Discovery, dating and profiles

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from Lynne Sandler, creator of the A Sound Match dating site, following up Paul Lamere citing my categorisation of music listeners at the SanFran MusicTech Summit. As her site explains, Lynne "stumbled upon her music-matchmaking theory over 15 years ago after a painful first date with a man who listened exclusively to 80's hair bands". Ouch.

A Sound Match profiles its users on the basis of questions about their music listening habits and then classifies them as either a Diamond in the Rough, a Heart of Gold, a Shining Star or an Unchained Melody. As you can see from the graphic, I came out as a Diamond in the Rough — "devotee, fan, music lover, you've heard it all…" — which seems more or less equivalent to the 'Savant' category in the Project Phoenix classification that I use. Lynne does not claim to have used rigorous scientific methods (and I don't know how the Project Phoenix methodology would stand up to serious scrutiny), but there seems to be a reasonable mapping between the two classifications.

Let's not get hung up over whether there is a proven link between music taste/listening and emotional compatibility between two people. (My view: the two areas are not independent of each other, but the exact nature of the link depends heavily on context, making it hard to predict.) The main point of A Sound Match, as I see it, is extending the role of music as an ice-breaker and help, errr, lubricate the first exchanges between strangers. If music be the food of love… and all that.

But there's a serious point about discovery, as well. A Sound Match encourages its users to create "Get to know me playlists". This illustrates why we shouldn't treat discovery as an abstract activity that takes place in a vacuum, and is informed only by a Platonic desire to extend your cultural horizons. If a recommender system tells me I should try out some Elvis Costello track, I'd probably ignore it because I've never clicked with his music. But if I were looking for a date and this same track was on the get-to-know-me list of someone I liked the look of, and talking about it might help me click with her, then it would be a different matter. (All hypothetically, of course, as my profile on A Sound Match is for research purposes only — honestly, Lucy!)

Connecting with culture through people and connecting with people through culture. There's more on how A Sound Match works. I previously wrote about dating and discovery in the context of books. And in the book, I describe how sexual energy drives discovery on sites like Dark Love.

Comments

[Lynne]

Thanks, David. I will be thrilled if people discover music they would otherwise overlook because the recommendation came from a cute human vs. machine. Since I rank matches by likelihood of compatibility, I hope people pay closer attention and are pleasantly surprised by these recommendations, as well as by the people recommending them. Having members send playlists inside emails is meant to be the ultimate ice breaker.

I enjoy reading your blog and look forward to hearing more!

Lynne