
bbc now playing website
there was this site that barny sent around work the other weekend. on first impressions i thought it was good. but the more that i have been thinking about it, the more i really think its taking a step in the direction of where i think the internet and all this web 2.0 malarky should be going.
the site is an aggregator of other web content, all centred around the currently playing tracks off 4 bbc radio stations. as something is playing it pulls in gig information, album and tracklisting information, background on the band, presumably using last-fm, background on people who like listening to that artist, and also videos and interviews off youtube for you to watch in one place. all this content stays for a couple of minutes till the track changes and then it all refreshes to the next artist playing.
pretty cool. and a good use of content that is already there and ready for appropriation. but what it did remind me of is that its pretty much exactly the same idea that my brother and i had about a year ago for a possible direction for the main radio 1 website. the whole conversation came from us being somewhat tired and bored of the 'user generated content' aspect of webtrends these days and wanting to get back to something that is more useful and experiential and exciting for people to use on a day to day basis.
we thought about having the site be totally geared around what was currently playing - NOT letting users create their own playlists or streaming in music that you know your user might like already from their last-fm playlists or whatever. chances are that people have already heard those artists or that unless youre going to plumb the pandora databases for "you might also like..." suggestions, the things that you can recommend to people may probably be totally off the mark. i know it happens to me all the time. there is a lot to be said for similar styles of bands, but at the end of the day, what sets your heart racing with music can go from a justin timberlake track one minute, to a piece of opera the next. if you limit people to the same genre for ease of comparison, youre sort of forgetting the unexplainable thing in music that makes people love it so much.
sooo, with radio, i want to the djs to play me things that i might hate. i dont have to like it. i dont have to go out and buy it. its good to have an opinion, even if its a negative one. but then, on occasion, there will be something that you have never heard before or that you never thought you would like but it stops you in your tracks and changes your life for a few short minutes. a website that then made it easier for you to find out about that track and put you two clicks away from seeing that band live or buying the album can only be a good thing. especially for most people of my generation who grew up with radio before the days of internet music on demand, and constantly walking into a room to hear a track but having missed the bit where they told you what it was. then spending the next 3 weeks trying to figure it out. its about discovery. its about someone else's take on music and you can share in that. thats why john peel was so great. he'd play the orb after cat power, belgian hardcore after the ramones. it didn't matter what it was, aslong as it was good. when radiohead stood in for zane lowe recently, im sure there were a lot of their fans who were listening to the show, still wondering why thom yorke just wanted to play MIA and dubstep. "but this isn't guitar based rock??" although maybe im being harsh there.
user generated content has made the internet a more useful place in a lot of areas, but i also think that it has killed a lot of opinion. people have blogs, but are getting more and more afraid of saying "this is what i like" because of the amount of people that will then return comments saying "youre an idiot". recently on andrew collins' website - http://www.wherediditallgoright.com/BLOG/, he stopped writing posts because of the disparaging comments that people were leaving. lets let people voice their thoughts please. if you don't agree, then thats fine, write your own blog instead of just arguing on other peoples.
lets not try and dilute the population, lets celebrate differences, talk to someone on last-fm whos music compatibility rating with you is low. you know, they still might be a nice person.
all this neighbour thing is doing is to herd people into little boxes of likeness. sure its a world where you can talk about your similarities, but isn't it also a world where you might miss out on being surprised.