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

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...

scrobbling iPods

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Windows - http://www.last.fm/group/iSproggler
OS X - http://www.last.fm/group/iScrobbler (this is the one I use rather than the big ol' nasty official client)