How good is Google’s Instant Mix?
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How good is Google’s Instant Mix?
1–10 of 30 posts
Re: How good is Google’s Instant Mix?
#2So, Google should purchase The Echo Nest.
Re: How good is Google’s Instant Mix?
#3He addresses this in his article, but you really can't evaluate competitors to your own service in such a manner. Not only were the testing criteria highly subjective, the fact that songs he considered 'WTF' in the lists were the negative marks.
I know music is a very subjective subject, I really think he could have been more objective about the whole thing. Maybe using other peoples music collections and getting their own personal opinions on which songs work and which songs don't. Add to that, have other people rate the playlists he generated, so it wasn't just his opinion.
Also, wtf about Genius only getting 10 marks against it for not doing Beatles playlists? I'm sorry, if you hold the criteria that any songs that are out of place are considered negative, no songs in a playlist should be worth 24 'WTF' points. Not that it matters in the comparison, and it was nowhere near close.
I don't have access to the beta, and at this point don't really care about it, but this just screams as self promotion. I think it would have been a lot more respectable if he had been more objective concerning the tests he used.
Re: How good is Google’s Instant Mix?
#4It would be interesting to run these songs through Pandora and compare the results.
Re: How good is Google’s Instant Mix?
#5He addresses this in his article, but you really can't evaluate competitors to your own service in such a manner. Not only were the testing criteria highly subjective, the fact that songs he considered 'WTF' in the lists were the negative marks. I know music is a very subjective subject, I really think he could have been more objective about the whole thing. Maybe using other peoples music collections and getting the…
I agree music is subjective and his results are biased. However, it's safe to say Google's attempts are terrible.
Re: How good is Google’s Instant Mix?
#6He addresses this in his article, but you really can't evaluate competitors to your own service in such a manner. Not only were the testing criteria highly subjective, the fact that songs he considered 'WTF' in the lists were the negative marks. I know music is a very subjective subject, I really think he could have been more objective about the whole thing. Maybe using other peoples music collections and getting the…
It is impossible to be objective about music. The point of his "WTF" test (not speaking for paul, but i do work with the guy) was to look at each song by each provider and ask "would most people agree this doesn't belong" erring very far on the generous inclusive side. You can definitely quibble about whether or not a particular song deserves a WTF mark but you can't argue that google's results are very terrible overall.
You couldn't do a test with other collections because the beta is very limited right now-- I can only think of a few people I know that have access. But I can concur that my results are as terrible as his were.
Yes, he works for EN (which he's very clear about) and yes it's a bit inside baseball showing a service that most people can't use (because they're not developers or customers) but you can scroll past our results & take it as a post titled "How is Apple so much better than Google at such a data driven task?"
(I would have given the lack of beatles on genius -24 too! I also found a couple EN clunkers that I'd give a WTF to, but I'm a notorious jerk for those things, ask anyone i work with :)
Re: How good is Google’s Instant Mix?
#7He addresses this in his article, but you really can't evaluate competitors to your own service in such a manner. Not only were the testing criteria highly subjective, the fact that songs he considered 'WTF' in the lists were the negative marks. I know music is a very subjective subject, I really think he could have been more objective about the whole thing. Maybe using other peoples music collections and getting the…
It is impossible to be objective about music. The point of his "WTF" test (not speaking for paul, but i do work with the guy) was to look at each song by each provider and ask "would most people agree this doesn't belong" erring very far on the generous inclusive side. You can definitely quibble about whether or not a particular song deserves a WTF mark but you can't argue that google's results are very terrible over…
> you can scroll past our results & take it as a post titled "How is Apple so much better than Google at such a data driven task?"
Sure, but that wouldn't exactly be fair seeing as Genius is 3+ years mature, and Google Music+Instant Mix is in beta and less than a week old. OP even seems to think so...
> The last time I took a close look at iTunes Genius was 3 years ago. It was generating pretty poor recommendations.
Re: How good is Google’s Instant Mix?
#8Could this be because this service is so new that they haven't yet had the benefit of gathering lots of data and stats from users?
Re: How good is Google’s Instant Mix?
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is impossible to be objective about music. The point of his "WTF" test (not speaking for paul, but i do work with the guy) was to look at each song by each provider and ask "would most people agree this doesn't belong" erring very far on the generous inclusive side. You can definitely quibble about whether or not a particular song deserves a WTF mark but you can't argue that google's results are very terrible over…
> you can scroll past our results & take it as a post titled "How is Apple so much better than Google at such a data driven task?" Sure, but that wouldn't exactly be fair seeing as Genius is 3+ years mature, and Google Music+Instant Mix is in beta and less than a week old. OP even seems to think so... > The last time I took a close look at iTunes Genius was 3 years ago. It was generating pretty poor recommendations.
Fair, but a few points:
- Genius was much better than this when it launched. It's even better now, but it wasn't as bad back then as Instant Mix is today.
- You don't think google has more data about music than Apple did when it launched Genius? YouTube, Music Onebox, search traffic.
- (severe bias alert) EN's playlist APIs are the same excellent quality today as the day it launched (sept '10.) We're roughly 0.10% Google's size. We didn't need any warm up period.
Re: How good is Google’s Instant Mix?
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you can scroll past our results & take it as a post titled "How is Apple so much better than Google at such a data driven task?" Sure, but that wouldn't exactly be fair seeing as Genius is 3+ years mature, and Google Music+Instant Mix is in beta and less than a week old. OP even seems to think so... > The last time I took a close look at iTunes Genius was 3 years ago. It was generating pretty poor recommendations.
Fair, but a few points: - Genius was much better than this when it launched. It's even better now, but it wasn't as bad back then as Instant Mix is today. - You don't think google has more data about music than Apple did when it launched Genius? YouTube, Music Onebox, search traffic. - (severe bias alert) EN's playlist APIs are the same excellent quality today as the day it launched (sept '10.) We're roughly 0.10% Go…
I'll absolutely agree that Google Music Instant Mix is nowhere where it needs to be.. not even close, but I still can't shake the feeling that this review is more of a "Please Buy Us" post...
Just curious, in regard to the quality of EN since launching.. You guys we're clearly working on your algorithm for several years prior to launch[1] in late 2010.. That's sort of a warm-up period, no?
[1] second last paragraph of http://blogs.oracle.com/plamere/entry/genius_or_savant_syndr... from 2008