iLounge

1

I would rate every song I have if they paid me in free music.

Posted by stark23x on November 17, 2003 at 11:37 PM (PST)

2

lol, totally flawed system.

Posted by Bob on November 18, 2003 at 12:36 AM (PST)

3

I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to create an applescript or similar macro to assign a random or constant rating to every song in your library, if this were actually a policy

Posted by wunderdave on November 18, 2003 at 3:57 AM (PST)

4

I’d do it…. but I am quite sure that the labels would not continue to support itunes if the users got to help rate music that they really like. The labels continue to control marketing of their music and don’t even allow the artists themselves to take on any kind of marketing of their music. The system that the labels currently have in place, are not meant to enlighten the music buyer…. only to sell as much music as possible.

Posted by mGee on November 18, 2003 at 5:04 AM (PST)

5

I think that using user ratings on ITMS is a cool idea but paying for it will never work. There should be a ‘contribute your ratings’ option in iTunes but no monitary element.

Posted by Crisp on November 18, 2003 at 5:38 AM (PST)

6

1. Why should they pay you? Apple could upload my ratings right now and I would not feel like I should be compensated for it, I wouldn’t care.
2. Apple doesn’t make any money off the music anyway, which I thought was common knowledge by now, so, again, why should they pay you? iTunes exists to sell iPods, and it must be working, because the day I installed iTunes was the day I ordered an iPod.
3. Yes, this proposal is quite flawed, isn’t it? All I have to do is rate my songs, get free music, rate those, get more free music, and (if you go by the suggested 1 for 10 system) by the time it was all said and done, I’d have about 300 free songs, going by the number of songs I have right now. If I managed to go through all 300, all I have to do is, gee, download some stuff off Kazaa, or rip CDs I got from the library, or whatever, and besides having that for free, I would of course have a ton more music to rate to get tons more of free music.
4.Can you not listen to everything you buy before you buy it? Yes you can, and I do. So, if I am considering downloading a song that Joe Shmoe rated highly, but I listen to it, and I don’t like it, does that make me more likely to buy it? No! Duh!

The End

Posted by monkedsel on November 18, 2003 at 6:29 AM (PST)

7

Apple already has a wealth of free song-preference info available through iTunes without paying us for more.

Posted by joshuamarx on November 18, 2003 at 6:42 AM (PST)

8

Why would iTunes pay you when Amazon doesn’t (even though it is much more difficult to input your ratings at Amazon)?  People would volunteer to submit their ratings if it allowed iTunes to make a better recommendation.

Posted by terry on November 18, 2003 at 7:02 AM (PST)

9

“What if Apple were to pay users to rate their songs, so that info could be uploaded to the iTunes store to make recommendations more accurate”

Implementing such a system of collaborative filtering would manage to splendidly replicate the functionality of AudioGalaxy from some years ago.

This was my favorite p2p site until the RIAA stomped it.

You could download tacks, see what other people had also downloaded, and also access ranking systems. Worked a bit like Netflix/Amazon rankings.

It worked amazingly well and helped me discover lots of new music… some of which I even ended up paying for!

Posted by `AudioGalaxy on November 18, 2003 at 7:14 AM (PST)

10

To clarify,

The ratings would simply be used to cross reference, not to rate the songs by preference (i.e. if you like xxx you might like zzz—-not that xxx is a 5 star album, and zzz is a 1 star album)

Rather than talk about the ‘proper’ amount of compensation, I think it would be more relevant to speak about how this might improve the recommendation feature of the store, and how that would create good word of mouth, furthering the perceived advantage of the iTunes store over other options for online music.

More use of the store=more iPods sold, so that would help Apple financially.

I’ve got about 3000 songs in my library, and I’m not sure that I’d want to rate all of them just for the heck of it…but if I could help out others discover new music, and maybe score a free track or two in the process…I’d be up for it.

It’s not so much that Apple ‘should’ compensate you, but rather they could use that as the bait to get you to go to work for them…to help them build a much better cross referencing system than the current ‘Listeners also bought’ based system.

I’ve got over 3000 tracks right now in my library, none of them bought from Apple, all legally ripped of my own cds.  So under the current system, Apple has no idea what I like, and what I’ve ‘also bought’.  Apple should use me and my info to their advantage, and if it costs them a few tracks…it would pay them back 10 fold, in the info that they’d gather.

Posted by Matt Bentley on November 18, 2003 at 6:25 PM (PST)