Stuart Andrews will be ignoring
There are many things I love about our all-digital, on-demand media age. I’m just old enough to remember when watching a movie at home meant waiting four years for it to be shown on TV, so instant-streaming video services are manna from heaven for a film buff like me.
Having grown up in a town where Woolworths was the only record store, I’m still flabbergasted by the choice available from the likes of iTunes and Amazon, while Spotify never ceases to amaze me. And while I like to support my local bookstore, I do have a Kindle Fire and a Kindle eBook reader and I’m not ashamed to use them. Convenience, price and choice count for a lot.
But there’s one thing that sours the whole experience, and that’s the obsession these stores and services have with making dubious recommendations for what I should read, watch or listen to next. I’m sure some people find them useful and for websites they’re an essential mechanism for flogging further content, or for keeping users ‘engaged’. Otherwise, like the overgrown toddlers we’ve all become, these customers will be distracted by something new and shiny elsewhere. Me, though? I hate them. They put me off the stuff I’ve paid good money to enjoy.
Why? For a start, they’re obtrusive and annoying. I like to choose what I’m going to read, watch or listen to. I don’t like the idea of some algorithm picking apart my tastes then deciding what I might w'ant to read or wratch next. I find Amazon particularly irritating on this count. I can’t even pick up my Kindle Fire and start reading without it recommending another three books I might like to read instead. It’s like a restaurant where my main goes cold because the waiter keeps shoving the dessert menu in my face.
And these recommendations are so often clumsy or wildly inaccurate. Listen, Netflix, I can see why watching Saving Private Ryan might lead you to believe that I’d also like other World War II dramas. But how on Earth do you get from there to Avengers Assemble, The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug or the Bruce Willis asteroid disaster, Armageddon? And why throw in tasteless ‘comedies’ (Step Brothers and Superbad) and - strangest of all -Top Gear? I guess there are some tanks in Saving Private Ryan, but surely that’s where the similarities end?
I’m even less keen on the recommendations that tell you w'hat’s ‘trending’ near you or popular with your Facebook friends. I have lots of ‘friends’ on Facebook, only 20 per cent of whom I’d actually count as real friends. Most of those have awful taste, so w'hy should I care what they think? Meanwhile, as someone wfho lives in a rural area where The Rolling Stones are still considered edgy, does it really matter what’s the hottest thing near me?
Even when these recommendations get things right, it just seems creepy. Last week, I listened to a new album on Spotify, only to get an email recommending 10 other albums, eight of which I already own. Have they got someone upstairs rifling through my record collection as I write?
I don’t know. What I do know is that I wish these stores and services wrould spend a little less time analysing my habits and trying to hurl stuff at me, and a little more making the stuff I know I want a little easier to find. Curating content, putting the best stuff up-front, getting it in the right genre and linked to relevant things seems a smarter move than trying to predict wrhat I’d like to enjoy next. Perhaps someone might recommend this approach to them?