icio.us might end up being easier and thus more popular, but that alone wouldn’t be giving people the final end product they desire. Even if you do give people another way to access the music, you still don’t have the things that mixtapes do well: structure and specific song selection, often done by a trusted individual.
• I don’t want to say it, but Audioscrobbler is another app that I don’t think fulfills its potential and/or does a very good job of its mission priorities (if I am to go by what their site tells me) of a) building my musical profile, b) matching me to people with similar tastes, and c) personalized music recommendations. Part A is being handled very well, but Part B and Part C are basically one section or page of each user profile. Does anyone know of any apps built using their data?

  (This reminds me of one of my favorite jokes: Two women are eating at a restaurant. One says, “This food is terrible,” and the other woman says, “And such small portions!”)

This making sense to anybody?