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.
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