Can you believe that people used to listen to the radio to discover music? Or even before that…? (No, let’s not look any further.) Music lovers today, especially those who are into dance music, would balk at such an idea. We’ve got SoundCloud. We’ve got blogs. Pandora. Spotify. Facebook. Myspace. iHeartRadio. The list goes on.
It can be a little overwhelming trying to keep up. To be honest, most of us don’t, or can’t. For those of us who want to find new music that appeals to our established tastes, having a tool available can be a relief and a time-saver. Back in July, we wrote about LiveNation’s acquisition and formal launch of a music discovery app called Boomrat, which takes the work out of the discovery process. The best part? It’s directed at dance music fans exclusively.
Boomrat has just launched a new feature called Directory, which gives users of the app the ability to look at lists of top artists (Trending, Featured and Emerging, respectively), top Boomrat users, and top music blogs. Boomrat claims to show users “the 30 most relevant artists right now according to online data and analytics” when it displays 30 artists across the page.
The designers of the app share that their selections were made using consumer-driven data pulled from the site, blog and social media activity, online stats and coverage, along with feedback from music curators & users. Top blogs are chosen based upon “content quality and reputation”, among other things .The algorithms that calculate trends for Boomrat are secret, but Boomrat shared with us that they “are constantly refining the algorithm to make it more and more objective”.
Boomrat applies science to finding good music.
Competitors all vary slightly in their methods for putting together suggestions for users. SoundCloud shows music shared by people you follow, but there’s no filter based upon aggregate shares; Pandora uses a sound-focused algorithm, and Hype Machine pays attention to what music bloggers blog about.
From what we understand, Boomrat is takes the most mathematical approach, although they attempt to tie numbers to trends that can be tricky to pin down with analytics. Does a calculation of popularity find you what you want to listen to? The only way to see how it compares with what you use now is to give it a go (it’s free!). Be sure to let us know what you think.
via lessthan3
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