Maybe I’m making this up, but when I was in middle school, I’m pretty sure that Sam Goody had a list on one of their walls with all of the new CDs that were coming out soon. That list, recommendations from friends, listening to the radio, and watching MTV were how I discovered new music. It worked, but it was risky. Sometimes you’d end up buying an absolutely terrible CD like Pras’ Ghetto Supastar, the album not the song. Today it’s completely different. You can listen before you buy (or keep listening and never buy), and you can get recommendations based on real data. Whether you’re using Spotify, Vevo, MTV, or iheartradio to find or consume music, you’re actually benefiting from The Echo Nest and their big data approach to music. They’re a Somerville, MA based company, and they “provide the largest repository of dynamic music data in the world – over a trillion data points on over 30 million songs — to help application developers build smarter music apps.”
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