The Archives: Shuttered Google Services
From 2006:
A new service is available from Google Talk, and it blows my chances completing a Google-free week. Well, technically, I still haven’t done any Google searches though, so maybe I can still make it.
A few weeks ago, Google gave Google talk users the option of displaying “What’s Playing” as their personal message. This week, Google rolls out Music Trends, a window into the world of what people are listening.
This seems to be an interesting experiment in some form of social networking. While Yahoo Music allows you to see other user’s recommendations, this seems to mainly be a top 30 list for what’s playing in any respective genre. The default genre is Alternative – World, which set me up for feeling really old when I didn’t recognize any of the bands or titles.
I found the way to switch Genres and also to switch to Unites States only. This didn’t help me in the Alternative Category, but it did make much more sense in the rock, classic rock and punk genres.
Some of the classifications make me wonder, however. Seeing Michael Jackson’s Thriller listed under Blues, Cutting Crew listed under Classic Rock . . . something’s not right. Then, it dawns on me. There seems to be many mistakes and confusion in the file-trading services, not that I would ever use one. But I have seen that many genres and artist-songs do not match on those services, which makes me wonder about the extent of file trading and the impact on music trends, such as this.
The occasional misclassification aside, This is a fairly limited look into some long-tail studies. The list by genre simply whets the appetite. I’d really like the option to be able to see a longer list or dig into sub-genres.
Getting into a few of the genres I was comfortable with (what? No 80’s New Wave?) I felt a little more relaxed, and I accepted the inevitable of getting older. The Classic Rock category was much more to my liking – not many surprises there, FreeBird is #2.