Music is a big pursuit in my life, more so then most, i once had an argument with a guy whether music could or could not be classified as an interest. He said that everyone like music so therefore its a given and you can't claim it as an interest. I argued the opposite saying that i spend time discovering new music and playing guitar and (trying to) creating new songs.Anyway i digress from my actual point
There is this great program / website called Pandora (www.pandora.com) where you punch in an artist that you like and it plays "similar" artists. Starting out with the obvious links then gradually expanding to looser connections, you get to expand your musical horizons. With the ability to skip or <3 the tracks the system starts to shape the upcoming tracks to really match your preferences. Unfortunately due to USA typical legislative society they put the brakes on this project for anyone outside the motherland.
Whilst this all went down, another site in existence called Last.Fm (www.last.fm) went about the same deal (not as well in my opinion) and attempted to corner the market. Its a bit more Myspazzy, everyone gets a log in name and then a page which includes their most listened to tracks etc and you can msg friends etc etc. As a bonus to this is an associated download which will track all your media player movements too, so if you whack on a cd it records that you have listened to the songs, further contributing to your "preferences".
So almost daily i work with WMP going in the background, when i remember to enable Last.fm it records all my playlists. So if i am ever away from my computer with all my fave tracks all i have to do is log on anywhere in the world and play station "Solat" (my username) and i get all my fave artists lining up for me! This has gotten so crazy that now i can punch myself as an artist (even tho my own songs only sit on my computer) and it associates all the artists i like as similar artists to me because I listen to myself along with them (since they are music files on my computer and get played when i just have my music folder playing on random).
So if you were ever looking for more music, or want to check out whats stuff is on my hardrive, head to last.fm and have a play around
2 comments:
I have met a person that didn't care about music at all, he didn't have any favourite songs or bands. We changed that though, but that's beside the point.
A lot of people listen to music when its played in a movie, tv show or random radio and can enjoy it but still have no interest at all in who is playing it or even how they could create such a sound. Even if they really enjoyed a song they will forget about it and not take the interest to buy it.
Music could definitely be described as an interest.
further to discuss, an article on the effect of online streaming music on the industry
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc2009035_000194.htm
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