LAST FM

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Because I have been working at home today I have been absolutely CANING last.fm (under my cunning disguise of freakytrigger), obsessively hitting REFRESH on the 'dashboard' so's I can taste-stalk my 'friends'. Unsurprisingly since the heart of LFM is big graphs of stuff I am a monster nerd for it, however not as much as some who have multiple accounts enabled for multiple genres wtf wtf.

So my question is - if you have it, do you find it affects how you listen, do you keep one eye on the minute hand when a shite track is playing, are you afeard to leave the itunes on "random", does it recommend you good stuff, do you think your charts are an accurate representation of you or not, are you the kind of MENTALIST who would choose to play one thing rather than another simply because you want it to be higher on your charts (btw I AM THIS PERSON :(:(:(:(_)

And if you don't have it is this any kind of principled decision?

And what do the top tracks/artists say about the Internet Nation???

JUST TALK ABOUT IT BASICALLY

(I have found myself thinking incidentally that a better way to do CANONS wd be to pick the top 30 all time tracks on Last FM)

Comments

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

I find that I don't pay attention to it, and occasionally I leave Winamp going when I leave the room so it thinks I listened to something 6700 times, which I didn't really.

My charts are not an accurate representation of who I am. Absolutely, not even remotely close.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

If not at least for the reason that I suspect the vast majority of peoples music collection isn't on ver computer!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I love watching last.fm but it's been REALLY SHIT for the past few days, not recording tracks for up to 12hrs after I actually played them. LAME.

It's really skewed towards album artists in terms of the data it flags up - I think when I listened to the 23-track Tori Amos album twice to review, it sent it zooming up to No 1. I do now try to listen to promos on my discman or ipod first (there is apparently a way to record what you listen to on your ipod but I downloaded it and I can't get it to work).

It doesn't always acknowledge repeat listenings - the first weekend of 'Umbrella' it recorded maybe one every four or five plays.

Mine is totally skewed by what I have to review - of my top 10 I've had to write about 8 recently, which is why they were on repeat.

Tagging = 1x major issue with the genres I like, with their featurings and their remixes and what have you.

I am always kind of conscious of it but I really don't listen to anything I wouldn't want people to know about, and I never have itunes on random anyway...the only 'artificial' thing I do is sometimes make sure that a track I want to big up is one of my last 10, so stays on the front page (this is also on my facebook and myspazz profiles).

Top weekly artists can be surprising.

Both the poptimists and ilx last.fm groups are disgraces to life and taste.

These are all whingey comments but I do love it really! I like seeing what other people listen to.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

'Both the poptimists and ilx last.fm groups are disgraces to life and taste.'

truth = beauty but falseness = sexier

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I only have a vague idea what it is, so I don't understand all you say. Does it just log what MP3s you play on your PC? Does it log CDs played there?

If I had it, and if I am on the right track of what it is, it would be unrepresentative because a lot of the MP3s I play on my PC are reviewing assignments for Stylus, so I hate quite a lot of them.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

It logs mp3s and CDs..

I listen to a lot of new stuff for evaluation purposes which I end up hating - overall one play of one track will barely be a blip on the radar.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah it does those things (it doesn't log CDs for me, but I think it does for most ppl).

The key is that you use it to see what yr mates are listen to, and also it has build in radio stations so you can get recommendations, listen to "artists similar to [artist you like]", listen to stations based on friends' tastes etc.

I never use the radio stuff tho!

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I just don't play that much music on my laptop - it's either stereo or work computer (work comp = not web 2.0 friendly!) so my charts mostly date from 2005 when the old monolith was still working and I was constantly listening to the Fall and Spanish techno. HOWEVER my most recently played stuff is fairly accurate as I was making mixtapes for Glasto innit.

(I am katstevens101 if anyone wants to add me)

[cis.livejournal.com]

are you the kind of MENTALIST who would choose to play one thing rather than another simply because you want it to be higher on your charts

yes! In fact I am the kind of mentalist who has even been known to CHOOSE a record and leave it running while I go down to cook, i.e. I am a PSEUD and a DIRTY LIAR and relentlessly FIDDLE with my DATA so that stuff I consider less [representative / cool / etc] does not show up on my weekly chart but falls off the bottom. (i don't care about the recently-played thing too much although I do enjoy it when it's 10 the same track or similar.) Still - iscrobbler doesn't pick up anything I've played on my ipod, so it's already missing a large chunk of my listening, and in a way i'm just replacing those. but basically I am a huge faker, it's very sad.

he stuff I listen to on my computer when I'm working tends to be dances music, ambient or classical - stuff I can't get distracted into singing along with, stuff i listen to in full albums - and so perhaps there's a bias toward that on there. My top artist on last.fm is glenn gould (which made me feel kind of self-conscious when Jessica P had that blog post about people who also listen to more high-culture music or whatever), and it seems he'll never be suplanted. This is, though, mostly cos e.g. the goldberg variations are all about a minute long and there are about thirty-two of them (compare the ABS album: same length, twelve tracks, or any of my collection of dj sets which are three hours over one track).

I have NEVER used the recommendations and haven't bothered with the radio bit in YEARS.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I sometimes look at what tracks my last.fm radio comes up with for me but surely if I wanted to listen to them I could just, like, click on them?

I had a track recommended to me by a last.fm friend for the first time ever today! I am eagerly anticipating finding out how that works when I am done with the tennis.

[cis.livejournal.com]

oh and also: I really enjoy my 'top artists overall' chart, seeing the mix of stuff in there makes me quite... proud of myself, I guess? I had this thing a while back where I decided not to listen to Jay Chou anymore cos I felt he was unrepresentatively high up my chart, as I didn't like him as much as a lot of people who were below him on the list who just happened to have fewer albums, or who I just hadn't been listening to recently. As I use it more, as my stats rack up, I don't have to worry so much about things being representative, because the general sense of my tastes as a whole is becoming naturally evident.

er um also I really enjoy looking at my last.fm neighbours! for a while they were just j-pop boyband lovers (plus two of lj friends who have v v v similar tastes to mine) but it's starting to broaden out now: they do divide, generally, into 'j-pop', 'dances music', and teh occasional 'other'.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I am http://www.last.fm/user/lexpretend/ btw.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I mostly listen to individual tracks so there's always lots of stuff ranked equal on one play a week -- so it doesn't take much for something that comes up a couple of times to top a chart. My all time top artists seem to be Current 93 and Position Normal which makes me sound a lot more avant than I actually am, but that's because they have albums with some very short songs on, and I had a phase for both of them recently.

No idea if my chart reflects my listening, which is pretty all over the place at the moment. I do think about how other people might see my charts, but then I stop!

I like being able to see who is online!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Oh yes actually! Several times when I've been at a loose end and wanted to know who was around I've looked at the last.fm dashboard to find out. Also v funny when one is meant to meet a friend at eg 9pm and at 8.50pm there you both are on last.fm.

Checking compatibility w/ your friends is classique as well.

holy shit!

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I've just checked my compatibility with freakytrigger and it is 'SUPER': I've never seen one that high before!! Perhaps only because 'League of Pop' is our most played artist?

[ms-bracken.livejournal.com]

I think my charts are about as representative as it gets- I've got the plugin installed at work and listen all day, the one or two albums I'll listen to on the CD player of an evening are a subset of what I'll have listened to during the day (because I put things I LOVE LOVE LOVE on the CD player and can afford to be more broadminded when I'm filling my mp3 player for work)

Whilst I try not to power-level my current favourite band / song / album, I'm sure I do unconsciously.

It did take quite a long time before the radio worked out I didn't want to hear Radiohead or Belle & Sebastian though; I much prefer the staring at graphs aspect of it to the recommendations, I've heard a bit of music I like because of it but less than I have through other channels.

(I'm Vincennes (http://www.last.fm/user/Vincennes/) on there, by the way.)

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

I've considered getting a last.fm account, but the thing is I never listen to music on my computer, so it'd be kinda pointless. Like this answer.

[credoimprobus]

Mentalist = YES. I have also been known to build up playlists purely for the purpose of feeding stuff I've been listening to off the computer to the plugin, to make my weekly charts more representative of The Truth (most famously, in a variation on this theme, when I was living elsewhere and internetless for four months last summer I would bring my scrobbler cache files home on the weekends to feed to the servers ha ha). Plus, when I'm doing something that'd skew my stats such as making a mix, I'll turn the plugin off, and my newly-downloaded-and-unlistened-to folder is set to exclude. *GIANT TOOL*

I really only use it for nerdy stats purposes (that and keeping up w/ what the frens are listening to, obv) since am on dial-up, and occasionally I'll eye over the recs though mostly they're pretty useless at suggesting me things I don't already know and have an opinion on. (Surfing the 'similar artists' sidebars on the artist pages tends to be much more useful, especially when there are free track downloads that'll let me actually give stuff a listen.)

My charts are definitely pretty representative, since the vast majority of my music collection is on my computer -- I've got like 80% of my cd collection ripped -- and I barely ever listen to anything on a regular cd player anymore. Although between my recently getting an mp3 player and the fact that I haven't been arsed to hook up any speakers to my computer since the last move, the percentage of my home listening done on the computer has been going down recently...

[nicolars.livejournal.com]

I know this sounds weird but Last FM is something I've never bothered to check out. Probably because my computer at work has no sound card and that's really the only time I would have to listen to it.

[pastels-badge.livejournal.com]

I do sometimes turn off the audioscrobbler when I'm listening to something for information purposes that I don't think I'm going to like (e.g. Voxtrot). Most of the time I leave it on, though, even if I'm just checking something out. Sometimes if I am listening to something on my ipod a lot and not on the computer (my computer is too old and slow to scrobble my ipod) I'll make a point of listening to it on the computer so it's in there. But I'm not too anal-retentive about all of that. I listened to a ton of the Shivers while working on a paper about them, so now they're my #1 artist and probably will be for a while. They'd be up there anyways, but not #1. The only time I've ever deleted stuff was when I accidentally left music playing while my volume was muted so that it just played all the L's and M's all night.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

'are you the kind of MENTALIST who would choose to play one thing rather than another simply because you want it to be higher on your charts (btw I AM THIS PERSON :(:(:(:(_)'

you know the answer to this question re me

but i find i really have to make an effort if i want to get tracks in my all time chart - a lot of what's up there has been for a year or more when i engineered a big marathon sequence of 'boosters' so i could have more songs in double figures. sob.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

My problems with last.fm are twofold:

1)'Sleep' playlist comprises 80% of plays.
2)As alexmacpherson mentioned, it doesn't appear to be doing a whole lot of scrobbling lately. It persists in thinking I listen to about a hundred songs a week when I know that's not true.

[5500.livejournal.com]

my experience with the personal radio station is that once i start it playing, i really don't want to turn it off. after 56k+ scrobbles, last.fm knows me as well as it's going to, so its estimation of what i want to hear is pretty right on.

my primary frustration about the site these days is that we can't vote for 'correcting' artist tags. i am sorry, i'm not going to organise my library 'firstname surname' for individuals. once upon a time, users could have 'surname, firstname' tags redirect to the site's chosen format, but that's not available on new artists. no longer. now there's just that obnoxious graphic.

I have much to say...

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

unfortunately i missed this discussion while it was going on so no one will hear me :(

Mentalist: Yes! (see below)

1. There are working scrobbling solutions (at least for iPods, both OS X and Windows) and in fact over the last year or so, I'd say as much as half of my recorded listening represents iPod scrobbles. The only drawback is that if you, say, listen to "Gotta Work" by Amerie 5X, it only scrobbles once (because iPods only register "played" or "not played."

2. Recommendations. First of all, really only useful if you use the radio function (which I do). Second, last.fm's recommendations are fairly pointless to anyone with significant musical knowledge - they're based on common denominators, and therefore they're "low" - although if you push the slider over to "more obscure," sometimes you'll get interesting stuff. But where they CAN be useful is when they're a) recommendations from friends (or to groups) and b) for specific songs, rather than just groups overall. However, part of the problem for poptimists in this respect is that most of us are (ahem) "early adopters," meaning that it will be fairly unusual that you can hear something new on last.fm that we haven't heard already.

3. Canons. The problem with this is that last.fm charts are weighted towards the songs that they can stream, so the last.fm top 30 approach may not always work.

One of the ways I am mental, I've noticed of late, is actually my effort to "balance" my charts more - e.g. Split Enz and Saint Etienne, while among my favorite bands, chart high because for both artists I have more or less their full discography on my computer and therefore they get shuffled up disproportionately often. So I find myself trying to listen to things I haven't played, or haven't played recently, to try and shift my profile more towards my tastes than my collection (although I agree with freakytigger thatmy profile is probably fairly representative. As you might guess, I want *everything* scrobbled (conversely if I, say, fall asleep while something is playing, I may go back in my profile and delete things I didn't actually listen to/hear).

Re: I have much to say...

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

i'm running behind too ;)

where are these ipod scrobbles pls? although whether they'll work on my 2nd gen ipod is unlikely...

[mostlyconnect.livejournal.com]

I had to uninstall it! It was kind of ruining music, for me.

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

Mine isn't very accurate, because I listen to my favourite music on CDs and Mp3 player, and what I listen to most on WMP is new songs I've downloaded. Over time it's got a bit more accurate, as the acts I do have most tracks of rise to the top, but all it takes is for me to have one new CD (for example Rihanna) and no CD player handy so listen to it a few times on WMP and because my play counts on Last FM are quite low, it quickly rises to the top. I think I must listen to more different songs and different acts than the average person because I've had Last FM for years and the songs and acts at the top of my charts don't have many plays compared to on other people's charts.