Nature vs. Nurture in Music Recommenders. I recently wrote a post on FmH in response to reports about new software algorithms to pigeonhole the formal qualities of pieces of music to make recommendations based on analytic conclusions about your tastes. In short, I stated that a more subtle, sophisticated and ultimately more pleasing recommendation engine already existed — social recommenders like last.fm (audioscrobbler), which I use, which point you to new music based on the listening experience of a body of users whose tastes are similar to yours. Here is a more elaborate discussion of the strengths and weaknessess of the two approaches, which weblogger Steve Krause neatly contrasts as ‘nature vs. nurture.’