The Echo Nest Fanalytics

At the core of just about everything we do here at the Echo Nest is what we call “The Knowledge”. This is big pile of data that represents everything we know about music. To build ‘The Knowledge’ we crawl the web looking for every bit of info about music. We find music blogs, artist news, album reviews, biographies, audio, images, videos, fan activity and on and on. This gives us a huge set of raw data that represents the global conversation about music. Next, we apply a set of statist

Rare gems of Madan Mohan unearthed in ‘Tere Bagair…’ (IANS Music Review)
By Ruchika Kher Album: “Tere Bagair…”; Music Director: the late Madan Mohan; Lyricists: Raja Mehdi Ali Khan, Naqsh Lyallpuri, Rajinder Krishnan, Prem Dhawan, Indeevar; Singers: Mohammad Rafi, Lata Mangeshkar, Talat Mahmood, Asha Bhosle, Kishore Kumar, Balbir and Brij Bhushan Rating: *** 1/2 A rare treasure, a glimpse into the unseen, an unexplored world of legendary composer Madan […]

Michael Jackson The Musician, Not Celebrity
Every media outlet in the world is already covering the news of Michael Jackson’s surprising death today from cardiac arrest at age 50. So why write an obituary for Culture Catch? Jackson’s music was part of the soundtrack of my life, and I loved much of it. But whenever musicians reach the level of fame that he did, they are viewed more as celebrities than talents, and their celebrity is written about rather than their art. I don’t care about all the detritus of celebrity, I just want to rememb

‘Love Aaj Kal’ has peppy, soulful numbers (IANS Music Review)
By Ruchika Kher Album: “Love Aaj Kal”; Music Director: Pritam Chakraborty; Lyricist: Irshad Kamil; Singers: , Sunidhi Chauhan, KK, Neeraj Shridhar, Mohit Chauhan and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan; Rating: *** After the hit score of “Jab We Met”, director Imtiaz Ali has collaborated with Pritam yet again for the music of Saif Ali Khan’s production debut […]

The Thriller’s Gone
The icons of my childhood are going fast, it seems. Ed McMahon on Tuesday. Farrah Fawcett this morning. And this evening, the King of Pop. I can’t say I was a die-hard Michael Jackson fan, but his music was the music of my youth, from the perfectly crafted pop confections of “ABC” and “I Want You Back” with the Jackson Five, to such towering works as 1982’s “Thriller” and ’87’s “Bad.” There was no disputing his enormous talent and riveting showmanship — music that proved to be terrific enough