Explains Eliot Van Buskirk at Evolver.Fm:
I like Yo La Tengo, but I have never “Liked” Yo La Tengo on Facebook. Still, Facebook has determined that I would be interested to know that the band has released a new album. It has never done this before — not in the nearly six years I have used the service — so it feels safe to say that Facebook just rolled out a brand spanking new music recommendation engine.
How does it know that I care about Yo La Tengo releasing a new album? Well, I’ve Liked a bunch of bands that are similar to Yo La Tengo in various senses, such as Quickspace, Half Film, My Bloody Valentine, and Mogwai. I’ve also listened to this new Yo La Tengo album, Fade, on Spotify, at least once. Facebook knows about both of those things, and that’s why it put this album into my feed — even though I do not “follow” Yo La Tengo on Facebook:
Ever since Facebook formed a connective tissue across music and people, I’ve been wondering when it would start using that information to, in a sense, become a meta-music (or -movie, -book, -restaurant) service, by pointing people not to Yo La Tengo on a music service when it knows they like the band, but instead, pointing them back to Facebook itself, even after harvesting our behavior from its partners. It looks like that time has come.
Behold, THE FUTURE.
Here's the thing. I'm a pretty big music fan as it is; I don't need Facebook to tell me what I like because I take a deep, intrinsic joy in discovering the music I like. Recommendations are bullshit, mostly because EVERYONE has recommendations when it comes to music. What I'd love to see, however, is Facebook develop something quite the opposite of this: Music you'd hate. When Zuckerberg develops an algorithm to tell me what music I'd absolutely despise, then I'll be excited. An endless stream of Pitbull's face in my Newsfeed doesnt' count.
[H/T: Pigeons and Planes]
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