Savage Beast Technologies is yet another company developing a music recommendation engine to connect listeners to music they will enjoy. Many companies play in this field, including Amazon, ChoiceStream, Yahoo, and Polyphonic HMI. Savage Beast’s model is closer to that of Polyphonic HMI‘s, measuring more than 400 musical characteristics of songs to create “fingerprints” used to offer recommendations (as opposed to Amazon’s collaborative filtering model, which simply compares customers’ purchase history with those of other customers). Why do I like Savage Beast? Not because of its oh-so-zany name, but because of its founder, Tim Westergren’s perspective (from Boston Globe):
“The key problem is to connect people with just the music they like.” Westergren became convinced that, as music became global and digital, there would be far too many choices to approach [the old] way. He was also miffed that music labels weren’t taking chances on independent artists who hadn’t attracted large audiences, and he hoped to find a new platform to get their music to market.On behalf of unsigned artists everywhere, we thank you, Tim. Savage Beast Technology is now being used by Best Buy, Borders, AOL, Tower Records, Barnes & Noble, and others. Last year, the company received a second round of funding totaling $7.8 million. It sounds like they’re well on their way to scoring big. I would love to know if there has been any affect on independent music sales at those locations implementing the technology, or if there are plans to incorporate unsigned music into recommendation engines? ]]>
Leave a Reply