He also has some thoughts about context.  A lot of people listen to music and don’t really think about what’s behind it, and that’s fine.  But there are a lot of us who want more; we might want to know why Bono thinks it’s stupid to play “One” at a wedding.  Guys may not know that Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young were all former members of other decent bands: the Byrds, the Hollies, Buffalo Springfield.  And it’s even more important to have a local context; my wife and I played “It’s the End of the World As We Know It” at our wedding; if someone is listening to that track, and they’re a friend on Last.fm, they might be amused to see that context.

So there’s the content, and the context, and the next gen of music on the web will hopefully give us more of both.

Sly & The Family Stone – Luv N’ Haight
311 – Come Original
The Soggy Bottom Boys – In The Jailhouse Now
Dance Hall Crashers – Street Sweeper
Kidneythieves – Serene Dream
Dance Hall Crashers – Truth Hurts
Incubus – Rogues
The Decemberists – The Island
Cream – Sitting on Top of the World
Bob Marley & The Wailers – Who the Cap Fit
Pearl Jam – Habit
The Hives – Walk Idiot Walk

How do I know this? Because of a nifty new web site that Zarch introduced me to last week. Last.fm is sortuv a music community site which helps you to find new tunes, enjoy music you love and find folks that enjoy the same rockin’ riffs as you. They’ve personally dubbed themselves “The Social Music Revolution” and after using it a week, I think the tagline fits.

So how does Last.fm know what I like? Basically by tracking everything I listen to on my PC (assuming my mp3′s are tagged properly). To do this, they just monitor the use of your desired mp3 playing software. I personally prefer using Winamp, but they have plugins for many of the most common players including Windows Media Player and iTunes. Once the plugin is installed, the Last.fm player basically acts like “Big Brother” and sends usage data back to your online profile at Last.fm and then begins the process of categorizing you.

Once you’re categorized (this can take a while as the system tries to determine what type of music you enjoy), you begin seeing “neighbors” on your profile page. Neighbors are basically other users that seem to enjoy the same types of music as you. I believe this is based on artist compatibility percentages, but that’s just a guess. Anyway, once you have neighbors, you can then go to their profile and begin listening to their radio stations.

Now, about radio stations… as the system continues to track information about you, it builds out a playlist of artists you enjoy and then embeds a flash player onto your profile page and populates it will full versions of tracks you like. As a member you’re welcome to listen to the radio station on your own profile page, or if you choose, you can listen to the station on any other members profile page. The thing that really makes these “stations” so awesome is that unlike streaming audio channels, you have the ability to skip tracks and there are no ads. Once you find a few users that share your musical tastes, you can start listening to some pretty specific stations that only play what you want to hear. Pretty sweet stuff!

The site also has some other fun info like personal usage statistics which are kinda fun to review now and then. They also have several community features such as a “friends list” and profile page “shoutboxes” (like our ModStomp shoutbox in the right menu) so you can post messages to other members. You can also visit the home pages to see what the most popular artists and tracks are throughout the entire member base. As you’d expect, the community is currently made of the more web savvy class of folks at this point so there’s a lot of hard alternative in the top 10 slots, but the community seems to be pretty eclectic as a whole.

So far I haven’t been categorized yet, but I have a feeling that’s because of the fact that I put my 40gig iRiver on full random so the system hasn’t really been able to nail me down yet. But hopefully, once it does start showing me who my neighbors are, I can utilize the site to find some great new tunes. There’s just so much good music out there, sometimes it’s hard to find some of the great bands that just don’t get radio time. Nothing like a little bit of “community spirit” to get the word out.

View Rudeboy’s Last.fm profile page
View Zarch’s Last.fm profile page

Anyway, check back over the next week or so for a report on the new Zen Vision:M, and we’ll see if I like it any better than I liked my last Zen.

Let It Be – The Beatles
Please Let That Be You – The Rentals
Ultraviolet – U2
Sometime Ago/La Fiesta – Chick Corea
Checkered Past – John Scofield
The Obvious Child – Paul Simon
The State That I Am In – Belle and Sebastian
Between Us – Harry Connick, Jr.
Vienna – Billy Joel
Sugar Magnolia – The Grateful Dead

Anyhoo, just felt the urge to make a quick top tracks list. I’ll dupe this in the forum for comments.

After I uninstalled Quicktime, the install of the Creative software went without a hitch. I’d like to believe there’s nothing to this, but in a world of white plastic and hip twenty-somethings rocking out in public to the top 40 on their iPods, nothing is certain anymore.

Anybody else have this problem? Fire an email off to me.