I discovered the LAUNCHcast Internet radio service in the late 1990s while working long hours in a cubicle doing IT work. At a time when my only company was the hum of the fluorescent lights, LAUNCHcast connected me to a world of music that went far beyond what I could find on commercial radio. In the process, I became a convert. In the years that followed, LAUNCHcast went through its share of ups and downs, but at its core was this ability to program your own radio station. It works like this: you rate music and LAUNCHcast responds by playing a combination of the music it knows you like and new music "recommended" based on your ratings. It combines the serendipity of radio—a new discovery potentially around every corner—with the comfort of listening to a jukebox stuffed with your old favorites.
Over the years, this combination has proved to have real staying power. Although I now have access to pricier on-demand services that give me more control over what I play, I keep coming back to LAUNCHcast. The main reason, I think, is that I often don't want to think about what I'm going to play. Yet, I want more control than I get with standard radio. I've tried other personalized radio stations, but none has captured my imagination in the way that LAUNCHcast has. LAUNCHcast is more interactive, more engaging, and gives you more control; it makes you do more, not less, work than the other services. Other personalized radio services are simplistic, drawing on lists of your favorite artists or the play logs of your jukebox software to create a personalized station.
LAUNCHcast, in contrast, gives you the option of rating every song, specifying whether and how often it should play in the future. Albums, artists, genres, and sub-genres of music can be rated in a similar manner. As your ratings accumulate, your investment in time begins to pay off: the station plays more music that you like and you start making happy discoveries. As your station grows and takes shape, you develop a sense of ownership and pride for it. Then you're hooked. When enough ratings have accumulated so that you're happy with your station, you don't have to spend as much time rating music. You can kick back and enjoy your station, jumping in now and again to rate songs that cry out for attention (both good and bad).
Of course, it's not perfect. Licensing issues with record labels have placed constraints on how the stations can work, and in some cases, the music that can be played. LAUNCHcast also relies on the Internet Explorer Web browser for its player, exposing users to the spyware plague currently affecting Internet Explorer users. Yet, this service stands alone among personalized radio offerings, inspiring devotion among its many users.
Spend some time reading postings on the LAUNCHcast Discussion Group and you will see for yourself. Here, you will learn about new features and changes to the algorithm; see animated discussions about the service; read analyses of playlist trends which suggest changes to the algorithm; and see the director of personalization respond individually to user postings.
HOW THE ALGORITHM WORKS
What follows is a guide to making the most of LAUNCHcast's rating scheme, sometimes referred to as "the algorithm," used to generate the playlists for your personal station. For a broader assessment of LAUNCHcast, see the profile available on this site or read the more detailed chapter in my book.
The First Law of LAUNCHcast is that the music on your personal station will always be a combination of music you have rated and unrated or "recommended" music. The player will display the reason each song has been selected, either because it is "recommended" or because you rated it (or a category of music that it belongs to).
The purpose of rating music is to instruct the system on how frequently you want that music to play. Should it be in heavy rotation, light rotation, or banned from the playlist outright? The choice is yours. The default rating scale runs from zero stars (never play again) to four stars (play most frequently). Previously, the rating scale ran from 0 to 100. This finer grained scale can still be selected as an "advanced" option, and is the preferred scheme for the power user. I have no evidence that it results in a better station. I just have an innate need to rate one song a little higher than another. Also, the algorithm favors new releases over old ones, and gives them a bump in play frequency.
There are two ways you can rate music: 1) While you are listening to it using the LAUNCHcast player (either to your station or to other LAUNCHcast stations) and 2) While browsing music listings on the LAUNCH Web site. The first lets you rate music that you are listening to, while the second lets you add ratings for music that you already know and love (or hate). The latter method can be used to add lots of ratings quickly.
Ratings can be given to songs, albums, artists, sub-genres, and genres. Accordingly, their scope can run from the narrow (applying just to a single song) to the broad (applying to an entire genre). This brings us to The Second Law of LAUNCHcast: Narrow ratings take precedence over broad ratings. For any given song, its play frequency will be determined by the most specific rating available for it. If the song is rated, the song rating will determine the play frequency, period. If the song isn't rated, but the album it comes from is rated, then the album rating will apply to the song. If, in turn, the album isn't rated, but the artist is rated, then the artist rating will apply to the song, and so on. Genre ratings will only apply to songs not yet rated at a more specific level (artist, album, etc.).
As of this writing, when you rate a song 70 or higher, you will begin to trigger recommendations from "fans of this artist." Above this, the higher the rating, the more likely that you will see songs which give this as the reason for the selection. Lowering the rating below 70 will make these recommendations go away. Note that the algorithm is constantly being tweaked and modified, which brings us to The Third Law of LAUNCHcast: The algorithm will change. So attempts at being overly clever and gaming the system are discouraged. Having said this, the general principles outlined here should remain valid for a while. The best way to stay in touch with changes to the system is to subscribe to the LAUNCHcast discussion group on Yahoo, where vigilant users will pick up on any significant changes.
LAUNCHCAST RECOMMENDED STRATEGY
Based on a reading of the help files and postings to the LAUNCHcast discussion group, I can summarize the recommended strategy as follows:
Start out with some genre and artist ratings
A good way to get your profile started is to highly rate the genres and subgenres you like. Then assign high ratings to your favorite artists.
But focus primarily on song ratings
The ideal profile has a lot of song ratings and comparatively few of the broader ratings (album, artist, genre). Song ratings are the most precise way of letting your preferences be known. If you prematurely rate an album or artist to "never play" on the basis of one song, you may be missing out on some great songs.
Avoid an overly restrictive profile
Overzealous use of broad ratings and "never play" ratings can lead to a situation where the pool of unrated music becomes too small for the system to function (see The First Law of Launchcast). The result is a "playlist concluded" message, after which your station will play popular music unrelated to your profile.
HOW I USE IT
My experience leads me to add the following advice:
Remember that ratings are about play frequency
Rather than viewing each rating as a referendum on how "good" a piece of music is, think of it as an indicator of whether you want that music in "heavy rotation" or not. I rate music highly that I want to play frequently in the short term, and then when I've had my fill, I will lower the rating. My all-time favorite songs get an "average" rating (50) or slightly above because I don't want to overplay them.
Album and artist ratings can be put to good use
Although I agree with the song-centered approach to rating, I still think the album is an important unit of music. When I hear that a favorite artist has released a new album or if I read a rave review of a new album, I'll go to the LAUNCHcast Web site and look for the album. If it is available, I will rate it highly to put it in heavy rotation. As I listen to the songs on the album, I will rate them according to how much I like them. When I'm ready to take the album out of heavy rotation, I will lower the album rating. The same goes for a new artist I'm interested in hearing more from. I find out about music from other places than LAUNCHcast, and this is the way I incorporate that knowledge into my station profile.
Don't rush to become a "Ratings Master."
In an effort to encourage people to rate music, LAUNCHcast created a set of ratings levels, ranging from "Newbie" (less than 100 ratings) all the way up to "Ratings Master" (over 10,000 ratings) and displayed the level on each person's "My Station" page. This resulted in people rushing to achieve Ratings Master status. Some of them ran into problems with overly restrictive profiles, and their stations suffered as a result. I've used LAUNCHcast on and off for close to five years, and have a comparatively paltry 3,000 ratings to my name. Yet, I've almost always been happy with my station. For the most part, I have simply rated music as I heard it (though lots of times I listen without bothering to rate anything).
Use "Moods" to listen to slices of your station
Sometimes I want to listen to a particular type of music, but my LAUNCHcast personal station is too broad, too eclectic. One option is to listen to a single focus station, on LAUNCHcast or elsewhere. The other is to use the LAUNCHcast "moods" feature, available to LAUNCHcast Plus subscribers, which lets you restrict your personal station to music from chosen genres. For example, I have a mood titled "Music to Work to," which is restricted to genres that work well as background music, such as ambient music and instrumental jazz. Moods also allow you to modify the proportion of rated vs. unrated music that plays. So if you're in the mood for more new music, you can tell the system to play more or it.
LOOKING AHEAD
Looking toward the future, I'm pretty sure that I'm always going to want something like a LAUNCHcast personal station: a way to combine my favorite music with a stream of new and interesting music. In its present incarnation, LAUNCHcast falls short of the ideal because it relies on a radio licensing model which—though it keeps costs low—places artificial constraints on how playlists can be created. For example, multiple tracks from one album cannot be played in sequence.
On-demand licenses cost more, but would open the door to a more fully-realized version of the LAUNCHcast personal station, one that did away with these restrictions. More than once, I've seen LAUNCHcast users state their willingness to pay an on-demand price (approx. $10/month) in exchange for doing away with these restrictions. With people signing up for on-demand services (e.g. Rhapsody) in ever greater numbers, it would make sense for these services to offer a LAUNCHcast-style personal radio service, alongside their online jukebox offering. Now that LAUNCHcast's parent, Yahoo, owns Musicmatch, which has its own on-demand service, perhaps we'll see something like this from them.
Next, I'd like to see LAUNCHcast improve the cohesiveness of its playlists, so that one track flows more naturally into the next; so that jarring transitions don't happen unless you want them to (e.g., a thrash-metal track sandwiched in-between two whispered love songs). Though it may not be possible to match the skill of the best DJ, it may be possible to instruct the system to create sets that string songs together based on a common attribute like artist, genre, tempo, or thematic content. And if, as programmer in-chief of my station, I received more knobs to twiddle in the process, I would be happy. More could be done with the mood feature too. At present you can only slice your station by genre. What about pulling tracks that corresponded to real moods (e.g. happy music, angry music)? Or music featuring brass instruments? Or fast-tempo music to wake me up?
Of course there's always the risk that Yahoo will head in the opposite direction and dumb down the system in order to broaden its appeal. But with any luck, LAUNCHcast will build on its position as the best, and most sophisticated personal radio service available.
Note: Yahoo has recently discontinued using the LAUNCH brand in favor of "Yahoo! Music." The LAUNCHcast name has been retained for the time being.
—Andy Breeding
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