Memetic elements to the music I enjoy

Rym

Pandora has decided, after much deliberation, that I prefer music including certain particular elements:

a Romantic-Era style
tonal harmony
minor key tonality
a passionate atmosphere
an emotional aesthetic
a well-known composer
a bittersweet sentiment

Two of the stations I have created eventually settled almost entirely on songs including most or all of these elements.

It's interesting, particularly since Pandora selects music based on these almost genetic elements, rather than a typical coorelation engine. It's akin to a political system where one votes "on the issues, not on the people."

Omnutia

That's nice.. I suppose.

An excellent example of Rym's tendency to link mundane occurrences to deep philosophical ideas.

Rym

That's nice.. I suppose.

An excellent example of Rym's tendency to link mundane occurrences to deep philosophical ideas.

I wouldn't call any of that philosophical, so much as practical assessment. Genetic/Memetic selection systems just seem to be much more accurate than coorelative engines due to their granularity. Coorelative engines follow holistic tastes with total works. They could determine that, because I like Rachmaninoff for example, I may also enjoy Chopin, on the grounds that other people are statistically likely to enjoy both. Memetic engines, however, could determine the same thing based on the fact that I appear to enjoy certain particular, individual elements of particular songs, which are common to both Rachmaninoff and Chopin.

Omnutia

I was referring to the last paragraph but I suppose philosophical wasn't such a good choice.

Rym

I was referring to the last paragraph but I suppose philosophical wasn't such a good choice.

I was simply analogizing. It's like a simile.

TheWhaleShark

That's generally the way I recommend metal to people. I ask for bands they currently listen to, and then ask what it is they like about those bands. Usually, you can find a trend right away; someone who likes a bunch of symphonic power metal is probably after an "epic" feel, a dark Gothic aesthetic, and a little bit of Romantic-era compositions with sprinklings of fugue textures.

It's a bit eerie that these things work so well. Despite the fact that I know that my preferences are simply the emergent behavior of a complex system, it's slightly unsettling to have my preferences accurately predicted by some code on the web.

Funfetus

There was a really interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell where he talked about about people who had, pretty successfully, built systems that could predict how much money a movie would make, or how popular a song or album would be, based on these kinds of elements. Unfortunately, none of the systems can tell you how to make a hit song or movie, just whether yours will be.

cosmicenema

It's like a simile.

Nice.