Music Discovery Services in the Classroom
Created by Catherine Howell (University of Cambridge) on November 28, 2006
Online music discovery services and streaming web radio are generating waves in contemporary youth culture, mirrored in the blogosphere. Web-based music services such as Musicovery, Pandora, Last.fm, Soma.fm and their ilk are undoubtedly starting to change the ways that young people today discover, share and discuss the music and media they care about. But are they at all relevant in the classroom? How can web-based music services be used to educate, as well as to consume?
My suggestion: online music discovery services have the potential to become an excellent self-guided learning resource for students of music classification, period and genre. Playing around with some of the different available services, and specifically, comparing their different music classification systems, could provide students with a highly accessible introduction to the history of musical styles, performance techniques, and interactions between music and other media, such as film and television.
So, we might start by comparing the music choices on Soma FM’s “Groove Salad” station with those on Musicovery’s “Electro” category, as an accompaniment to the history of electronic and electro-acoustic music. Or a teacher might ask students to compare the concept behind Pandora’s Music Genome Project™ with Musicovery’s music description system (see Robin Good’s post for more information).
The classification systems that we use to distinguish different types of music are essentially social and cultural in nature. They tell us much about cultural mechanisms for organizing knowledge. When we are able to see how these mechanisms unfold and change over time, we learn about history. Using music discovery services in the classroom could help teachers to integrate music theory, music appreciation and the history of music in some new and interesting ways.
My suggestion: online music discovery services have the potential to become an excellent self-guided learning resource for students of music classification, period and genre. Playing around with some of the different available services, and specifically, comparing their different music classification systems, could provide students with a highly accessible introduction to the history of musical styles, performance techniques, and interactions between music and other media, such as film and television.
So, we might start by comparing the music choices on Soma FM’s “Groove Salad” station with those on Musicovery’s “Electro” category, as an accompaniment to the history of electronic and electro-acoustic music. Or a teacher might ask students to compare the concept behind Pandora’s Music Genome Project™ with Musicovery’s music description system (see Robin Good’s post for more information).
The classification systems that we use to distinguish different types of music are essentially social and cultural in nature. They tell us much about cultural mechanisms for organizing knowledge. When we are able to see how these mechanisms unfold and change over time, we learn about history. Using music discovery services in the classroom could help teachers to integrate music theory, music appreciation and the history of music in some new and interesting ways.
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