DJALCHEMI

Bigmouth Strikes Again — Five Eight article

My article on word-of-mouth recommendations among music fans and playlist sharing is the cover feature in the August issue of Five Eight music business magazine. Here's the introduction (written by Five Eight editor, Eamonn Forde):

Word of mouth is a term passed around the marketing playground everyday. But in a culture where the marketplace is increasingly connected, it is time to ask how these powerful and very personal phenomena can be understood and exploited. Word of mouth springs from communities — increasingly more powerful because of online and mobile — where trust is key. How can the music industry effectively work in and, crucially, with these communities and build a relationship of trust and effective recommendation systems, particularly through playlisting?

To read the full article, you need to subscribe to Five Eight.

If you've come to this site after reading the article, you may find the following articles useful as context and further detail:

• comparison of seven playlist sharing services including review of GoFish playlists;
• review of Mixmatcher playlists;
• review of FIQL playlists;
• review of Art of the Mix, Soundflavor, Upto11.net and Webjay playlists;
• playlist experiment #1 — an 'imaginary' celebrity playlist;
• playlist experiment #2 — collecting legally available contemporary tracks;
• playlist experiment #3 — sourcing public domain ballads;
• my earlier Five Eight article, published as One Recommendation Under a Groove;
• research into sharing music via iTunes;
• Radio David Byrne and celebrity playlists.

As with my previous Five Eight article, the full version may appear here in a few months, if I get permission.

Update, 4 June 02006: the full version is now available on my Net, Blogs and Rock'n'Roll blog.