Play With Play.It Yet?

[Arp2]

I have. First, I was highly impressed. Then, I was frustrated. Now, my frustration is turning to exasperation.

Play.It, if you don't recall, is CBS' home for station streaming and the creation of personalized "stations" (think "Pandora"). I'm doing my best to think through and write this strictly as a user of the service with no knowledge about anything about anything.

As I "programmed" my first "station," I was impressed with the interface. It features an empty space made to look like a "target" on which you can place icons for searched-for artists, songs, or albums. For each one you place, you're offered similar artists, songs, or albums. The claim is that artists influence the programming of your "station" more as they get closer to the center of the "target." There's also an "Adventurousness" slider that lets you choose, supposedly in an eleven-step range, your desire to hear "The Hits" or "Go Deep."

I spent a couple of hours searching artists and placing them on the target, arranging them roughly in quadrants containing four different styles of music and their variations (primarily for my ability to keep track, not anything I thought it would do due to my "neatness") and carefully "ranking" the artists on the target. All of the things I placed on the target were artists with the exception of one actual song, a song I put in thinking it would indicate both a style and an era. Initially, I left the "Adventurousness" slider right in the middle (the default). I then "saved it as a draft" and tried to test it by "playing the station."

Nothing.

Try and try again. Nothing. Edit the station. Save as draft. Play. Nothing. Unable to play mine, I sampled some of the CBS stations. You're given the option to save stations as "presets," so I did. And it didn't. "Maybe it's a 'cookie' thing," I thought and then allowed a couple of cookies. And it still didn't keep my presets. Not for more than one station for a couple of minutes, anyway. (That was resolved on later visits by the allowing of cookies all the time, though.)

Having exhausted all other possibilities, I chose to "Publish" the "station." Then, it worked. For several songs. Then, it quit. Of the three songs I heard, I knew not a one of them. All unfamiliar.

Having experienced failure, I thought I'd check out the "programming" of my "station" again. I dragged the "Adventurousness" slider from "6" to "4" (more hits) and saved it again...er, "published" it again. One song (unfamiliar) and then nothing. I gave up.

The next day, I tried again. It played much better, but I didn't like what I heard -- big hit, unfamilar album cut, unfamiliar album cut, unfamiliar album cut. I gave up again and entered editing to drag the "Adventurousness" slider from "4" to "3." Same thing. I dragged from "3" to "1" (The Hits!) and quit.

I went back to it again today and listened. With "Adventurousness" set all the way for "The Hits," here's what I heard:

(Key: "Big Hit" probably peaked 1-5, "Solid Hit" probably peaked 6-15, "Mid-charter" probably peaked 16-25, "Stiff" probably peaked 26+...."probably" because they're all really guesstimates)

Big Hit
Unfamiliar album cut
That One Song I Placed On The Target Thinking It Would Suggest A Style and Era
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut (I was peeved and edited the station to see if I could plaster the "Adventurousness" up against the "The Hits" wall!)
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut
Familiar mid-charter
Familiar stiff
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut by a one-hit wonder who I put on to indicate an era and style
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut
That One Song I Placed On The Target Thinking It Would Suggest A Style and Era (yes, that same song again!)
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut
Solid Hit
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut by that same one-hit wonder I put on to indicate era and style
Big Hit from the "Familiar stiff" artist a little ways back (So far, 21 songs have played from only 15 or 16 artists)
A Christmas song from the artist who did the 4th song in this list
Unfamiliar album cut by that same one-hit wonder I put on to indicate era and style (yes, three-song artist sep)
Familiar mid-charter (a personal fave and a hit at the time, btw, but I know it now tests like a stiff)
Unfamiliar album cut (a moderately popular artist, but the song seems to instruct the listener how to kidnap, subdue, rape, and then kill a woman...I'm revulsed!)
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut
Solid hit
Familiar mid-charter
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut (maybe slightly familiar...in a commercial?)
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut
Solid Hit
Unfamiliar album cut
Big Hit (but older and dated..."nostalgia" in its genre...would test mediocre today but wouldn't pass a "fit" test...in concert, might get a verse and a chorus as part of an acoustic medley)
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut
Solid Hit
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut
Big Hit
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut
Unfamiliar album cut

.....and I give up. See I went a long time and a long way...I gave it every chance. I told it to play "The Hits," and it refused to or failed to 85-90% of the time. I told it what genres to play, and, by placing artists at varying distances away from the center of a target, I told it in what proportions; it refused to or failed to do that. As a matter of fact, of all those songs listed, only five or six came from the genre I thought I was weighting the heaviest (only one was familiar), and only two came from another I thought would come in much stronger.

Maybe it defines "The Hits" as "these artists and these artists only." I think I experienced that (but that may be because I placed so many artists). The songs were almost all unfamiliar, but all the artists were familiar. But don't "The Hits" and "Go Deep" both imply we're talking about songs?

I don't get it. I tried. I invested hours, "personalized" the heck out of it, and got nowhere near what I wanted. How is this any different from Pandora, and why is it so hard to play songs I like? Real OTA Radio does it soooooo much better!

And I don't think I'm being biased.

I'm going to try it a few more times. What I'll add to it is a rating for each song....I'm going to five-star all hits, four-star all other familiar songs, and tank all the rest and see if that makes any difference.

Impressed...frustrated...exasperated.....

[retroraider]

This is something I have spent a good deal of time on in the past couple of weeks. I can tell you what my results have been so far.

I have programmed 3 different stations. I wanted to go with an 80's based playlist with the stations because the artists/songs were readily available, and yet at the same time, it would give me an idea of how much the playlists deviate from what I had intended (in other words, I wanted to hear how many 90's and currents sneaked in there and I figured it would be easy enough to discern).

My first station, Project 19, is strictly artist based. This was my first attempt, and I loaded it up with artists from the 80's. The result was I got the same type of playlist as you are experiencing; a lot of songs I didn't recognize played by the artists I programmed into the list. It was very pandora-like.

My second attempt, Retromix, is strictly album based. For this I stuck exclusively to Greatest Hits compilations from the artists I wanted and compilations like "Big Hits of the 1980's" and the like. In the search field, I searched for 80's, 80s (without the apostrophe), plus every year (1981, 1982, etc.) This result was much better in regards to hearing familiar tunes. My tastes include a lot of new wave and old school RnB, so I included the Just Can't Get Enough compilations as well as the Phat Trax compilations as well (both searchable in the search field). The result for this station was a lot better. Very rarely would I get a song I was unfamiliar with, and it was usually because the compilations have a lot of unfamiliar songs in them, but for the most part the playlist was what I was shooting for. Yet I wanted to try something different.

So, for my third attempt, I went strictly song based. For Transatlantic 80's I looked up every single song that ever hit the charts between 1980 and 1989 using Rock of the Net and Retrocharts from everyhit.com as a guide. I had no idea it would take so much work. It took me pretty much a solid week of looking up songs and dropping songs into the folders. This one worked out very well, as the playlist does not deviate much at all from what I programmed into it. However, I'm not sure if it was worth all the extensive work I put into it.

Observations on the whole?

-- The player is very buggy, sometimes takes forever to load a station's playlist. They say in the FAQ that there is a cookie issue, and that if you clear your cookies it should clear things right up. That usually works for me, but I'm listening right now and can't get any of my stations to play. Guess I have to clear out my cookies YET again.

-- The playlists DO repeat every time you log in. It's incredibly annoying! No matter how many times I skip Dan Fogelberg, he's still there playing the Leader of the Band every time I log in to listen.

-- Have you posted on the beta blog yet? There are some posters there who are arguing for better exploring of other artists/songs. I hope it doesn't come to that. The last thing I want is some profanity-blaring, self-congratulatory nonsense from some new rap artist just because I programmed Kurtis Blow or Grandmaster Flash.

-- I don't think by "hits" on the adventurousness scale, they mean "hits". I don't know what they mean exactly, but I do know the adventurousness scale has nothing to do with big chart hits being played more often than not. I played with this slider a lot. No discernible difference.

-- I'm not sure the target means a lot either. I have used weighted settings and equal settings both, with again no discernible difference in the frequency of artists/songs. But that's probably because the thing keeps repeating the same damn songs all the time anyway.

[AmpedNow]

I tried to personalize it once as far as saving presets, but it didn't seem to work all that well. Spent time building a preset list only to have them dissapear the next time I turned it on.

I mostly just listen to individual stations through the updated Winamp player. Works fine for that.

Speaking of that, the CC streams seemed to be down this afternoon. I think their player will be launched any minute now...