Guru -- Project Report Sections 1-3 (Rough Draft)

8/13/2019 Guru -- Project Report Sections 1-3 (Rough Draft)

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Gu.ru: A music discovery and fan-interaction website.

Project report rough draft for COSC 400 Senior Design November 25, 2013

Project team

Anthony Adkins, BS Computer Science 2013, University of Tennessee;

Daniel Baldwin, BS Computer Science 2014, University of Tennessee;

Samuel Day, BS Computer Science 2014, University of Tennessee;

Philip Vaccaro, BS Computer Science 2014, University of Tennessee;

This document describes Gu.ru, a web service aimed at providing its users relevant

information, analysis, and discussion on musicians.

A Simple Tale of Struggle and Strife on How Gu.ru Can Change Your Life! [Author:

Adkins]

Staniels life was one of indecision and compromise. Even his name was a compromise

between his mother and father, who couldnt decide what to name the newborn Staniel. Momwanted a Stanly, dad wanted a Daniel, though neither was truly happy, they settled on Staniel.

With his earliest moments out of the way,

the rest of his life continued the same every day:

Never deciding, never committing,

Staniel was on the fence about pretty much everything.

He went to a local college, as was expected,

but Staniel had no social life and felt quite dejected.

Then one day, as if mana from heaven

he met a girl whose name was Jennilyn.

Staniels heart stopped, he knew then and there

he would impress this girl, he would win her care.

But what to say, Staniel simply didnt know


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her shirt said I Fight Dragons, he drew a blank and froze.

Are you OK? came a voice through the haze,

she was speaking to him, oh what a day!

You like these guys? she asked, pointing to the shirt

Of course! proclaimed Staniel, his stomach dropped with a lurch.He had never heard of the band, not once in his life,

Staniel panicked, he was trapped. Oh what mental strife!

Thats awesome! Finally, no one else has.

Want to get lunch later? After next class?

My goodness, oh my! With his heart all a flutter,

all that Staniel could manage was to utter

yes. As she walked away, Staniel panicked quite a bit,

he stood there a minute, then almost fell trying to sit.

He had one hour, not very long!

She couldnt find out what hed said had been wrong.

Staniel got out his laptop, and quick as a flash,

he had his browser open to the greatest knowledge stash.

He Googled and Bingd and Wikipediad too,

naught but generic information, and that would not do.

Then another miracle, what perfect timing too!

with just five minutes left, Staniel found Gu.ru.

Basic info and fan testimonials abound!

Staniel almost couldnt believe all hed found.

Stories from concerts and album reviews,

all he could want and all he could use.

Staniel and Jennilyn then went out to lunch,

talked of the band, and Staniel knew so much!

It even turned out they had more in common,

so Staniel made his first decision, though it left his heart throbbin.

He had liked I Fight Dragons, so at the last minute,

he snapped up two tickets, and a CD with it.

His decision you ask? Well, you oughta know!


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Staniel asked her to the concert, and of course shed go!

You never know friends, it could happen to you

and in that moment, call on Gu.ru.

Does the story of Staniel sound familiar to you? How many times have you made a butt out of

yourself in a conversation about music. Maybe you misspoke, or maybe you honestly did not

know the answer. Wouldnt it be great if there was a site out there, maintained by fans, that

could help you be more informed. Wouldnt it be nice (if we were older?) if there was

somewhere you could share your opinions about the music you loved, and maybe even talk

about it intelligently with other people who share that love?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, or maybe even if you did not, Gu.ru is the site

for you. Gu.ru is a place for people who love music to talk to other people who love music. A

place were experiences and thoughts can be shared easily in a friendly and moderator

controlled environment. That doesnt mean everyone has to agree! Quite the opposite, user

debate and discussion is encouraged. The only thing the moderators will be there to prevent

is trolling, advertising, and generally toxic posts from polluting the submission system. You

can use Gu.ru to find new bands too. We will be building a section for each band to have

influences, contemporaries, and other ways to find similar artists. Then, you can browse usersubmissions about that artist to see if they seem interesting to you. This saves users the

endless searching for new bands by using search engines or listening to popular music on

youtube. This helps especially if you are not in to whatever is popular at the moment.

So come on and support Gu.ru and help us build a community of music lovers. Help us make

a place where all of us can hang out and not have to worry about trolling or flaming. Where

you can learn new things about music you love, or find your next favorite.

The Market's Need for Gu.ru [Author: Day]

Despite lamentation in years past of the oncoming death of the music industry (and

ostensibly music itself), the popularity and social relevance of music has never been higher.


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A-List actors Bruce Willis1and Shia Lebeuf2have both starred in recent European pop-art

music videos, Floyd Mayweather used major music stars Justin Bieber and Lil Wayne to hype

the crowd as he cruised to his latest light middleweight championship3, and even the White

House has addressed a recent boastful claim by Jay-Z.4Music is a constant; a cornerstone of

the human experience like ice cream and laughter, but it is not immune to shifts in technology

and culture. Guitars went electric, records scratched, and the means through which people

consumed music evolved from cylindrical tubes to, 1,000 songs in your pocket.

And again, we have seen another evolution. Music has gone digital in more ways than

could have ever been imagined even 10 years ago. Record companies finding a way to sell

digital singles and albums was an obvious yet crucial development, but a 16 year-old Justin

Bieber went triple platinum thanks to Youtube and its hard to imagine his career becoming

what it has without the power technology provided, yet alone a contentious Internet

missionary like Lil B. The question is, how exactly were these artists able to use the Internet

to launch their musical careers and build their popularity base?

Turn out, that question has been answered time5and time6again: through fan

interaction. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine; each week brings a new bridge between

artists and fans, and this is a good thing. The art is in its most accessible form and the line

between musician and fan blurred, but there is a noticeable market gap in this new frontier.

Communication lines are laid between artist and fan, but there has yet to be a service that

allows a way for fans to communicate with each other online in a way that is analogous to the

real-life discussions that take place in our record stores, concert spaces, and homes.

Maybe there isn't a market for long-winded discussions on music, one might argue.

Well, did you know 7 out of the 10 most-followed people on Twitter are musical artists? What

if I told you that 9 out the 10 most liked Facebook pages were musicians7? The most viewed

1 http://youtu.be/nhPaWIeULKk

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4 http://###.o3ne#.com/poitic/201-/04/11/#hite!houe!enie!ay!!$ap!caim!about!cuba!viit/

5 http://content.time.com/time/ma%aine/a$tice/0671161780-600.htm http://###.ne#yo$ke$.com/onine/bo%/cutu$e/2012/04/the!umb!b$iiance!o!i!b.htm

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http://vimeo.com/45185028http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/DMR2013.pdfhttp://vimeo.com/45185028http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/DMR2013.pdf


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video on Youtube with over 1.8 billion hits?8A music video. Need more proof? The

International Federation of the Phonographic Industry reported digital downloads alone

accounted for $5.6 billion dollars in revenue for record labels, and that's not including the

revenue obtained through streaming services such as Spotify.9

Ok, so fine, music fans are online everywhere, but how can we be really sure as to

what they want? Would they even use such a service? Granted, forecasting a fan culture's

behavior over a long period of time requires either a lot of luck or a little black magic but there

are encouraging signs for the market of fan-to-fan interaction and discussion of music. For

one, there is the popularity of music review sites on the Internet. Staples like Rolling Stone

and SPIN pull in 23 million10pages views and 7.6 million11unique visitors a month

respectively, and even the new-old-kids-on-the-block Pitchfork are able to pull in a whopping

43 million page views. What this means is there is a demand for content that diligently

analyzes artists from an intelligent point-of-view. Need more evidence? Take a look at The

Needle Drop12, a review series on Youtube run by, The Internet's busiest music nerd, whose

long, in-depth dissections of albums garner tens-of-thousands of views a piece. Or better yet,

Nardwuar13, a caricatural interviewer who specializes in obscure knowledge of an artist's

biography and getting millions of Youtube hits. Again, people are drawn to these videos

providing an instant means of in-depth analysis and critical thinking towards the music they

love. Notice that the less popular an album is, the fewer views Anthony Fantano's review of it

gets. This is not a coincidence; enthusiasts don't watch these types of review videos to

discover new content, but rather to incite a discussion of some sort, even if that discussion is

wholly internal.

Alright, so music fans like reviewing things, but who says they'll care about any other

content relating to music? What other content is even out there? This question is a bit trickier,

and since it is trickier we must take a more creative approach to answering it.

8 http://###.youtube.com/#atch;v170

7 http://###.ipi.o$%/content/ib$a$y/,9201-.ppp. !

10 http://###.$.com/meiakit/$oin%tone/)i%ita.htm

11 http://###.pinmeia.com/12 http://###.youtube.com/ue$/theneee$op

1- http://youtu.be/?c&3iW#ubnk
http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/DMR2013.pdfhttp://www.ifpi.org/content/library/DMR2013.pdf


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So back to the IFPI report. All this time we have been looking at statistics on digital

music, but physical media sales still comprise the majority of income for the industry 58

percent of it, in fact!14As digital distribution provided more convenient ways for people to

consume music, physical media had to compete and so a new trend emerged with physical

release: selling more than just the music. Deluxe packaging, retailer-specific promotions,

limited-run vinyls; all ways of getting fans to interact with music in ways other than

consumption. After all, music is not a product, music is an experience.

And when one views music as an experience, emerging market trends in the music

industry become a little more clear and easier to understand. People subscribe to music

streaming sites to get the experience of music, not for the value of the individual songs

provided by that service. Vinyl sales are increasing because people enjoy owning good

looking, high-quality physical manifestations of the music they love. Concerts and festivals are

seeing boom years because of the desire for the live music experience.

Perhaps the most important aspect of all of this is we are already seeing people

sharing their experiences with music online in a variety of ways. As new trends on the Internet

emerged, there has been a noticeable willingness amongst fans the adopt them, whether it be

through message boards and forums in the early days of the web, music blogs in the early-

mid 00's that helped cushion the fall of the major label infrastructure, shared music links on

Facebook and other social media networks, or contemporary content-aggregate sites such as

reddit today (whose music subreddit has 3.4 million subscribers).15

The market is there, but it has yet to be realized to its full potential. Music lovers use

other services to converse about music because there is a desire to discuss music no matter

what the means necessary, not because the current means are ideal. But the opportunity is

here to make those ideal means; to provide a service that allows fans to tell live show stories,

speculate about artistic intent, and share their love for for music with one another in a way

built specifically for the discussion of the arts.

14 http://###.ipi.o$%/content/ib$a$y/,9201-.ppp. 7

15 http://###.$eit.com/$/muic


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Our Competition [Author: Day]

With music making the shift to digital, fans have been given a wide-ranging assortment

of options for consuming the music they love, but in terms of fostering discussion and

appreciation for that content, the current options are inadequate. This is not to say valuable

discussions are not being held, on the contrary. There is a whole galaxy of fandom online and

they seek any opportunity available to talk to each other about the things they love. What this

means is when we examine the competition, we must not only see their flaws but also what

draws people to them in the first place.

Let's examine social networking sites. Going back to the IFPI report, the popularity of

musical artists on these sites is nearly insurmountable16, so what's the problem? Simply put,

the fundamental methods of communication these sites are share-heavy; tour dates on

Facebook, words of inspiration on Twitter, anything that tallies a page's likes, retweets, or

stars. This is ideal for intercommunication between artist and fan the very act of music itself

is its creator sharing something with the listener fans do so much more than that with each

other. They debate, analyze, speculate; these sites are valuable for sharing experiences or

news as it happens but there's no cataloging of events, no sense of the range of thought on

each musician.

So we turn to the music distribution sites. What support do they give to the fans' ability

to communicate with one another? Short answer is: not much. iTunes and Amazon focus their

approach on reviews, a smart choice given that their primary service is to sell a product and

consumers like to know if their money is well-spent, but there is much more to art than a

dollar's worth so the format's limitations are fairly obvious. What may be less obvious,

however, is the uniqueness that social media integration brings to the conversation. If social

networking sites' tool of conversation is sharing, then why not share the music you buy? After

all, it spawns discussion and it spurs the endless cycle of exchanges that define these

networks. By distributors providing this service we learn two things: first, that web services do

not exist in a vacuum, and second, it is probably best that way. By prioritizing themselves

towards reviews iTunes and Amazon cut to what is influential to someone making a financial

1 http://###.ipi.o$%/content/ib$a$y/,9201-.ppp. 22!2-6 in cae you o$%ot


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decision: the idea that they are buying value. And that is fine, just as it is fine that Facebook

and Twitter provide the service of sharing, but what is fascinating is how one service feeds

another. Someone buys an album on iTunes, shares that information with his or her friends,

they check that album out on that recommendation, and the cycle continues. But what if

someone wants to learn more about an artist from an independent source, on that does not

have a financial sake in their opinion?

Wikipedia is probably the first site one would turn to, given that it is the sixth-most

visited site in the world17, and why wouldn't they? Wikipedia represents the best the internet

has to offer: a free and open well of information, but it is also worth considering its limitations.

Music is an art, and because it is an art there are inherent qualities that cannot be

represented objectively to fit Wikipedia's requirements. Interpretations can't be cited, and

anecdotal experiences don't fit the ethos of Wikipedia anyhow. Besides, Wikipedia lacks in its

ability to truly represent the impact or importance of a band; to their fans, to the music as an

art, and to society at large. Fans don't recite summarized biographies to one another, so why

is that such a popular

As I've noted earlier, critics provide a wonderful resource for this kind of information

and analysis. Sites such as Pitchfork, Guardian Music, and NPR serve as digital tastemakers

and their influence on musical trends, though sometimes overstated, is still vital in how we

perceive modern music's role critically and historically. That said this creates a barrier

between author and reader, no different than that which exists in print media. Part of the

beauty of the Internet is that barrier can be breached; regular people can and have

contributed a wealth of content on Wikipedia, Discogs, Whosampled, Reddit, Stack Overflow,

IMDB, Wordpress, numerous blogging services and countless forums. There has yet to be a

user-submission based site that collects the things admirers of the art care about, however.

The closest example would be a critical database like JSTOR, but again, there is a barrier to

entry to getting published. People should be allowed to share their experiences without

requiring exorbitant amounts of effort, but rewarding those who do.

Perhaps the best example of direct competition then would be the site Rapgenius, a

1 http://en.#ikipeia.o$%/#iki/Lit@o@mot@popua$@#ebite


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lyrics database that allows its users to add annotations to the lyrics that explain their

intentions. Obviously this leads to an over-examination of certain ideas and interpretations

can get loopy, but it shows a community of fans interacting with one each other discussing the

music that they love, and it has attracted $15 million as a result.18This is the market we are

targeting, and the Gu.ru service provides an opportunity to attack it from a unique

perspective. Rather than being song-based, Gu.ru is artist-based; its information and

resources tailored towards presenting a full-scale picture of each artist not only through

biographic or release information, but through reviews, concert experiences, and in-depth

analyses on their style, impact, and any other cultural influences they might have had.

18 http://###.theae$.com/2012/10/0-/ventu$e!capita!invet!15!miion!in!$ap!%eniu/

Documents

Guru -- Project Report Sections 1-3 (Rough Draft)