Me and Handsome Dick thank you, dan.

Is there a way to make this work with ze iPod yet?

I loved that the top charting artist last week (for the week) was Neutral Milk Hotel. Matildaben lobbied for them to be #1, and they were.

You're stilicho, right? I think? If so, thanks for starting the group. I'm getting a big kick out of checking out everyone's lists, and it's a lot more managable (surfing-wise) than the metafilter group.

Wow, Boards of Canada over Modest Mouse? Radiohead over White Stripes? I never would have guessed. I am pleased.

Wait a second. Michael Jackson over the Dead Kennedys?

WHAT THE FUCK?

/me summons unbridled punk rage and runs amok, pointlessly and artistically setting things on fire and spewing heroic gouts of bodily fluids out of every hole before passing out in a pool of his own vomit and used heroin needles.

Yes, he is stilicho, but I wish he would just be dhartung (whom I love), but whoever he wants to be, I still love him, and also thank him very much for starting the last.fim thing for us, which is great.

I'm going to get that radiohead off of there, dammit.

More Charlie Feathers and Dangerdoom for me, I guess.

I'm going to get that radiohead off of there, dammit.

I fully support you in this endeavor.

Also, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Is there a way to make this work with ze iPod yet?

So that's a "no" then?

Heh. Much love back, taz. I just happen to be logged on as dhartung on this computer. No identity crisis.

loquacious, Boards and Mouse are artists with identical "reach", i.e. numbers of members who played them. Same for MJ and the Kennedys. They're equal, not "over" ...

Capn: Audiopod. [disc, disc]

For those of us who don't have a clue what this is about (even after reading the last.fm homepage), could someone explain it?

I have yet to sign up for this because I'm not sure what it's about.

Does it let y'all know what I'm playing on my Winamp, iTunes, etc.? Or does it play a playlist? Or?

Does it work with Windows Media Player? I have iTunes, but personally, using it is a royal pain in the ass, only slightly better than Quicktime (probably for good reason).

I signed up, and it seems that I can see what I've played, what other members have played, and charts detailing such. Is there another benefit? Can I listen to your music?

OK so you download a little program that monitors what you listen to on your computer (interfaces with a winamp, itunes, a bunch of others). You have your own page where you can look up to see what you've been listening to.

that's the boring bit.

You can also join groups, like the one metachat has, and last.fm will compile group stats.

The reason I really like it is that you can also listen to the radio, and you can control the radio a number of ways. You can listen to "metachat radio" which will play music that is popular in the metachat group. Or you can type in a band and it will generate playlists of music similar to that band. You can also listen to one user's radio (although I think only if the user is a paid up member - $3/month).

somehow i failed to join this group. i have remedied the situation.

what I've played, what other members have played, and charts detailing such

So much for privacy issues. ;-P

So wait; this is yet another program that I can install on my computer to make it run even slower, and all it does is tell you I have eclectic taste in music? Ooookay....

somehow i failed to join this group. i have remedied the situation.

Yeah, I'll get in there sometime this week, too.

One man's eclectic...

You guys are going to have to work harder to sell me on this concept.

It also cooks beans pretty good.

It provides Happy Endings?

With hot pepper jelly on them?

I never had an orgasm until I joined last.fm.

Joining last.fm was the best thing I ever did. As soon as I got my "welcome to last.fm" email, my face cleared up, I found the job of my dreams, and I won the lottery!

Well, I'll sign up, but it had best not mess with my music folders like iTunes wants to do.

Hey! mischief is already taken as a user name. Bastard!

It's two things. The Audioscrobbler part just keeps track of what music you play on your (whichever) music software. Now, this may seem boring, but I actually find it interesting (and so do many others) to watch my own stats. From that, I can browse to a favorite artist, say Aimee Mann, and see not only the most popular songs (for the site users), but also similar artists, and top fans. I can see groups that have connected to this artist, such as Singer-Songwriters, or people who act happy but are actually sad inside, and these groups all have their own charts and profiles.

The site will also calculate my own musical neighbors, and I can manually add friends. I can publish journals, post in group forums, and generally discuss anything related to music where people who are already fans of an artist are pretty sure to find it. My profile will also present recommendations to me, and you can recommend specific albums to other users, or to a group.

Now the Last.FM part is that any of these profiles can be used as the basis for an internet radio station. I can play my own personal music (you have to pay for that optino), or just the music that my musical neighbors like (which is generally a little broader but still compatible), or an individual group's radio, or now radio based on music tags. I can even explore some new artists by dropping their names into the custom radio interface.

Now, very seriously, I always had a hard time finding new music I would like. I was very lucky to occasionally find a Neutral Milk Hotel or Arcade Fire. I tended to have these really divergent likes with wide gaps between them, instead of being obsessed with a certain genre. But Last.FM has really been a godsend for me.

It was through the group I started for the Intonation Music Festival that I discovered Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and Last.FM has definitely made me realize that I love bands as diverse as Magnetic Fields, Frou Frou, Metric... the list goes on.

OK, I signed up. I hope the FBI has fun with this new source of info.

heheh

Somebody took carter, too :(

I like your profile pic, mischief. You have really nice eyes.

"...that I discovered Clap Your Hands Say Yeah."
On the other hand, it can help you find good music too.

One of the other neat things is that you can generate an image based on your last listened tracks. Mine's ≡ Click to see image ≡

And hopefully, the mix I put up will help at least a few of us marshall our forces toward getting random, obscure musicians rated... C'mon Afrirampo!

Thank you, iconomy

. ] blink blink [ .

Man, I am totally gonna mess with next week's chart. I'm housecleaning my music folders and giving the crap one last listen before deleting it.

Does anyone know if there's some way to export the recent tracks info to something that I could add to my MT blog?

omg dhartung is stilicho! i wish to state for the record that i have never heard of any of the groups that are on the top ten, and the onle way i can listen to them is the metachat group radio. so . em. thanks

Never heard of the Beatles? Oh my! ;)

dhartung: Speaking of Arcade Fire, some of them did a little busking outside Union Square subway station here in NYC in the early hours of sunday morning (a small video of them covering Boys Don't Cry).

except the beatles...damn i should look at the list again :)

On the other hand, it can help you find good music too.

Metacritic top ten. Just sayin'. I can see how it would be an acquired taste, though. The cool thing was that I only knew them as this band that people in my group were listening to; I p2p'd a track, and before it was done playing I was looking for the album.

Pish tosh. Metacritic's fine for some things, but lists like that just prove that democracy can't be used to settle which albums are best, even democracies among critics.
I picked it up from a friend who thought I might like it and before the first track was over, I was looking for my Talking Heads albums. It's OK, but all it does is remind me of great things that I could be listening to instead of it. Much like Interpol.

(And Lightning Bolt is the first album on that Metacritic list that deserves to be there...)

"Wow, your music sucks hard"

That Clap Your Hands guy sure has a whiny voice.

hey, good music! just joined.

This seems like something I would be into. But for some reason I'm not pulling the trigger.

um, joined.

Thanks for the answers. BUT! If I join up that means y'all will know what crappy music I listen to. I'd, like totally, skew your charts into Top40 (from the '70s, '80s, '90s and beyond!) territory. Y'all would hate me and I'd have to hide myself from y'all forever and ever and ever.

Well, Deborah, some might say that you could use this to find more music that you wouldn't be ashamed to tell the neighbors you liked...