Brian Zisk on music, humans and technology

Here's another segment of our multi-part conversation with Brian Zisk, long-time online music advocate and executive producer of the SanFran MusicTech Summit.

In this piece, Brian says that while he's a big believer in using technology to connect people with the music they like, some people prefer the feel of getting recommendations from another human being.

That's true even if the "person" is an artificial-intelligence-created personal like Olive, who was the star of Green Witch Internet Radio, a company Zisk formed a decade ago. 

Zisk says services like Pandora and LastFM do a great job helping people finding music they live, but even they are moving toward building a social networking component.

On another topic, Zisk says the recent hiring of a top Google engineer by a major music label could be the sign that the technologists plan to take over the music industry from the inside out.