The mystery of Pandora

[melanina]

So, I'm amused by the non-random randomness of Pandora and have been creating different stations to listen to at work. Today? Nirvana. I was irritated that the program decided that just because I liked Kurt's voice, I also liked Eddie Vedder, but whatever. What confused me was that it never once played Hole. Not one song. Not even the ones that are

Comments

[chipadeedoodah]

Hole fans are likely to enjoy Nirvana as well. Nirvana fans are likely to think Courtney Love is a skank who murdered Kurt and wasted his fortune.

[melanina]

Ah, I guess that makes sense.

[jwz]

More precisely: Nirvana sold a lot more albums than Hole, so the fanbase is larger. The larger the fanbase, the bigger the percentage of people in that fanbase who don't have actual opinions about music but instead just listen to the top 40, so that's what their recommendations degenerate to. In any recommendation engine, you get better results if you never cop to enjoying a band who is actually popular, no matter how much you actually enjoy them.