I’ve been spending alot of time utilizing Yahoo Music to feed my aural appetite. For what it’s worth I’m currently labeled a “Fanatic”, having rated a total of 2,408 items (songs, albums, artists) over about two months (the marketers/trend watchers/statisticians/etc at Yahoo doubtlessly love me). What I haven’t done is made “My Station” public. At first I thought,”Hey, why bother? I don’t use this email address they gave me (as part of my ISP account) so no one will be able to give me feedback anyway; and I won’t use it because getting email from strangers doesn’t seem particularly prudent when the net is incubating newer and nastier viruses by the nanosecond.” Now there’s some logic to this position. Except it’s a pointless point. If I don’t read the email people might send me, there’s obviously no danger. So why is My Station still private?

I suspect it has to do with a little feature Yahoo has which they call “Influencer”. Here’s Yahoo’s definition of “Influencer”:

An Influencer is another LAUNCHcast user that you select to influence the music played on your station. When you select an Influencer, songs he/she rates highly will be more likely to play on your station.

Now on the “My Station” webpage there’s this big squarish block labeled with a tab declaring “MY MUSIC INFLUENCE”. Inside it (in bold) are the declarations “I’m influenced by:” and “I influence:”. As a person who, by occupational definition, is an “Influencer”, this feature is a bit unnerving. No, I’m not a music critic; I design products. But my ego makes me reluctant to readily admit being influenced by just anyone (“Hey, I’m a designer!”) and even more hesitant to face the possibility that I influence no one (“Hey, where’s all the glowing email I should be getting?!”). This can’t be a healthy attitude. And although I read online comments about the products I’ve designed, I wonder how much I listen. Something I need to consider. If I react this way about music, how open am I to design criticism? Maybe not as much as I think.