Last FM, about one week in...

Last FM, a service which is basicly a music recommendation site, but also charts your music and has discussion boards and groups and whatnot suckered me in on February 22, 2006. Here is a memoir or journal of what happened next.

Before I download the audioscrobbler (which tracks what you play), I check up on possible spyware involved in downloading this free program. It seems to check out.

I get the thing running, start playing songs on my computer, they somewhat freakily show up on my profile page almost immediately.

I look around at the discussion pages and start posting. My goal is mainly to get some more traffic going to this site. As of now, I would guess some various friends of mine read this site, plus I get an occasional comment from Aaron Burkhalter, who runs the always appreciated Discord/Harmony blog. I want fans, I want adoration!

No one really responds to any of my comments, and I pretty much stop paying attention.

I start playing lots of songs trying to get some neighbors, which are promised at 300 songs played. I get them at around 100. Once they are there, I am entirely unsure what to do about it except notice that such and such person has been listening to plenty of Sufjan Stevens, just like me. Also, they have a penchant for The Hold Steady. Imagine that! Should I message this person? And then what? Say, "Oh, you like the Hold Steady and Sufjan Stevens? Good GOD! It's too bad you live in Oregon and I'm in Minnesota...otherwise we could be best of friends and go bowling or something..."

I join a group that's for Minnesota residents, hoping shared locality will lead to online kinship or something. Most of the people are either from the cities or complain that everyone is from the cities. No one seems to care I'm in Winona. In fact, I'm not entirely sure the group is still checked on by anyone.

I find my podcasts also get put on the recently played list, catapulting The Onion to the top of my artist list.

I go a whole weekend without playing music on my computer.

I realize Last FM is really not terribly exciting, and isn't very good at recommending me music. I prefer reading about a band, then checking them out. Or getting recommended by my friends. My friends do a much better job. I found Modest Mouse through my roomate Blake, Polaris through my other roomate Jeff and both are better than anything Last FM gives me. My latest music recommendation was Cat Power from Aaron Burkhalter, and it's been solid gold. But most of all, I trust my own instincts whilst sifting through day after day of Pitchfork and other internet sites, similar to how I used Spin and Rolling Stone as a guide through much of high school. So really, not a lot has changed besides my current friends having much better taste in music than my high school friends.

Sasasee ya!