GrindEFX

Earlier this evening, Wired reported that a programming team has finally won the Netflix Prize, after over three years of competition.

The goal of the competition was to increase the accuracy of the recommendations that Netflix gives its customers – that is, when a Netflix user sees “If you liked this movie, you might also like these movies,” the results would be more relevant and useful.

More details about the competition and the winning team can be found at Wired, or in this posting from ReadWriteWeb, but here we ask, “what does this mean for musicians?”

Quite simply, better recommendation systems will allow music fans to discover new artists that they enjoy quicker and easier. Musicians will be able to rely less on traditional gatekeepers – radio, record labels, the press – and reach their audience directly. Recommendation systems provide an incentive for emerging musicians to participate in the market, especially those musicians in niche genres or appealing to non-mainstream tastes.

Hit Culture and the Long Tail

The traditional music industry has focused on hits and blockbusters primarily because the expense of distribution and physical limitations of retail have limited the amount of product that could be on the shelves. Combine that with the inherent uncertainties of the entertainment market in general, and you had a system that had to rely on hits.

Along comes digital media and widespread internet access. All of a sudden, you don’t have to worry about warehouses, trucks, or retail space to distribute and sell music. Toward the beginning of the developing Web, starry-eyed optimists dreamed of a “celestial jukebox,” where anyone anywhere could access any song ever recorded.

Author Chris Anderson discussed this in length in his seminal book, “The Long Tail.” He thought that these changes in distribution economics would result in a shift away from hits and toward less-popular and niche products. The amount of sales coming from the “head” of a distribution curve – where the hits and blockbusters reside – would soon be outweighed by those coming from the “tail” – where everything else is. And without the “tyranny of physical space” limiting the amount of products available, that tail could go on for a very, very long time.

But that’s not what happened. Several studies have shown that the “blockbuster effect” remains with digital retailers. There has been a slight shift, but nothing like what Anderson and others imagined.

The question is, why not? Turns out, while the Long Tail theory is made possible by digital media and the internet, it is still missing something to make it a reality. In short, people aren’t going to go out of their way to search for music that may possibly appeal to them more than what they hear on the radio, from friends, or read about. There’s a lot of music in the long tail, and quite frankly, a lot of it is garbage. Only the most passionate music listener – a small percentage of the total audience – is willing to sift through all that.

Recommendations – Making the Long Tail Work

Enter recommendation systems. Netflix and Amazon have been in the forefront of implementing recommendation systems on their sites (”Customers who bought this book also bought…”) and they have seen the results in increased sales. Several studies have confirmed that visible recommendation systems drive demand down the long tail.

Sixty percent of Netflix rentals come from its recommendation system. Since Netflix relies on people discovering new movies to watch and continue their subscription, it began the Netflix Prize to improve those recommendations.

The Netflix Prize being reached is only one example of all the hard work being done to improve recommendation systems. Implementation of recommendation engines on all sorts of sites continues to grow. Soon, recommendations will be everywhere.

Currently, sites like Last.fm and Pandora show the potential that recommendation systems have for increasing music discovery.

The growing presence and accuracy of recommendation systems will only serve to help independent and emerging musicians reach their future fans.