A smorgasbord for music festival-goers

By Michael Corcoran
AMERICAN-STATESMAN WRITER AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, February 19, 2009

Sun Microsystems researcher and programmer Paul Lamere is a South by Southwest virgin, coming to Texas for the first time next month to moderate a discussion on music recommendation systems called "Help My iPod Thinks I'm Emo." To prepare, the 49-year-old music fan from Burlington, Mass., looked at the original list of about 1,200 showcase artists and was overwhelmed. Nearly 600 more acts have been added in recent weeks to make the task about as frustrating and daunting as trying to get a cab to the Perez Hilton party on Saturday night after last call.

"There were too many bands that I didn't recognize by name, and it was just going to be too hard to make heads or tails of the list," said Lamere, whose taste in music runs from the prog rock of his youth to quirky singers like Regina Spektor, electronica acts such as Aphex Twin and the noisy rock of Deerhoof. (In these online times, you can see exactly what he's been listening to by going to his last.fm page at last.fm/user/lamere.)

"I wanted a way to be able to sift through all of the artists, listen to their music and read their bios," Lamere said. "I also wanted to be able to see who the most popular (SXSW) bands are, where they are all from, and which ones had the most buzz."

In his spare time — about two hours a night, over two weeks — Lamere built a SXSW artist catalog that makes it easier for himself and others to navigate the musical glut. Go to sxsw.tastekeeper.com to experience SXSW planning made easier.

This Father Theresa of the Badge People wrote about 5,000 lines of Java code to create software that queried a number of different Web sites, including sxsw.com, Last.fm, Flickr, Google, YouTube and the Echo Nest, and organized the information in a number of convenient ways. The SXSW Artist Catalog ranks the popularity of showcasing acts (based on number of listens on last.fm), keeps fans up to date on latest additions and groups the acts according to genre, among other things.

If you're into drum and bass, you can click and see the seven SXSW acts classified as drum and bass. A map shows the vast number of overseas acts, so if you're into Irish music, say, you can click on Ireland and find acts from there that are playing the fest.

A "hotness" index uses information from the Echo Nest, which measures acts according to the amount of buzz they're building on the Web.

Lamere delved right into the catalog he created and made a few early musical discoveries, including sinewy Seattle post-hardcore band These Arms Are Snakes and a Blondie-like punk band called the deBretts. Every day he finds a handful of new and interesting bands that he had never heard of before. "Today I've been listening to Zolof the Rock & Roll Destroyer (because I liked their name)," he remarked in a recent e-mail exchange. "And Titus Andronicus — I hear that they are really something to see."

Now that the SXSW grid schedule has been announced, Lamere and others will be able to enter the names of their must-see acts at www.sched.org. Then, they can print out a personal itinerary. Time is precious when there is so much going on in just four days and aimlessness is just hard on the feet.

SXSW has a tremendous online presence, but it's not a one-stop because organizers can't show much more favoritism than listing the acts whose names start with "A" before those whose names start with "B." All acts are considered equal. But when it comes to talent, originality and experience, some bands are much better than others. That's why sites like Lamere's, which give more weight to the more accomplished acts, are such a great addition to the SXSW planning process. His site is objective, yet it collects data from other sources to compartmentalize the mass of musicianship.

Lamere's SXSW panel participation has nothing to do with his SXSW artist catalog. He'll be talking about how his company has been exploring content-analysis to help fans find more of the music they like. With music recommendation engines at sites such as last.fm and Pandora, the narrowing down of music has become a growth industry. "We've built a system where that allows us to train our computer to listen to music and to learn when two songs sound similar or different," he says. The computer then sifts through millions of songs to find music that sounds similar to music that the fan already likes. (Sounds like they ripped off KGSR's philosophy.)

In five years, Lamere predicts, nearly all recorded music will be online, creating a problem of just too much to choose from. SXSW is the live music model of too much to choose from. But in cyberspace, being chosen to play SXSW actually puts acts in exclusive company. And as you wonder how 1,800 acts can all be special, note that it's better to be one in 1,800 than it is to be one in a million. Especially when sites like Paul Lamere's focus on the chosen many.

Paul Lamere on music discovery:

'When I was a teenager, people found music mostly via radio DJs and friends. Nowadays, there are so many other ways to discover music: TV shows like "Grey's Anatomy," games like "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band." And then there are some great music discovery sites online. Last.fm and Pandora both have really good music recommendations engines. For hard core music enthusiasts, those that really like to be on the bleeding edge, there's nothing like the Hype Machine. It is a firehose of new music. Another really novel site is thesixtyone. which combines music discovery with a ranking system that seems to be inspired by Dungeons and Dragons. You can listen and rate music and if the music you rate becomes popular, you earn points, and achieve levels. In thesixtyone, instead of being a fifth-level wizard, you can become a fifth-level tastemaker, all while listening to really new and really interesting music."