One of the best aspects of social music is that it’s able to help listeners find new artists that they may never have discovered otherwise. And while most of the best apps and software choices have incorporated recommendation features, many of them haven’t been able to do so in a truly useful way (except for, in a more abstract sense, my beloved 8tracks).
Enter Rexly, an app specially designed with music tastemaking as its focus.
Rexly uses recommendation algorithms similar to those found in Facebook and iTunes to make discovering new tunes easy. Normal digital listening patterns culled from iTunes actions (like when I play MOP’s Ante Up seventeen times in a row each morning) are gathered and used as a suggestion barometre that can then be passed on to others that are “following” your musical activities.
Where Rexly differs from its competitiors is in its designer’s understanding that too much content can diminish a service’s usefulness, drowning out good suggestions by offering up too many all at once. Rexly combats this by making its users choose only six people who are able to provide recommendations.
By receiving new suggestions from only those the user trusts most, Rexly hopes to refine the process and offer up content advice in a more palatable form. There’s no chance of hurt feelings either since the app makes this list invisible, a feature that is part of Rexly’s overall decision to emphasis user privacy with their service.
Check out (or sign up for) Rexly through by using the technological miracle of this hyperlink.
