I signed up to Songkick yesterday: a great idea for a site that lets you track when your favourite artists are performing nearby. I chose to login using Facebook Connect and got this list of suggested artists:
Coldplay as the first recommendation? I can’t stand Coldplay!
I found myself quite indignant at being recommended I like Coldplay. But it’s not really about Coldplay, it’s about being suggested I engage with something I really don’t like. (So if you like Coldplay, please just think of your least favourite band in this scenario!)
I think there are two main reasons behind my reaction to this: the first is that after logging in with Facebook and giving Songkick access to my shared information, I expected that it would look at the music I like:
…and from that generate some suggested artists.
The second reason I found myself not happy with the list of suggestions was the labeling: ‘Track artists you want to see live’. The first call to action after this is a search box, and then the list of artists starting with Coldplay.
Regardless of whether Songkick checked my musical tastes through Facebook, I think a simple tweak to this page could have avoided the entire issue, such as changing the heading below:
I don’t care if Coldplay is on the screen; just so long as it doesn’t appear that for some reason it’s been determined that I do like Coldplay. Spotify and Last.fm often ‘suggest’ artists that I may not like, but the tone is very loose: ‘Related Artists’ (Spotify) and ‘Recommendations’ (Last.fm).
Facebook will throw up recommendations based on pretty much anything you type, but again it’s very diplomatic:
As social media develops, I think these sort of scenarios are going to become more prevalent and more important to user experience. Personal taste is such a idiosyncratic and illogical trait — a system that can adequately deal with this will be an amazing achievement.
Do you think, though, that we’re getting so used to customisation of content that we could potentially narrow our view to the things ‘I like’, and end up missing things that you don’t yet know that you like? Okay, so Coldplay is a step too far, but is there the possiblity that we may miss out on the unknown through hyper-controlled customised content?
Hi James
Thanks for taking the time to write up your sign up experience, this is really valuable.
We do pull in the music you like on Facebook, but not until later in the process at the moment. After signing up we show you a personalised list of upcoming events in your area. This list is based on any artists which appear in the music section of your Facebook profile plus any you tracked on the ‘Track artists you want to see live’ grid.
If you visit any pages on Songkick before you sign up we base the artist grid on any band or concert pages you looked at. If you don’t visit any pages we show you a default grid of popular artists. In this case titling the grid with ‘Popular artists to track’ as you suggested is a good idea.
We’re constantly improving our sign up process to make sure we show you as many relevant and interesting events as we can once you reach your calendar.
It’s a great idea to base the artist grid on your Facebook artists you like if you choose to sign up using your Facebook account and we will definitely take this feedback onboard when we revisit this feature in the future.
Thanks again for bringing your experience to our attention. If you have any feedback on other aspects of Songkick please let us know.
Thanks
Jo
User Experience Designer @ songkick.com