VGMdb Recommendations Function?

[Bernhardt]

Y'know how Amazon.com recommends other albums/music to you depending on what albums/music you specify into the wizard that you own, or have previously bought from the site?

I've been thinking; what if VGMdb ALSO had a recommendations function? So users could recommend on an album's page other albums that other users might enjoy, based on stylistic similarities, and not just by the same series or the same artist.

For example, say you're interested in something gothic. Then entries like Castlevania and Devil May Cry would pop up together, among other entries. Or say you're interested in hard rock or heavy metal; than Atelier Iris ~ Deceitful Wings and Lord of Vermilion would pop up together, among other entries.

Or, say you did a search for the Baroque soundtrack: On the page would be recommended other albums that have a similar musical style, and not just other soundtracks composed by Shigeki Hayashi.

Would do you think? Good idea, or needlessly complicated?

[Gigablah]

There's no problem implementing something basic such as "users who liked this album also liked...", but a good recommendation system is, to put it simply, nontrivial =3

My dream is to have a flexible, moderated, weighted tagging system.

[Secret Squirrel]

I've been toying around with some possibilities too, namely a system that provides matches based on a weighted function of:
Rating - namely the set of albums that were rated most similarly by the people who rated this one.
Artists - the number of artists that the albums share in similar spots
Game - Representing a similar set of products.

Obviously, some of the other data fields (e.g., classification) could be part of this formula, and a slight bit of randomness could be added so that, sometimes, the recommended albums change when you refresh.

The trick though is figuring out a way to do this that isn't too intensive.

[Crash]

Is there a way to calculate a correlation between your collection and someone else's? If so, this would provide a way to get a handle on which other collections are most similar to yours. By browsing the most similar collections, you could get a good sense of what other albums you might enjoy.

I don't know how one would calculate a robust correlation coefficient with non-numeric variables, though.

[vshwong]

I am actually interested to know the top 10 "most owned" albums from the members of this site. I bet it's Metal Gear or some FF soundtracks.

[Myrkul]

I am actually interested to know the top 10 "most owned" albums from the members of this site. I bet it's Metal Gear or some FF soundtracks.

You'r right.
But this feature is already available, with a bunch of other interesting statistics.

It can be found at the bottom right of every page. (or here (http://vgmdb.net/db/statistics.php))

[Secret Squirrel]

Strangely, the most owned album is Final Fantasy XII Original Soundtrack Limited Edition.

[Metroid]

"Limited Edition" That is sure interesting, come to think how many copies were available.

[Myrkul]

If i had to choose one strange statistic..

It's the view count of Bouncing Beats: The ESPN NBA 2K5 Soundtrack (http://vgmdb.net/album/7911)..
It's actually 14th, before many other great and certainly better albums.

I mean, it's a basketball soundtrack! Come'on it's not a great game.. it's a promo, it's owned only by 1 person and it does not have any refback.

That album is constantly in the top 20 of the most viewed albums (last 30days).

For me, it's a mystery.

[Carl]

I am actually interested to know the top 10 "most owned" albums from the members of this site. I bet it's Metal Gear or some FF soundtracks.

That information is shown in the "statistics" section
http://vgmdb.net/db/statistics.php?do=most_collected

[Bernhardt]

Yeah, it's also strange that the Super Mario Galaxy OST is commonly owned; pretty sure that was a limited print, too...

[KeyLogic]

Strangely, the most owned album is Final Fantasy XII Original Soundtrack Limited Edition.

Yeah, that kind of surprising me too. I figured that FF XII OST would be over shadowed by many other FF soundtracks, like FF X. It's good to see that CRIED is up there in the 14th position, definitely a very nice album. :)

[Zorbfish]

Doesn't surprise me much, considering the FFXII's LE soundtrack was easier to find than the regular edition (Also because its better than expected Sakimoto). Also the fact that it's on clearance for $15 over at gamemusic.com might not have hurt its position either.

[dma]

I think a tag based system a la Pandora (music genre, mood, notable music structure elements, notable instruments, etc...) would work fine on this.
It should probably be re-thought or extended to VGM specific tags : synthesis/music-chip used (for pre-streaming OSTs), game genre, etc...