xmanoel@

AudioScrobbler

Hello, I decided to join in Audioscrobbler. I just considered it after fromoze opened his account. I knew about this Audioscr... thing, but I was not very keen on trying it. What would be the use of statistics of the music I listen to? Well, now time will tell if this is useful. I will try this for a few months...

This is the picture you will see beside my name in Audioscr.... If you feel curious I can explain you why I choosen this picture. Just simply because in the picture it is me listening to music. I took the picture at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. What you see on the picture is a set up on the museum that included sculpture and music. The music playing on the headphones was Stereolab. (Stereolab is not one of my favourite bands, by the way, but it probably was for the artist that created the set).

So far, I am not very sattisfied with experimenting with Audioscrobbler. Let me explain: The service works really fine, the plugins are not buggy, and I think they are respectuous with the privacy. I have no problem with that. What dissapoints me is that either the system has identified my tastes too well or it just ignores my current tastes.

After just one week using it, Audioscrobbler has identified people with similar tastes, and their tastes are too similar in some bands, but they ignore some of my other tastes. Those neighbours started to suggest me to listen to Pixies and Beck. What should I say... amazingly, they got me. Despite I do not listen to them anymore, I was a huge Pixies fan. I bought their records in the 80s. The same way they correctly identified that I also like Pavement, Beck, The Smiths,... And so on. But when I joined I was expecting to have suggestion of bands I have not already listen to, instead of recommending me to listen to bands I already know.

Fromoze gave me the hint that the reason why I am suggested the reason why I am suggested bands that I already know is because Audioscrobbler does not already have the information that I had already listened to them, and until it has it, they will not be removed from the recommendation list. Ok, I will give some time to Audioscrobbler to expand my statistics and I hope the recommendations will get for better. (But on the other side, as long as I do not feel like listening to the recommended bands, they will keep on showing up as recommended. It will be cool to have remove them manually).

What is definitely interesting is the asociated service to Audioscrobbler: Last.fm. With Last.fm I can listen to the music that suits into my tastes (obtained from the Audioscrobbler statistics). The quality of the sound is great (MP3 128kps), I can skip the songs that I do not like so much, and I can ban bands that I do not feel like listening to anymore (Bye, bye Beasty Boys), Seems an interesting choice. I wonder if the selections I made at Last.fm will be reflected in Audioscrobbler to fine tune my tastes. So far, I had the chance to listen to some unusual records. Great service!!