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

[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.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

It doesn't do ANYTHING, does it?? Just says "here is a song you might like", go find it? I clicked on a recommendation thing one (it was molly recommending francoise hardy!) and nothing happened...

[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'.

[ms-bracken.livejournal.com]

The neighbours thing is quite fun, but if you live with someone on last.fm they tend to be your #1...