The State of Online Music - Online Social Networks
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Online Social Networks
Unquestionably with the latest waves of mass social networks, music communities have sprung up. In the past few years these online social networks have acquired a great deal of popularity. Millions of people are signing up, frequently checking in, and expanding their online virtual social circles.
Audioscrobbler was launched more than a few years ago. This service allowed participants, with the use of a plug-in, to gather a huge number of statistics regarding the most listened-to tracks. Ultimately it cross-linked fans of the same bands and artists, recommending tracks that others were frequently listening to because they had the same music taste.
This service achieved its popularity because thousands of people expanded their musical horizons and found bands and artist of which they weren't even aware. Therefore, this benefited not only the listeners but also the artists, because it gave them wider exposure. More than a few not so well-known bands' sales rose thanks to this service!
Furthermore, this Audioscrobbler service merged with Last.fm. Due to this, Last.fm started offering services to maintain audio blogs, creating personalized radio stations based on listeners' preference. These stations could be automatically generated via the gathered statistics or manually by the listener. Then sharing with friends was possible.
A few other music social network alternatives that are blossoming right now include:
iLike
PureVolume
Project
Music Nation
and so forth. All of these services offer the possibility of creating personalized playlists, and based on these you can search and meet people with similar preferences, find new bands due to genre similarities, and so on.
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