Saturday, May 26, 2007

TUN3R now allows you to search Playlists

It's been a good week!
We've launched the radio playlist search feature at, and will continue to expand on this. If you haven't had a chance to try it yet, go NOW! I can't tell you how many great stations I've been able to find with just this feature alone, and it's really really improved the audio browsing experience.

Basically, I can now enter the name of an artist and/or song title and the TUN3R Dial lights up all stations that play those tracks. When you move to that station on The Dial you can now see a large sample of tracks played over the few days, in addition to hearing a live audio sample from the station itself. In my opinion, this really separates the "wheat from the chafe". It's one thing to say you play "pop" or "alternative", but different people have vastly different views of what this means.

Now, if you just take a look at the playlist you can get a pretty clear idea of what the broadcaster is really all about, just by see the past played tracks, as well as hearing the audio sample. I've been literally spending hours on this thing and continue to find gold nuggets. I'm also amazed at how eclectic and varied Internet radio is compared to terrestrial FM radio.

For the first time, in a long time, I'm discovering music I actually like. I've always known that these awesome DJs are out there, but TUN3R has allowed me to pinpoint them.

Now, I should state my bias: I've always been a bit dissatisfied with the other "music discovery" services out there. Services like Pandora, Last.Fm, and Yahoo! Launch have failed to keep me hooked, and in a nutshell here's why:

  1. I feel like I've got to constantly "teach" these services what I like. But when I'm listening to radio, I just want to kick back and relax. If a bad song comes on, I feel like I need to act quickly and tell the system that this is not what I want, otherwise the neural nets and genetic algorithms might get the wrong idea and God forbid, think I'm indifferent to the song. To stressful!
  2. These systems haven't been able to find really really fresh new catchy material that I crave. Hey, I'm a sucker for a great pop hook, but I don't see how a computer algorithm can really differentiate between a genuinely awesome pop hook, and a kids tune from Miffy the Sweet Little Bunny. To be fair, I know that these systems use "the wisdom of the crowds" (also known as "the tyranny of the masses") to recommend music. That said, a cutting edge DJ will always be one step ahead of the crowds. I believe the technical term for what a good DJ is, is Opinion Leader.
  3. Sometimes I like a bit of repetition in my radio. Sure it's nice to hear new stuff, but there are also those new songs that hit the market you're just craving to hear more of. Real DJs seem to get this intuitively.
  4. I like the shared experience of listening to a broadcast and knowing that others are also partaking. It's the same reason I like going to movie theaters, live concerts, and even live sports (okay I'm not a huge sports fan). Super customized radio just doesn't give me that feeling, and there's nobody to talk about it with.
  5. I simply like the idea of a real person spinning tunes, in the same way that I prefer playing video games with real people. For me it feels like there is more of a soul behind music. I see DJing as much of an art as it is a science.

We're still working on lots of improvements which you'll to wait to see, but so far I think TUN3R is practically everything I've wanted out of a radio search engine.

Since I love talking about music, feel free to drop me an e-mail at:, and tell me what you think, and what stations you've found since playing with the newly upgraded Dial.

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