[bsder]

> Whatever happened to the good databases and their algorithms? They definitely used to exist.

It was called a record store employee, and they no longer exist.

There's an AI search engine I'd like to see ...

Even the "market segmentation" of pop music still doesn't work for crap. Even something as basic as "Gee, I like 80s New Wave, how about recommending some artists born roughly in the 21st century who would fit?" seems to be totally beyond the pale of anything currently existing.

[MrDrMcCoy]

My tastes have always been niche enough that most record store employees would give me the "deer in the headlights" look or condescend to me when I asked for a particular artist or similar that I found on Last.fm.

If the database quality of current Last.fm were similar to its state back when it had radio, I would think that an AI trained on their data would be pretty good. With the current state of it... It would have to be crap. Heck, even if an AI model could be trained on the play counts of every song of every user on every streaming service, I'm not sure it could approach the curated relational algorithm that Last.fm had at its peak. Would definitely love to see an attempt, though.

[gosub100]

> It was called a record store employee

I'm happy to not relive the days where CDs were and inflation adjusted $35 for about 10 songs. And there is no economic incentive or guarantee that any given retail employee would know anything about the inventory. Go to home Depot and canvas some of them about home repairs if you don't believe me.

[bsder]

> I'm happy to not relive the days where CDs were and inflation adjusted $35 for about 10 songs.

Limited edition vinyl stuff, for example, generally goes for right around that in order to support the artists. Most of that money is going directly to the artist, nowadays (as opposed to live in which it all goes to Ticketmaster).

If you're not willing to spend at least some money, well, then you're part of the problem why artists can't get paid for doing music and why so much of it kinda sucks.

> And there is no economic incentive or guarantee that any given retail employee would know anything about the inventory. Go to home Depot and canvas some of them about home repairs if you don't believe me.

Sure, if you went to Tower Records, you almost always had someone clueless. However, the point of going to those stores was to NOT go to the big retailer, it was to go to the local record stores that had people who worked there specifically because they were super passionate about music.

This was how you found out about that super obscure artist. It was also how you found out about the local bands that might be of interest to someone who liked that super obscure artist. etc.