Festivals 2010 beta

RSS, please )

the new design is ugly for the moment. The artists pictures should stay at the top, for starters...

Great idea! I'm glad to see that last.fm is improving like this.

gamboviol sa:
Please give us specific examples and we'll work to improve the service - it's a brand new algorithm so the more feedback we get the quicker we can improve it. Thanks for your help!
The algorithm should take into consideration how much you've listened to an artist. For example I get a 30% compatibility for a festival with only one artist which I've listened to only 6 times! That seems very incorrect. Another example is a festival with only one artist I've listened to only 18 times, but for some reason that gives me a high 62% compatibility, what's up with that?

I think artists which you've listened to so little should have lower compatibility.

Don't you agree? :)

Goblim said:
Great idea! I'm glad to see that last.fm is improving like this.

gamboviol sa:
Please give us specific examples and we'll work to improve the service - it's a brand new algorithm so the more feedback we get the quicker we can improve it. Thanks for your help!
The algorithm should take into consideration how much you've listened to an artist. For example I get a 30% compatibility for a festival with only one artist which I've listened to only 6 times! That seems very incorrect. Another example is a festival with only one artist I've listened to only 18 times, but for some reason that gives me a high 62% compatibility, what's up with that?

I think artists which you've listened to so little should have lower compatibility.

Don't you agree? :)

Please tell me which festivals and I'll take a look!

Maybe it's worth mentioning that the compatibility algorithm has to consider more than just whether you have scrobbled artists in the lineup. If it didn't do that then most users would see zero scores far too often, even for festivals they might actually like. For example imagine a festival with a small lineup, where several bands are very similar to ones that you like, but where you haven't actually scrobbled any of them yet.

gamboviol said:
Please give us specific examples and we'll work to improve the service - it's a brand new algorithm so the more feedback we get the quicker we can improve it. Thanks for your help!

I'm browsing festivals in North America.

This is my highest-ranked one, at 62%:
http://www.last.fm/festival/1340145+Festival+d'%C3%A9t%C3%A9+de+Qu%C3%A9bec
But it seems to me it should be lower. Of the four bands it gives in "your reccomended lineup", there's only one I listen to regularly, and three that I listen to at the rare-end of occationally. (The full list of bands doesn't really exite me, either).

The next one down, at 54%
http://www.last.fm/festival/1410932+70000+Tons+of+Metal
Seems like it should have a slightly higher score than it does (and should certainly be higher than the first one I mentioned). Looking at the full lineup: In addition to a few bands I listen to, it also has several that I've been "meaning to check out", which push it up a bit higher. it's still "middling", not a "must see" or anything.

My #3, at 52%,
http://www.last.fm/festival/1358084+Cisco+Ottawa+Bluesfest+2010
Seems only to be recommended to me because of a single band. If I wanted to see that one band so badly, I'd catch them on their own tour, rather than at a festival with 145 other bands. (If it WAS recommended for more than that one band, it would be nice to have a hint as to why, because I'm not immediately seeing it.)

My #5, the 43% score seems about right:
http://www.last.fm/festival/1501386+Noctis+IV+Thrones+Of+War
I might go if it were convenient and close by. Not something I'd be likely to travel for.

My #6, at 43%
http://www.last.fm/festival/1222803+ProgPower+XI+USA
It should definitely have a higher score. And should be higher on my score than the first five. Still not a must-see, but definitely interests me.


Another question: There are touring festivals that are being given different scores at different stops along their tours. Why is this?

Thanks for the feature! I'd been wanting a better way to find out about festivals.

Discussion - brilliant, because shoutbox is not enough.
Compatibility is fun.
Recommended artists especially helpful when we have to deal with huge festivals.
Keep it going. Maybe improve layout just a bit.

i think the recommended line-up is a very good idea :)

This is super-useful, well done and good luck with fixing all the bugs and tweaking the algorithm(s).

Another suggestion: General festival information should be still avobe the line-up lists. And like someone else already mentioned:
Don't break with the sidebar!

I dont like the new version. To me it's really confusing. Especially the lineup display sucks. You can't see all artists at a look ):
I want the old way back!

on the main events/festivals page some of the dates are showing a day early (for both single and multiple day festivals). this is happening for festivals in chicago.

also want to reiterate some other bugs:
-no link back to the event page from the edit page
-band sorting is out of whack

Hey! And the regular events list no longer thinks that parts of the country over a thousand miles away are "local"! It's actually worth trying to browse now!

Before, it would suggest concerts "tonight" that were 1200 miles away, just because they happened to be in the same country. This is MUCH better. (And it lets me switch to "US" if I want to. Very good.)

Suggestion: I'd like to be able to switch to "North America", rather than just "US". Montreal is much closer to me than most U.S. cities; I'm far, far, more likely to go to a concert there than one in, say, Austin TX or LA.)


(The "recommended events" list always showed only things within a reasonable radius, but the main page didn't give me a way to filter by things within 100 miles or so.)

Thanks for all the thoughts and bugs everyone! We've rolled out a few fixes/improvements today and have more coming soon.