Am I The Last.fm To Know?

I’m so Jason right now

by j. brotherlove

Jason recently professed his love of last.fm and I wholeheartedly concur! I signed up for the service in February but didn’t do much with it. I couldn’t get the plugin for Media Center (which I use to watch, listen to and view most of my media) to work properly and I’ve never liked iTunes.

While I was sleeping, the wonkiness has been fixed and I’m now a last.fm addict. I can’t wait to finish my site redesign; my return to the blogosphere will be media rich, baby! I’m on last.fm’s site all the time; listening to my music, others’ and checking my music charts. I’m impressed with how many people listen to some of the relatively obscure artists I like. Bananas! However, there are a few annoyances (like how the service matches your track with pre-formatted artist tags resulting in one of my favorite Prince bands, Madhouse, displaying in my list as this Madhouse. Um, eww.

I’mma need them to fix that.

Despite the few hiccups, I especially love “eavesdropping” on other people’s Recent Tracks listing. I surprised George on IM last week when I applauded him for recently listening to “Like An Angel” by Duran Duran. Don’t be surprised if I do the same to you. Currently, I’m experimenting with last.fm’s webservices so I can list the last track I last listened to (in the left panel) as well as display this nifty graphic of my Top Artists from last week:

And Top Tracks from last week:

Not a lot of surprises there if you are remotely familiar with my taste in music. I’ve been jamming Kamaal a lot lately and the Kate Bush’s latest CD is indescribably gorgeous.Perhaps I should work on my favorite (and not so favorite) CDs for the year.

I’m so Jason right now I can’t stand it!

Supposedly, a lot of the tag/naming issues will get fixed when last.fm completes musicbrainz integration.

Everybody needs to get up on the last.fm train, especially because the site is severely disproportionate right now, skewing heavily towards the alt-rock crowd.

I haven’t found much need to check last.fm out but maybe the two of you will convince me.

You lost me at MADHOUSE !!!

*whips out creditcard*

well i just signed up this weekend, finally, and i do enjoy it. i’ve got to download the radio plugin soon so i can get into the station stuff. but i like the way the scrobbler integrates with itunes so that i don’t have to think about. i’m also trying to tag as much of my artists and music as possible.

Thanks for remind me about “tagging”, lynne. Why is this necessary? I spend a lot of time assigning genres to my tunes. I don’t know why last.fm can’t pull from the genre field of my songs - or at least give me the option to do that.

With the amount music I listen to, tagging every song is tedious, even in batches.

I usually tag on a weekly basis, the artists that end up in my weekly top ten. There’s no real reason for it unless you’re going to get into the “tag radio” functions of the last.fm player which I don’t normally use.

I think the reason that they set up tagging for tracks without genre specification is because you can tag songs with multiple things. “seen live” is a common one or “night time” and they might be included along with regular genre tags like “rnb” or “downtempo”. People tag things by gender and by year or use a tag like “diva” to coordinate their music in different ways.

Lynne has one called “F__K music”

I’m looking and looking but I don’t think that genre shows up in my iTunes.

Hehe… Jason, you may need to download the latest iTunes upgrade. lynne hit me up to that tag, last night. But my favorite is stripper tunes (or tracks, I haven’t decided what sounds better).

IMO, lynne tapped into the best use of tags right away (she’s galactic like that). Tagging as a substitute for genre is highly subjective - and a mess if you’ve ever tried using Global Tag Radio.

Want to hear Chicago house (I know I do)? Global Tag Radio serves up “Jga” by Björk. Um. What?

Okay, scratch that. Per last.fm staff member Russ (a 20y/o!): “Genres are annoying superficial concepts which should be eliminated.”

Based on that position, I’m thinking the genre intergration thing won’t be happening any time soon.

j and jt - i haven’t put enuff music into f___k music nor have i started stripper tunes yet. i want to, but who has the time to do that. i started tagging so much, that now i have all these stations that have no content in them. i suppose i could delete all the tags.