My travelogue into the brave new world (?) of jelli.net:
Despite my background in content creation, I would class myself as a fairly late (and generally curmudgeonly) adopter of new media outlets. I do not seek out the shiniest and newest; if my old standard works just fine, I am happy until clued in to something clearly better. I actually want to be influenced. I want the most-informed, most picky person I know to shortcut qualitative analytical processes for me, and just tell me “X is better than Y, you need to check it out.”
Remembering the way I took to sites like last.fm— instantly, and on the recommendation of music lover friends— colored the way I approached jelli.net. Online radio fit into my life easefully, seemingly from one day to the next, a happy result of intuitive user interface plus real applicability to my everyday life. So my question regarding jelli.net is rather simple: can this site have a similar effect on both the influential classes, and the “ready to be influenced” – people like me.
I asked a totally unrepresentative, totally biased focus group— a handful of music geek friends, a few of whom are critics for New York-based publications — to use jelli.net, and let me know if they could envision crowdsourced internet-terrestrial radio in their lives. Could they, for example, see bopping away to broadcast radio as they went about their day, laptops or iPhones primed to participate, nixing, requesting, or chatting about a song?
Below is some of feedback I received:
Community issues:
“Really like the concept of the shout-outs. I can’t think of another online radio station/site that does that.”
“Actually using the chat option would really depend on the music, if the music made me burn to throw in my two cents. If I wasn’t fired up about something, why would I chat about it?”
Reputational systems:
“I like that I can get ‘credit’ for picking something out and rocketing it up.”
Site design/technical issues:
“I think it should be ‘in-browser’ radio, as opposed to playing a stream through Windows Media Player. That’s definitely what I’m used to as a user and I think a lot of others are as well.”
“When they bring on the mobile apps I could see this being more relevant. If I hated a song I could ‘bomb’ it from my phone.”
“Like the user interface – saw there was even a chat there.”
“There should be a lot more than three channels, because some songs will never be ‘rocketed’ otherwise (because they don’t fit one of those three general genres).”
Content choice:
“The tracks need to be a little more tailored to users’ tastes. Playing The Cars through Metric on one station is cool, but I don’t necessarily want to sit through Cake just because a user decided 1996 was cool. The station themes need to be a little more narrowed down, or I need the option to skip tracks I don’t like (not just give it a thumbs-down).”
“Musically, this is a little too unpredictable for me, as far as if you’re wanting to strike a mood/genre with what you’re listening to … If I want to stream loungey ‘60s stuff, for example, there’s really no way to do that on here. On Last.fm or Slacker (or even Pandora), you can do that.”
“I’m a bit hesitant to say I think it’s a revolutionary concept. I think last.fm (or even Slacker Radio, which I can play online as well as through my Blackberry) is more likely to be on at home because it’s extremely personalized and you know what you’re getting.”
“The way the music is selected is right now a little too broad for me personally. I’m not sure this is something I’d use on a day-to-day basis, especially with something like Spotify just coming out.”
Interestingly, regarding music choice I heard from two sides of the fence, from those who were afraid crowdsourced radio would denigrate rather quickly into infinitely recycled top-40 mush, as playlists were hijacked by a herd of over-involved teenagers ― and, conversely, from those who were afraid that a small crew of music geek media elite would wield disproportionate control of a station or show, perhaps leading to very esoteric and crowd-alienating selections.
My general sense is that it will indeed be the music fiends who are drawn to something like this — providing shows/stations are micro-targeted. The community discussion aspect of this may have the most resonance with music die-hards, as they meet up online with others with similarly defined tastes – providing of course, and this is a large caveat, that the size of the listening community stays manageable enough for meaningful communication. Regardless, to succeed jelli will need a committed user base, whether it is in the tens or the tens of thousands.
That said, it is just really hard to envision this actually working by the thousands of users. It’s easier for me to imagine 50 or even 500 fans having a meaningful Altcountrypunkpolka Evening, where everyone could have a voice, where 20 “bomb” votes could yank a bad polka off the air – but could 5,000? Would the logistical challenges of 5,000 committed and active users, all weighing in enthusiastically with their music choices, actually lead to a very incoherent listening experience? As jelli is very new, and its user base growing (and presumably far off its target numbers), it is just too soon to track how increases in users will affect the listening experience.
On the flip side, I could see great numbers of people trusting and enjoying the musical choices of a small team of tastemakers— just as if the trusted DJ of yesterday has been supplanted by a small, buzzing hive of committed and knowledgeable listeners. Still, this would not be genuinely harnessing a crowd’s collective music wisdom, but a crowd ceding its agency to a few select representatives.
