Friedrich Nietzsche once said that a man who is very busy seldom changes his opinions.
Well, Max Schulte-Hillen, Trinity '07, wants to broaden your horizons-on music, that is.
Schulte-Hillen is the mastermind behind Music For Busy People, a website that recommends new music to those who don't have the time to find it themselves, just as the name implies. Site members-who need an invite code to join-receive e-mails from Schulte-Hillen a few times a week with links to songs. Users can also access archives of past e-mails and vote on waitlisted individuals who would like to join the site.
Last summer, Schulte-Hillen, who once worked at Rolling Stone, began sending out weekly e-mails of music recommendations to a list of his friends. Soon, Dan Englander, Trinity '08, and Taylor Mingos, Pratt '07, encouraged him to turn the idea into an actual site and bought Schulte-Hillen the MFBP domain name at Christmas.
Starting out with about 20 users-stemming mostly from the three's friends-the site now has about 800 members. "One in 100 users gets really competitive with me and sends me lists and lists of songs that he thinks are great and wants me to listen to, which is fantastic because it makes my life so much easier," Schulte-Hillen said.
He said he hopes that the site will collect enough members to begin taking in revenue from ads.
The former freelance photographer limits suggestions to five to seven bands per e-mail so people can look through the music quickly. His e-mails also normally start out with a paragraph mentioning updates from the site, which site members he has met recently or whatever else is on his mind at the moment.
For variety, Schulte-Hillen said he usually tries to have at least two indie rock songs, one or two more danceable tracks and-for lack of a better term-world music, which he described as "something that's kind of weird and odd in a wonderful way, or at least has a fantastic music video to it."
So far, he decides what to recommend by personally meeting site members at bars or concerts and learning about their musical tastes.
"Ninety-five percent of the bands I've never heard of, and I'm not super into indie music at all, but I generally really like it, which I find interesting," Englander said.
Schulte-Hillen said the site is targeted at college students and those fresh out of college who are now working and "don't have the time to go to the record store anymore."
"I guess it's like back in high school when everyone's watching that one TV program, and it's nice to have that one thing in common," he said. "More than that, I think it's people that are tired of the iTunes Genius function because it keeps recommending the same Arcade Fire album over and over."
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.