On 1/18/08, Vlad Fratila <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > So today I find this image on last.fm > http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/160/405256.jpg > You can find it at this page http://www.last.fm/music/Kooks > > IxDA has 2 topics on this, quite theoretical and interesting: > http://ixda.org/discuss.php?post=9948 > and > http://ixda.org/discuss.php?post=16143 > > I'm curious for thoughts about the method last.fm is using to clean up > their > tags. For now, it does not seem much. > And if this is older, the fact that I haven't seen it until now must mean > something.
I don't think this is related to either taxonomies or folksonomies as there is no classification happening. I am an obsessive last.fm user myself, and have actually gone through and fingerprinted my iTunes library (it doesn't take much human effort, just CPU time). What's happening here is that last.fm wants to come to consensus on *how to label* a given track, album, etc., not what genre it is or whatever. They're trying to solve the problem of having the same track show up as multiple different tracks. Previously, if two users scrobbled the same track but with slightly different ID3 tags, they'd show up as different tracks. The last.fmtagging system (which is about as folksonomic as it gets) is something completely separate. Conceptually, the "folksonomy pointing to the taxonomy" technique discussed in one of the links you sent is similar, but in this case you may have several different ways of labeling a track that point to the "canon" label. For example, I downloaded a Roger Rotor album from eMusic and the ID3 tags for all the tracks are in all lower case. When I listen to tracks from this album they show up on my last.fm profile as, e.g., "Roger Rotor - Beyond Beyond" instead of "roger rotor - beyond beyond." Personally, I think this sort of thing is great for a site like last.fm. People use it for all sorts of things, but discovering new music is probably it's primary value (well, for me anyway : ). So when I really like a track I can click on it to see who else has listened to it and then see what else they've listened to. Before tag normalization, that would be more difficult because what I'd be looking at is not everyone who listened to the same track, but only those people whose ID3 tags for the track were the same as mine. - Fred (http://www.last.fm/user/captainbleep) ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
