An Owl's 2 hoots

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

World of music - 1

When I logged into yahoo messenger to listen to Launch Cast, I was welcomed with this message. Adappavingala! I hope this would just be a temporary thing.

I have very fond memories of Launch cast. I first got introduced to internet radio in 2001 in those glorious grad school days, where I spent marathon hours doing assignments, projects, chatting (oh yea!), on-campus job searches, all the while listening to internet radio. Poor grad students cannot afford to buy CDs. Downloading MP3s was frowned upon in the computing centers at school. Our savior was Internet radio! So, it was first the radio player in Mtv.com, then Netscape radio, and then the my favorite - Yahoo launch cast. Raaga was the most popular source for desi music. But it's not "radio" exactly.

The beauty of radio lies in the tantalizing expectation of what would come up next. An ideal companion when one is doing other works. FM in India (I do not belong to the radio mirchi era; mine was more archaic) was a favorite past time when I was home and was not doing anything else. But I experienced it to the maximum after coming here.

You really get to discover music when you listen to radio. With all humility, I consider myself to be a pretty good music enthusiast and I attribute a large part of that to the music which I stumbled upon, actively pursued or stalked - all which had a start point from Launch Cast. Entire genres of music which have become my favorites now had to do with the "seed" sown in net radios. And the beauty lies in how broad or how deep you are willing to go to find your music.

For instance, the well known Robert Miles' "Children" can be considered as a somewhat dreamy, uplifting, ephemeral number. Once this song is rated, launch cast found Sasha's "Wavy-gravy" - a true trance classic. Then, I rate Sasha as an artist and the album (Airdrawndagger) which featured this song. Magically, the radio then plays (well, it may take a couple of days to propagate fully) Sasha and Digweed's mixed version of "The Silence - Mike Koglin" from Northern Exposure. which by itself is not an original, but a damn good number, and belongs to hard-core trance. Slowly but surely, the radio plays each song in the album and if I like them, I go buy the album. To cut a long story short, Northern exposure would remain one of my most coveted double-CDs.

Of course, not all of the listenings are based on just by chance. Sometimes I pick an artist and rate ALL his songs and albums in the launch cast website and eventually, the radio HAS to play it. Tupac, U2, Paul van Dyk, Air, Tiesto were some of the artists I actively pursue(d).

There were a lot of artists which I have rated as "uggh" so, the radio learns that too and never plays anything from that artist.

There may be other players which perform much better, but I was most comfortable with Launch cast. Given a good amount of positive and negative examples, a learning system would be able to predict/discriminate music tastes too. A very nice concept from which I hugely benefitted and am still. Even if they indeed ban Net radio, it is not the end of the world, since I already have the wind below my wings.

But I hope it won't end this way.

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3 Comments:

  • Oi, achei teu blog pelo google tá bem interessante gostei desse post. Quando der dá uma passada pelo meu blog, é sobre camisetas personalizadas, mostra passo a passo como criar uma camiseta personalizada bem maneira. Até mais.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at June 30, 2007 3:33 AM  

  • Hmmm...
    Still remember those times when you used to run out of skips for songs you did not want to listen and was forced to hear what the radio used to churn out.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at July 02, 2007 4:21 AM  

  • Rodrigo: poda naaye!

    --..--..--

    Slash: I still am stuck in the "fanatic" level. Have not rated enough to graduate to the next stage!

    By Blogger tt_giant, at July 03, 2007 11:14 AM  

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