Scrobble my mood

I'm back on Last.fm after a long stint on Spotify. I have paid for the premium services of both in the past, but both are disappointing in one area: knowing what to play next. Spotify makes you choose your own tracks (the Radio functionality is useless), which is simple but very limited. I barely discover new music on Spotify, it's usually just from searching for things I've heard elsewhere. Occasionally I will discover something new by listening to compilation albums which contain tracks I've searched for, but that's about the limit of it.

Last.fm, by contrast, makes it almost impossible not to discover new stuff unless you only listen to your Library or Loved Tracks all the time. But the piece of functionality that should do exactly what I want (click-free music that I want to listen to for hours) is the Recommended Radio, and it's not great. Which is surprising, because it knows everything I have listened to for the last few years, as I've scrobbled even my Spotify listening.

So what's the problem? Inappropriate tracks. I don't mean offensive, I mean not matching my mood. Some artist radio stations are good matches for my mood and don't end up playing me rubbish; Rob Dougan is one, but mostly because it plays me lots of Rob Dougan, who is just excellent, particularly at work.

My mood is very variable, and the music has to fit it or I'll just switch it off. At the same time, I usually want the music to just play without me needing to babysit it. On Spotify, I tend to play specific playlists built up over weeks or months of selections and deletions. On Last, playlists are nearly pointless (you can't just play a playlist until it has a very large number of tracks in it, so you never actually build them up), so I end up playing tag or artist radio.

I've never worked out, however, whether playing the Uptempo tag radio will be the same for me as for someone else - does it take my tastes into account?

Idea: Do mood-matching to link my scrobbles
If I listen to a load of tracks in one go, and I skip some of them before they scrobble, then I'm probably in a particular mood, especially if some of those I skip are loved tracks; it's not that I don't like the track, I just don't want to listen to it now. Thus, we have more meta about this collection of tracks; they are probably mood-related. So instead of making me work out playlists for myself, or cast myself to the winds of tag or artist radio, Last could do mood-specific recommendation.

The power of the Web 2+ world is to do algorithmic cleverness in order to deliver some very human requirement automatically. Google goes beyond mere links now, and personalises searches, fixing spelling mistakes and suggesting maps. Social networks have to handle my social segregation between close friends, acquaintances, family and work, without telling work I'm pregnant, or the matriarchy about my relationship status before I'm ready. Thus Last has done well to facilitate self-measurement (scrobbling), but they have some way to go to give me a set-and-forget radio station that works for me.

So for now, I stick to pop artist radio... the mainstream is at least inoffensive to the ear for the most part, and fairly peppy.

Optional paying is giving, so let me give right.

Digital artwork is easily pirated, paying is optional.

Optional payment is a gift, a reciprocation, a thanks, honouring its creator.

We give to reciprocate, so why give most of the price to intermediaries? 

I have come to realise that the above are all unavoidable statements, in order of descending certainty.

In a traditional thing-based society, we can use physical force to make sure people pay for what they take. This is necessary both because taking means the original owner no longer has it (copying is manufacture), and because resource is limited. But in a digital world, I can give you a song and keep it as well. It is also near-impossible to enforce (literatally, force) laws controlling sharing and copying of digital media.

The response of traditional media and the status-quo has been to attempt to enforce thing-world control of digital artefacts; creating rights management software to prevent you distributing your music by making it more like a physical thing; traceable, hard to copy, sending the police to find you if you disobey. Understandable, but a losing battle. Computers change often making any such systems obsolete quickly (Why can't I play my albums any more? I paid for them!) and widely evaded, because imperfections are quickly exploited and the exploits easily distributed. The internet is made to distribute data quickly and freely, so all control systems are fighting the basic nature of the system.

The result has been a two-layer system: On one it is easy and free to get digital artefacts without paying for them; until iTunes and Spotify, it was actually easier to pirate music than to go and buy it. Cheaper, faster and better = revolution. On the other it is easy and reasonably cheap in moderate quantities to buy or license music. Most people, particularly the teenagers who will drive the future culture, therefore have a choice whether or not to pay.

It is not quite as simple as clicking Pay or Free download; for the older generations (twenties and up) there is a significant social distinction between pirating and buying, and the legal difference means Spotify is limited to legally licensed music. So the two layers are quite separate, meaning each group tends to employ only one or other system in the main; some groups download everything, some buy everything. The difference is predictably related to disposable income as well as socially-enforced stigma.

It is, however, already a reasonably free choice for most people whether to accept a minor amount of guilt and download something to try it out, or to stump up for it. The barrier is far lower on renting sites like Spotify, but it still exists. I can opt to look for an illegal electronic version of a new book or buy the hardback; buying the artefact is seen as a way of supporting the author, in the same way that ticket and merchandise sales are seen as a way of supporting a team.

So people are already used to making a morally-guided choice based on personal expression about where their money goes; we have been taught by consumerism "You are what you buy". If you doubt that for a moment, consider whether any advert for a premium brand focuses on the product or the viewer's self-perception. You pay a bit more because you're worth it.

If I buy a hardback book, I know that most of the money is going to the printer, the publisher, the retailer. But some of it will go to the author (once past their advance). We accept this bargain; this is the author-sanctioned mechanism for both thanking the author and obtaining a physical artefact of self-identity; "Thank you Jo Rowling, my copy of The Half-Blood Prince will take pride of place on my bookshelf. I am a Potter fan."

But if I pay for a copy of an ebook, there is no printer, no retailer. If I already like the author, they have no need for a publicist in this transaction. It's me thanking the author and their editors. Why should iTunes or Amazon take a cut?

The (small) cut should go only to whoever creates the system permitting me to thank the artist at my discretion, which somehow lets me build my identity by the same token.

This kind of giving is expressive, social and efficient by minimising middle-men. Just what the internet is for.