Columbia wants to know how you find new music

[roymond]

Music Lab will let you "download free music" ... uh ... whoopie?

I haven't checked it out yet, but figured I'd set the trap

[ken]

I thought you meant Columbia Records, as in 12 Cds for a penny.

ken

[sparks]

I am convinced that 4 of the 5 band names on the "have you heard of them" list are made up. It was all:

The Monkey Porridge Experiment (yes/no)
Couch Guys (yes/no)
Wall Puprle Bingo Madeup Band (yes/no)
U2 (yes/no)
The Made Up Band Name Monkey Soy Project (yes/no)

The rest was just stupid demographic information. Just one question that's music-related. After that they have you listen to and rate as many/few songs as you'd like, all of which sound like bad 2005 college rock (emo with EDGE, man. None of that wussy shit! We scream our bad poetry. Except for that one song on the album where we don't.). I picked my listens according to Sparks's law of predictable-band-name/style-correlation-in-collegey-music. "The Bolshevik Bop" (song title, don't remember the band name) was the only exception: the name is good, and suggests fun will follow, even if it's stupid fun. It was such hilariously awful faux-artsy melodramatic guitar noodling. Worse than most substandard SomeSongs entries, even (especially) in terms of instrumental skill. Absolutely everything else was competently self-produced and thoroughly awful screamo.

But yeah, the question is surely meant to be a trick. It's the sociology department, after all.


EDIT: sorry, it was the bolshevik boogie. I mean, I know you don't care, but here are the lyrics. I didn't know it had lyrics, because I only listened to the first three minutes of off-time guitar.

iv. The Bolshevik Boogie

A heart so dense
a monkey wrench
couldn't writhe or rend or splinter
its walls

Humility seeping
from his capillaries

Partition what you preach
into
Cute little sausage links
and
tempt the meek
with your pontifical meats

Ha ha ha. Sorry. HA.

No, seriously, go to the site. That's not even the worst of it.

http://www.sumrana.com/music3.html

[roymond]

Yeah, delete this thread. Very stupid. They all sounded like the same band...generic LA "alternative" rock. I wrote them with that feedback and they said "we'll keep your comments in mind when refining the site". There was something about how great it was that you could download the music for free and it's legal! so I also told them, well, there are hundreds of net-labels that let you do that and the music is superior. Too bad they didn't bother to use some of that.

[erik]

I think it's a psychology experiment designed to see if people choose to listen to a song just because alot of other people have downloaded it, because, like you said, all the songs sound an awful lot alike. Man, I'd venture a guess and say that all the songs on the site were made by like 4 or 5 bands.

[Mostess]

I think it's a psychology experiment

Most definitely. You have to give consent first (the form is typical psych study consent language and says, as it legally must, "The purpose of this study is to understand how people evaluate music.").

The research team seems to be working on statistical sampling techniques using naturally occuring "tell your friends to do the survey" methods, which would be a hell of a lot easier and efficient than random sampling if there was a way to account for all the weird biases that would creep into your data. My guess is they're not so interested in which songs you like or don't like, but the extent to which one of these songs becomes more popular than another. Since they're all about the same quality, they'll assume that they're all equally likely to become popular, so if one gets higher ratings, they'll figure there was some "hey man, listen to this one and go rate it!" going on in the sample---an estimate of bias.

Pretty neat idea, really.

P.S. And yes, I'm aware that if I'm right, I've just contaminated their sample further by pointing out their attempt at deception. But they need to account for that sort of bias, too, eh?

[Hoblit]

DUDE, it totally rawkzorz main!

I listened to two of the songs and just blew it off after that. I just came back here today and saw that I was manipulated.

I feel so used.

The music wasn't bad , but it wasn't good...and after reading ya'lls evaluation of the site's intent and purpose...I realize that the music had to be exactly that. Average as average can possibly be. Maybed dumbed down for public factor.

I still feel used.

[Leaf]

I voted that I loved every tune, but didn't download any. If you got the spare time, I recommend doing this, purely for diabolical pleasure.

[Mostess]

purely for diabolical pleasure.

Oh, Leaf. They'll see right through you. They're only sociologists, but they know what you're up to. The Second Foundation has already accounted for your mischief. You cannot win.

[sparks]

I think it's a psychology experiment designed to see if people choose to listen to a song just because alot of other people have downloaded it, because, like you said, all the songs sound an awful lot alike. Man, I'd venture a guess and say that all the songs on the site were made by like 4 or 5 bands.

I agree--they are actually pretty transparent about that one though--they almost admit it. That's part of what tipped me off to the "fake band name" survey, too, since they're pretty similar concepts.

I'm pretty sure, though, hoblit, that it doesn't matter whether the music is good or bad. Probably they thought they were getting a fair sampling of college rock, and were just too dim to know btter.

[HeuristicsInc]

ha ha, second foundation. awesome.
-bill