Analysis for Feb 14 - Feb 21

Before I begin to summarize my analysis for this week, my findings for the past few weeks:
1. a. Audioscrobbler generates recommendations on a weekly basis, which I think is influenced by the listening habits of my 'neighbours' and of course, myself. The popularity of an artist or track helps it to climb or fall in the recommendations list.
1. b. Audioscrobbler recommends audio tracks, albums, artists, events (concerts), videos and even users (neighbors).
2. I have asked a few people to be my friends, but seems like people don’t like me a lot over here lol ... I don't have any friends as of now, but I hope I do get some soon, which will enable me to study the correlation between their listening patterns and my recommendations.
3. I have a list of neighbors, who are ppl who listen to music similar to what I have been listening to ... last.fm calls them recommended users.

Found an interesting piece of information in the FAQ section:
"The list of artists which you may see on an artist page as being "similar" is based exactly on our user's listening habits. If a lot of users listen to Artist X, but also Artist Y and Z - Y and Z artists will become similar to X.

With a few added constants and other functions thrown into the equation to help make it more accurate, you'll find that's how Similar Artists are made."

I wonder if they use the same technique for track recommendations too...

Now coming to the recommendations for this week, the following were the recommendations for this week:

Artists: linkin park, yardbirds limpbizkit staind were all similar to the tracks I have been listening to in the past few weeks on the last.fm radio(new age rock/metal)
police, jimi hendrix, franz ferdinand were all similar to the tracks I have been scrobbling in the past few weeks. thus we know for sure that last.fm recommendations are influenced by both what I listen to on their radio and on my winamp player, with the scrobbling feature enabled.

music: unfortunately, the tracks thrown up by the recommender engine were not the ones I was looking for. but then I decided to check out my neighbors, and their music was a really appealing to me. last.fm lets you listen to an assortment of tracks your neighbors have been listening too, and this mix of old-age and new-age rock and metal proved an awesome experience. I hope my own recommendations begin to reflect my neighbors taste soon.

Links:
1. to view my recommendations ... log into last.fm with the username zarthos@gmail.com and password 'zarthos'
2. my last.fm profile page