"Accidental discovery" also comes with a price. Even at 99c kindle ebooks... it still adds up. Going to the library as a kid, I could pick out 5-10 books for a week or two at no cost.
1. Real world spatial discovery is easier than 'virtual' discovery. Exception is probably Wikipedia, but it is not as well curated as your typical public library. Probably easier to discover music through CDs in a rack (curated by parents' tastes) and books in a library (curated by librarians, etc.) or home (parents).
Is there an application for virtual reality here? It sounds a bit like science-fiction and funky, but perhaps an e-book library / bookstore where you pick books in VR. Or more realistically, perhaps book and music discovery game apps?
2. For discovery of books and music, algorithmic recommendation systems are not sufficient. You also need curation. IIRC, as a kid, I did not look at books simply because they are similar, but mostly because I just found them in the shelves, where they were because a librarian or teacher or parent had found it to be worthy.
