ian

-As Lucas pointed out, track listings needs to be easily copied for posting
-Ability to search by keyword, across Artist, Album and song title
- Search by composer, producer, recording studio, label, etc
-Reduce the barriers for Internet citizens to listen to playlists posted online
-Copy and Paste functionality in the Playlist Description box in YME
-Ability to Tag Playlists
-Random playlist load to portable device by user, genre, keyword, etc
-Classical music is almost impossible to find on YMU for playlisting
-Market and promote high-quality playlists, consumers just do not understand what can be done with them

Under these 70 high-level categories there are many sub-level categories. For instance, “Rolling Stones Covers” could be “The Highest Charting Rolling Stones Covers”, “Reggae Stones Covers”, “Tattoo You, Covered” or even as specific as “Acoustic Jazz Stones Covers With Female Vocalists” My point is, the possibilities for arranging music are endless and more interesting than anything going in technology today. (well, in my opinion anyway)

Remember that K-tel compilation you had in 10th grade? We can put them together. Want to know all of the songs in a film that were not on the soundtrack? We can do it. How about every song ever used by Coca-Cola in a TV commercial? Songs for a Nurse’s Graduation Party? Every song that features Billy Preston on Organ? Songs that feature Fart Noises? Blah, blah, freakin’ blah! Sometimes I cause myself cluster headaches by thinking about the cool things you can do, and the value it adds.

Basically, I see playlists breaking into three camps:

1: The Community Playlist Database
A place where anyone can upload their playlists, they can be rated, catalogued, etc. Lots of this out there, FIQL, Mixmatcher, internal to YMU and Rhapsody. This model has value, but in an early MP3.com kinda way. You have to sift through thousands of trash playlists like “Good Songs” to find a decent list.

2: The Edited Playlist
Knowledgeable, creative music fanatics set free to go nuts with a good cataloguing system. The blog was made for this. This model can also find the cream of the crop from #1 above to re-distribute. Good, reliable, interesting and educated content will always work, no matter how it’s delivered.

3: The Playlist Building Community
Whether it uses a system of fact-checkers and music editors or a wiki system. The community members can create and edit each others playlists as well as their own. This has immense archival and educational value. For example, I did a list on Songs With Theremin
This list is not a matter of opinion and contains no creative effort, however it takes research. A recording either has Theremin, or it doesn’t. If a community member knows a track that’s missing, they can add it. Disagreements spur more research and eventually a definitive Theremin playlist. Now image this with every instrument, time signature, songwriter, sidemen, recording studio, etc.

I could speak on this for days, but I think I’ll stop here for now.