“音樂大腦”的讀心術

????一切都是從一次爭論開始的。兩個博士生，特里斯坦?耶漢和布萊恩?惠特曼，在麻省理工學院（MIT）的媒體實驗室（Media Lab）里相遇了。兩人都是業余音樂人，而且他們都對一項技術非常感興趣，也就是如何根據聽眾的品味向他推薦音樂。而且二人都相信，目前流行的“協作篩選”技術離實現這個目標差得還非常遠。那么他們的分歧在哪在呢？耶漢的研究方向主要關注如何教會電腦捕捉音樂的聲音元素，而惠特曼的研究方向主要關注音樂的文化和社會元素。他們將各自的研究方法結合在一起后，Echo Nest公司也就應運而生了。Echo Nest是目前最重要的數字音樂公司之一，只是很少有人聽說過它。

????Echo Nest從2005年開始著手建立一個龐大的數據庫，它就像一個能理解音樂的大腦，如果你喜歡當紅嘻哈音樂巨星坎耶?維斯特，它就會向你推薦另一個嘻哈歌手德雷克的音樂。這聽起來似乎跟音樂網站Pandora的服務很像。的確如此，不過Echo Nest的規模更大，而且它的服務并不直接面向聽眾，而是把數據賣給實力雄厚的流行音樂服務商和廣播電臺。

????Echo Nest的總部位于馬薩諸塞州的薩默維爾市，這家公司融合了兩種頂尖技術：首先，電腦程序可以分析歌曲的音調和節奏等基本元素。（Echo Nest的客戶向公司提供進入歌曲文件的接口）與此同時，還有一個像搜索引擎一樣的機制會在網絡上收集關于該樂曲的微博和評論，比如“這首歌適合跳舞”、“這個歌手跟鮑伯?迪倫有一拼”等。兩種技術結合在一起，賦予了每首歌曲一個獨特的電子指紋，同時總結了歌曲的音樂和文化屬性。通過這種方法，Echo Nest已經收集了200多萬名歌手的3,400多萬首歌曲的數據。Echo Nest公司內部的人管這個日益龐大的數據庫叫“知識庫”。

????Echo Nest的首席執行官吉姆?盧切斯于2007年加盟這家公司，幫助他們把這個創意推銷給廣大開發者和企業。一般來說，客戶會定期向該公司支付許可費用，同時還會根據用戶的人數，再支付一筆浮動的費用。早期階段，采用Echo Nest技術的一個重要客戶是音樂公司Spotify。2009年，正當這家流媒體服務公司風靡歐洲的時候，Spotify選擇了Echo Nest的技術用于自己的播放列表功能，之后各種訂單紛至沓來。比如Clear Channel公司就把這項服務用于它的iHeartRadio音頻播放器；MTV也把這項服務用于它的Music Meter應用，這個應用每天都會更新最熱歌手的排行榜。Echo Nest的客戶中既有諾基亞（Nokia）、英特爾（Intel）這樣的大牌企業，也有Raditaz和Rdio這樣名不見經傳的小型創業公司。音樂視頻廣站VEVO的總經理弗萊德?桑塔匹亞稱：“他們是這個領域里做得最好的。”VEVO公司今年年初也通過Echo Nest的技術，添加了一個“相似歌手”功能。

????Echo Nest獲得歡迎的原因，不僅僅是因為其數據庫的規模。像谷歌（Google）和Facebook一樣，這家公司也不遺余力地討好開發者。Echo Nest還提供了一個設計得非常簡捷的應用程序界面（API），讓其它程序也能通過這個API調取Echo Nest的數據。

????在線流媒體服務公司MOG的創始人兼首席執行官大衛?海曼與Echo Nest開始合作是在2009年，當時，他的公司推出了一個高級訂閱功能。除了Echo Nest的“知識庫”之外，更令海曼印象深刻的，Echo Nest的服務可以非常輕松地與他自己的數據進行映射。換句話說，由于其他工程師能夠將Echo Nest的技術與自己的工作融合，Echo Nest將潛在的競爭對手轉化為了付費客戶。

????此外，Echo Nest還推出了音樂應用“hack days”來提高該技術的開放性，并且還允許開發者免費使用該技術進行非營利性試驗。位于澳大利亞的編程人員大衛?麥金尼指出，這項戰略使Echo Nest成了那些想“打造新的音樂體驗”的企業家的航空母艦。正是通過那些借助Echo Nest技術進行的試驗，麥金尼拉來了投資者，成功建立了一家名叫Discovr的創業公司。

????It began with an argument. Tristan Jehan and Brian Whitman met as Ph.D. candidates at MIT's Media Lab. Both were amateur musicians passionate about the ways technology might recommend songs based on a listener's tastes. Both were convinced that "collaborative filtering," a trendy means of achieving that goal, was woefully inadequate. Their disagreement? Jehan's research focused on teaching computers to capture the sonic elements of music, while Whitman's studied the cultural and social components. In combining the two approaches they created the Echo Nest, one of the most important digital music companies few have heard about.

????Starting in 2005, they set about creating a vast database, a music brain that, based on your interest in Kanye West, can suggest you check out rapper Drake. Sound like Pandora? It's similar -- but on a massive scale. And instead of making its service directly available to listeners, the Echo Nest markets its data to power popular music services' custom playlists and radio stations.

????The Somerville, Mass., startup combines two types of cutting-edge technology: A computer program analyzes songs for their fundamental elements such as key and tempo. (The company's customers provide access to song files.) Meanwhile, a searchlike system crawls the web collecting what people are tweeting and commenting about music -- "that song is danceable," "that singer is Dylanesque." The two sets of data are combined to give every track a digital fingerprint containing its musical and cultural attributes. The Echo Nest has gathered data in this way for 34 million tracks by more than 2 million artists. Internally, the ever-growing database is referred to simply as "the knowledge."

????CEO Jim Lucchese joined the company in 2007 to help market the idea to developers and businesses. Clients would pay the company a recurring licensing fee, plus a fluctuating fee based on the number of users. An important early customer was Spotify. In 2009, when the streaming-music service was storming Europe, Spotify licensed Echo Nest technology for its playlist-building function. A series of deals followed, including one with Clear Channel for its online radio player iHeartRadio and another with MTV for its Music Meter app, which generates a daily ranking of hot new artists. Along with giants Nokia (NOK) and Intel (INTC), smaller music startups such as Raditaz and Rdio signed up in droves. "They're the best there is at what they do," says Fred Santarpia, general manager of music-video site VEVO, which added an Echo Nest-powered "similar artist" option earlier this year.

????It's not just the size of the database, of course. Much like Google (GOOG) and Facebook (FB), the venture has become successful by relentlessly courting developers. It provides an API -- a sort of front door that makes its data usable by other programmers -- explicitly designed to be simple.

????David Hyman, founder and CEO of online streaming service MOG, started working with Echo Nest in 2009 when his company launched a premium subscription option. Besides "the knowledge" itself, what impressed him was how easily it could be mapped onto his own data. In other words, Echo Nest's ability to meld with the work of other engineers has transformed would-be competitors into paying customers.

????The company promotes this openness by hosting music-app "hack days" and giving developers free access to its technology for noncommercial experimentation. The strategy is making it the "mothership" for entrepreneurs looking to "create new musical experiences," explains David McKinney, a coder in Australia whose experiments led to the creation of an investor-backed startup called Discovr.