Meet your neighbors
Over at eMusic.com, we just re-launched an (unfortunately) seldom-used feature: the Neighbors page (or check out my neighbors if you’re not an eMusic user). “Neighbors” are eMusic users who have shown they have similar tastes to you, through shared downloads and ratings. We take a handful of these users, and show you a few of the artists they’ve been downloading recently. Here’s how it works.
The old Neighbors page had a drab layout, with user nicknames arranged in a grid, and artist names underneath each. It was hard to extract much useful information from this page — you never knew where to look, and your best hope was to kind of randomly scan around looking for an artist you recognized. We’ve spruced it up and aimed to make it more interactive, fun, and hopefully useful.
The new format emphasizes the connections between users and artists. Now neighbors are arranged in a column on the left, with columns of artists in the center and on the right. The center list shows artists that you share with your neighbors, and the one on the right includes artists that your neighbors have downloaded but you haven’t (recommendations of a sort). Artists that are more popular with your neighbors have a larger font. The fun part is that when you move your mouse over any user or artist, you’ll see the connections between them: hovering over a user name will reveal the artists that user has recently downloaded, while an artist name will connect to users who’ve downloaded that artist, as well as other artists they also downloaded. It’s a more visual way of presenting the information, and the center column of “shared” artists gives you a logical place to start browsing your neighbors.
We also used the new Neighbors page to start experimenting with an oft-requested feature from users: sound samples that play within the browser (through Flash), rather than requiring an external media player. Clicking on an artist name displays a mini-playlist of their most popular songs (like on the artist page), and plays the 30-second samples of each. The intent is to get people listening fast, rather than making them wade through additional pages (and lose track of their neighbors).
As our astute users have pointed out, just because your neighbor has downloaded an artist, it doesn’t necessarily mean they like it. Nor does it indicate that artist bears any similarity to other artists they’ve downloaded in the past. Neighbors (as they exist right now anyway) don’t show you true “recommendations,” but they are an interesting pulse on your surrounding eMusic users, and a testament to their variety of taste. Check them out.
Love it? Hate it? Improvements you’d like to see? Tell us here or on the message boards.
Thanks for posting this – I never used the old one but I like this. Obviously there is more it could do but it is a big improvement. One question though is…are you stuck with your neighbors? I would like to be able to refresh and get a new set now and again.
emusic should buy last.fm – then you’d really have all this nailed, and could give itunes a run for its money, DRM or no DRM
Very nice upgrade.
Wow. This is a very well constructed new feature. The layout is easy to understand and the flash player works great. One question: For some of my neighbors, there doesn’t appear to be any shared artists – only recommendations. How does that happen?
There’s probably a formal location to make requests for new features, but probably the most desirable feature I could suggest would be to indicate which songs you have already downloaded on any page that you can download.
thanks
I like the neighbors upgrade. As far as suggestions, I would like to be able to remove artists from the recommended column. At the moment, The White Stripes are showing in that column for me. I don’t need them in that column – I already own two albums and don’t want any others. Of course there are many artists showing that I would like to check out, but it would be nice to eliminate artists who for one reason or another, I know I won’t be downloading.
Only 4 of the 13 or so shared artists shown on my page are artists I’ve truly chosen to download; the 9 remaining must have come from the free daily downloads (I notice that at least 2 of them are the same as shown in the sample above) and so I get mostly suggestions of music I would never download. Not even close! I almost never get the DD anymore; why aren’t arists whom I obviously like (based of the number of downloads of the artist) used rather than so many artists of whom I have only one track?
Yikes, the player feature needs a volume control!! Way too loud on my system. Great idea otherwise.
Paul
Seems cool, except I got a recommendation of Kenny Rogers. Heh.
BTW regarding “As our astute users have pointed out, just because your neighbor has downloaded an artist, it doesn’t necessarily mean they like it.”
Why not use the star ratings instead of going by what users download..
or maybe use both?
Nice improvement. Although the recommendations weren’t exactly what I’d want ( either things I have already, or not my taste), I did use this new feature to find a few neighbors who had downloaded the same items I did – and then I looked at their full Download lists. So now I just added 3-4 albums to my Save lists in the last few minutes, including a few I didn’t know were on eMusic. So it works for me.
One thing I’d like for both the Neighbors and Friends tabs is a section for Comments under each person’s name. (Just like on the SFL page.) That way, when I look at their lists, I can jot a note to remind me why they interested me. (Usually it’s because they have a lot of albums in a particular genre that interests me.) If I already like what’s on their lists, I imagine I’ll be interested in their future choices as well, and will want to go back and look again.
Wow! that is a much better system. ChristieLove if you are reading this Post, you’ve been my neighbor since ’03. Wuzzup
If nothing else, YES YES YES to the Flash previews vs. m3u files. I know that’s a huge project but it would be great to have that throughout the site. Thanks!
Omigod, I am so happy to see an inline music player appear on eMusic, even if it’s only on this page for now. Please drop all other web-design tasks and get that into the album pages!! I promise I’ll download at least seventeen times as much stuff if you do.
Now criticism:
The “recommendations” column shouldn’t include any artists you’ve rated albums by. Like, in my case, the Pixies. I don’t need eMusic telling me to listen to the Pixies; I bought all their albums when they came out (which is why I haven’t downloaded any.)
Likewise, the “in common” column probably shouldn’t include artists you’ve only downloaded one or two tracks by (and haven’t rated any albums of). EMusic keeps thinking I like Cat Power, when honestly I don’t remember ever hearing anything by here. Maybe I downloaded one track years ago but didn’t like it much?
Just don’t implement any of these improvements till you get that music player all over the site!!
OK a couple additional comments. 1)I agree the new Flash Preview is preferred to the old m3u, that way I don’t have to interrupt my current playlist to hear stuff that probably I won’t like. 2) No one has mentioned this yet, and I came across it by accident; right click on a band/artist name to have the choice to go to artist emusic page (either same window/tab or new window/tab).
Peace,
MiDoJo