Merriam-Webster defines eclectic as "selecting what appears to be best in various doctrines, methods, or styles."
I play whatever sounds good to me, whether it be rock, alternative, reggae, soul, Celtic, Americana, blues, folk, electronica, soundtracks, jazz, or any other genre you can think of. I play new music and old music. Hard music and soft music. Happy music and sad music. Popular music and obscure music. In a nutshell, I play music that I like. As far as I'm concerned, all other labels are meaningless.
I guarantee you won't like every song I play, but I hope you'll like most of them. If you're open-minded about all kinds of music, Dynamic Range Radio may be the station for you.
Showing posts with label eclectic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eclectic. Show all posts
Dynamic Range Radio vs. Radio Paradise
In the world of eclectic internet radio stations, Radio Paradise is an institution. It was one of the first, and it's still one of the best. I have nothing but respect for what Bill Goldsmith and his wife Rebecca have created, and without Radio Paradise, Dynamic Range Radio almost certainly wouldn't exist.
Radio Paradise kindled my passion for internet radio, but after nearly a year of heavy listening I found myself less than satisfied, and I couldn't shake the idea that I'd love to create something similar to RP that better reflected my musical tastes. And so, Dynamic Range Radio was born.
Bill Goldsmith taught me a lot about how a DJ can turn radio into an art form, but he and I are from different generations, so it's natural that my playlist focuses more on music from the 80s and 90s as opposed to the 60s and 70s. I tend to think of Dynamic Range Radio as a more energetic, Gen-X alternative to Radio Paradise, and I always thought that DRR was every bit as eclectic as RP, but there was never any hard data to back up those claims. Until now.
One of Radio Paradise's loyal listeners has adapted a Last.FM tool that scrobbles every track RP plays, so now I can compare Radio Paradise and my broadcast to see how they match up.
That's what I see when I log in and visit the user page for the scrobbled version of Radio Paradise.
The two stations have a lot in common based on this cursory examination of artists played, but I love digging a little deeper with the various stats tools available through Last.FM, so I'll start with the Long Tail Analyzer and Eclectic Score Calculator, both of which I've written about before.
So, that gives me a small edge over the flagship station in the eclectic genre, but these tests barely scratch the surface. I'd love to see a Super-Duper-Eclectic test which analyzes your top 200 artists because, as the results of the Long Tail test indicate, the top 50 artists make up less than a quarter of the playlists on both stations. So how does that other 75% compare? And is Dynamic Range Radio really more energetic and more modern sounding? Check back soon for part 2 and you'll have your answer.
Radio Paradise kindled my passion for internet radio, but after nearly a year of heavy listening I found myself less than satisfied, and I couldn't shake the idea that I'd love to create something similar to RP that better reflected my musical tastes. And so, Dynamic Range Radio was born.
Bill Goldsmith taught me a lot about how a DJ can turn radio into an art form, but he and I are from different generations, so it's natural that my playlist focuses more on music from the 80s and 90s as opposed to the 60s and 70s. I tend to think of Dynamic Range Radio as a more energetic, Gen-X alternative to Radio Paradise, and I always thought that DRR was every bit as eclectic as RP, but there was never any hard data to back up those claims. Until now.
One of Radio Paradise's loyal listeners has adapted a Last.FM tool that scrobbles every track RP plays, so now I can compare Radio Paradise and my broadcast to see how they match up.
That's what I see when I log in and visit the user page for the scrobbled version of Radio Paradise.
The two stations have a lot in common based on this cursory examination of artists played, but I love digging a little deeper with the various stats tools available through Last.FM, so I'll start with the Long Tail Analyzer and Eclectic Score Calculator, both of which I've written about before.
The Long Tail
If you read this post you'll get a detailed analysis of how the long tail analyzer works. In a nutshell, it determines how often you play your top 50 artists, so the more artists in your playlist getting regular airplay, the longer your tail is.
When I compared Dynamic Range Radio and Radio Paradise with the Long Tail Analyzer, I discovered that both stations had the exact same score: 77%.
In other words, both stations play their top 50 artists a mere 23% of the time. That means lesser artists still receive the bulk of the airplay, and both stations offer a very wide variety of artists.
End result: Radio Paradise and Dynamic Range Radio are equally eclectic according to the Long Tail Analyzer. So, on to the next tool.
Eclectic Score Calculator
My first post on this tool can be found here. What it does is take your top 20 artists, finds the top 5 similar artists for each according to Last.FM users, then adds up the total number of similar artists to find a score. So, if you listen to nothing but British punk from 1977-1979, all your top artists will probably be tagged as similar to The Sex Pistols and The Clash, and your eclectic score will be very low.
End result: Dynamic Range Radio and Radio Paradise are equally eclectic according to the Eclectic Score Generator, with both stations scoring an impressive 94/100.
Super-Eclectic Score Calculator
The same site offers a second test which digs deeper by examining the top 50 artists instead of the top 20 and looks up the twenty most similar artists for each. That yields a score out of 1000, and, for the first time, delivers a clear winner in this analysis.
Dynamic Range Radio: 641/1000
Radio Paradise: 598/1000
End result: Dynamic Range Radio is more eclectic according to this test, whereas more of the artists in Radio Paradise's top 50 tend to sound alike.
So, that gives me a small edge over the flagship station in the eclectic genre, but these tests barely scratch the surface. I'd love to see a Super-Duper-Eclectic test which analyzes your top 200 artists because, as the results of the Long Tail test indicate, the top 50 artists make up less than a quarter of the playlists on both stations. So how does that other 75% compare? And is Dynamic Range Radio really more energetic and more modern sounding? Check back soon for part 2 and you'll have your answer.
Dynamic Range Radio Asks "How Eclectic Are You?" (Part Two)
As promised in my last post on the subject, here's a look at another tool created by a Last.FM user to analyze the eclecticness of your musical tastes by looking at the length of your musical tail.
For those who may be unfamiliar with the Long Tail Theory, here's a quick summary by Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, who coined the term in an October 2004 article and then later developed it into a book.
Dynamic Range Radio is definitely one of the little guys trying to carve out a niche in the long tail of the radio world, while Clear Channel is the best example of a short tail juggernaut playing only the most popular artists.
So how does all this relate to the eclecticness of my playlist? Imagine a graph like the one above, but replace "popularity" with "airplay" and "products" with "artists".
Pretty simple really.
To calculate the length of your musical tail, visit this site and enter your Last.FM user name. The site will take your top 50 artists and add up the number of times those artists have been played, then divide that number by the total number of tracks played overall, then multiply it by a hundred to get a percentage which represents the head on the graph. Subtract that percentage from a hundred to get the length of the long tail.
If I had fifty artists I really liked and over-played them like your local classic rock station does with Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and Aerosmith, then my tail would be very short.
But Dynamic Range Radio currently has 744 unique artists in its playlist, so my top 50 artists only make up a small percentage of what I play overall.
26.5% to be exact.
In other words, 3/4 of the time, Dynamic Range Radio plays artists who fall into the long tail of my lesser played artists. So if you really hate one of my favourite artists, chances are you won't be hearing them that often.
If you want to see a list of my top 500 artists for the week, and how how often they were played, then visit my Last.FM profile. And if you rest your head on your right shoulder, you can even see a graphic representation of Dynamic Range Radio's long tail.
For those who may be unfamiliar with the Long Tail Theory, here's a quick summary by Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, who coined the term in an October 2004 article and then later developed it into a book.
The Long Tail, in a nutshell
The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.
One example of this is the theory's prediction that demand for products not available in traditional bricks and mortar stores is potentially as big as for those that are. But the same is true for video not available on broadcast TV on any given day, and songs not played on radio. In other words, the potential aggregate size of the many small markets in goods that don't individually sell well enough for traditional retail and broadcast distribution may someday rival that of the existing large market in goods that do cross that economic bar.
The term refers specifically to the orange part of the sales chart above, which shows a standard demand curve that could apply to any industry, from entertainment to hard goods. The vertical axis is sales; the horizontal is products. The red part of the curve is the hits, which have dominated our markets and culture for most of the last century. The orange part is the non-hits, or niches, which is where the new growth is coming from now and in the future.
Traditional retail economics dictate that stores only stock the likely hits, because shelf space is expensive. But online retailers (from Amazon to iTunes) can stock virtually everything, and the number of available niche products outnumber the hits by several orders of magnitude. Those millions of niches are the Long Tail, which had been largely neglected until recently in favor of the Short Head of hits.
When consumers are offered infinite choice, the true shape of demand is revealed. And it turns out to be less hit-centric than we thought. People gravitate towards niches because they satisfy narrow interests better, and in one aspect of our life or another we all have some narrow interest (whether we think of it that way or not).
Dynamic Range Radio is definitely one of the little guys trying to carve out a niche in the long tail of the radio world, while Clear Channel is the best example of a short tail juggernaut playing only the most popular artists.
So how does all this relate to the eclecticness of my playlist? Imagine a graph like the one above, but replace "popularity" with "airplay" and "products" with "artists".
Pretty simple really.
To calculate the length of your musical tail, visit this site and enter your Last.FM user name. The site will take your top 50 artists and add up the number of times those artists have been played, then divide that number by the total number of tracks played overall, then multiply it by a hundred to get a percentage which represents the head on the graph. Subtract that percentage from a hundred to get the length of the long tail.
If I had fifty artists I really liked and over-played them like your local classic rock station does with Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and Aerosmith, then my tail would be very short.
But Dynamic Range Radio currently has 744 unique artists in its playlist, so my top 50 artists only make up a small percentage of what I play overall.
26.5% to be exact.
In other words, 3/4 of the time, Dynamic Range Radio plays artists who fall into the long tail of my lesser played artists. So if you really hate one of my favourite artists, chances are you won't be hearing them that often.
If you want to see a list of my top 500 artists for the week, and how how often they were played, then visit my Last.FM profile. And if you rest your head on your right shoulder, you can even see a graphic representation of Dynamic Range Radio's long tail.
Dynamic Range Radio Asks "How Eclectic Are You?"
If you want to find out, Last.FM offers some interesting tools to help you answer that question. This week I'll take a look at one of the most popular tools and find out just how eclectic Dynamic Range Radio is in the process.
The test can be found at anthony.liekens.net, and here's a description of how it all works, along with Dynamic Range Radio's eclectic score.
It's an interesting little tool, and I think the algorithm is more accurate than the open-minded index calculator, the results of which you can see in the sidebar of my Last.FM profile.
The OMI calculator relies on user-defined tags such as "rock", "indie", "blues", and so on, but basing things on artists instead of tags makes a lot more sense to me. It could be even more accurate if things were based on individual songs or albums since saying all of an artist's songs sound the same is quite a stretch. There are fans of early U2 who despise later U2 and vice-versa, but the artist-based system is still more accurate than lumping every song tagged as "rock" in the same pile.
The open-minded generator may or may not have been shut down, so next week I'll take a look at another interesting time-waster that answers the question "How Long Is Your Tail?"
Dynamic Range Radio
Eclectic Internet Radio
The test can be found at anthony.liekens.net, and here's a description of how it all works, along with Dynamic Range Radio's eclectic score.
Take your top 20 artists. For each of these artists, collect the top 5 similar artists. The resulting number of unique artists is your eclectic score. If the score is small (extreme = 5) your musical preferences are very limited, and if it is large (larger than 80, extreme = 100), then you have an eclectic musical preference.
My eclectic score is currently
86/100
The 86 related artists for my profile are 54-40, Alanis Morissette, Annie Lennox, Arctic Monkeys (2), At the Drive-In, Billy Bragg & Wilco, Black Sabbath, Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan and The Band, Bob Marley & The Wailers, Broken Social Scene, Bruce Springsteen, Burning Spear, Chris Rea, Coldplay, Deep Purple, Dire Straits, Eagles, Emmylou Harris, Eve 6, Flogging Molly, Franz Ferdinand, Grady, Guns N' Roses, Guy Clark, Headstones, Interpol (3), Jeff Tweedy, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Cliff, John Lennon, Led Zeppelin (2), Lucinda Williams, Matchbox Twenty, Matt Mays & El Torpedo, Matthew Good, Matthew Good Band, Mogwai, Naked Eyes, Neil Young (2), Oasis, Paul McCartney, Peter Tosh, Pink Floyd, Pixies, R.E.M. (2), Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sam Roberts, Shane MacGowan, Shane MacGowan and the Popes, Simple Minds, Sloan, Sonic Youth, Spoon, Steve Earle & The Dukes, Sting, Suzanne Vega, The Alarm, The Arcade Fire (2), The Band, The Cranberries, The Doors, The Dubliners, The Fixx, The Flaming Lips, The Killers, The Libertines, The Pogues & The Dubliners, The Police, The Raconteurs, The Raphaels, The Rolling Stones (3), The Skydiggers, The Strokes (3), The Velvet Underground, The Wallflowers, The Who (2), Third Eye Blind, Tori Amos, U2, Uncle Tupelo (2), Van Halen, Van Morrison, Weezer (2), Wide Mouth Mason, Ziggy Marley
It's an interesting little tool, and I think the algorithm is more accurate than the open-minded index calculator, the results of which you can see in the sidebar of my Last.FM profile.
The OMI calculator relies on user-defined tags such as "rock", "indie", "blues", and so on, but basing things on artists instead of tags makes a lot more sense to me. It could be even more accurate if things were based on individual songs or albums since saying all of an artist's songs sound the same is quite a stretch. There are fans of early U2 who despise later U2 and vice-versa, but the artist-based system is still more accurate than lumping every song tagged as "rock" in the same pile.
The open-minded generator may or may not have been shut down, so next week I'll take a look at another interesting time-waster that answers the question "How Long Is Your Tail?"
Dynamic Range Radio
Eclectic Internet Radio
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