Often the first, but this time the last to heft my increasingly large ass onto an Internet bandwagon, I'm now going to talk about my experience with last.fm, which I joined Sunday afternoon, so by now I'm a total expert.
Basically, what the site does is spy on you listening to music on your computer, right, and it keeps track of what you listen to if your metadata doesn't suck (more on that later.) You can also hook up with friends, join groups, tag stuff (a website's not a website without social tagging these days, it's the new anorexic), and eventually get recommendations based on your music habits. Not preferences, habits.
I say that because if you listen to a song all the way through, it assumes you like it no more or less than any other song you listen to all the way through. There's no rating system except for if you listen to something over and over again like a crazy person with no desire for variation.
The website's clunky and slow and horribly-designed, and I find myself very often subjected to things I hate on my recommendations station. This may be because I listened to the wrong sorts of stuff at the beginning, but the thing plays some real shit. Luckily, you can skip tracks and ban songs, but you cannot ban artists and try as I might, last.fm, I promise I'm not going to starting liking Nelly Furtado or Michelle Branch, those bitches make my blood boil and just because I like ONE SONG by The Wreckers does not mean you have to shove her gross whining into my ears every three minutes.
On the plus side, I've heard more obscure, crazy Japanese music than I have in my entire life up until now because I joined the shibuya-kei group. I've also filled up a little post-it of things to check out, and after work today, I'm going to Virgin to buy some music by Messer für Frau Müller and Plus-Tech Squeeze Box because now I'm in love.
I also spent a good portion of my work morning listening to the personal station of this guy in Finland, and it's pretty much the only place besides my living room where you can hear Christina Aguilera, Diana Krall, Winona Judd, and Judy Garland in succession without touching any dial. He's also kinda cute, so I messaged him and told him I liked his music and now he's my Finland boyfriend even though he hasn't written back yet.
Anyway the main reason the site is frustrating is because nobody in the world can take care of their music collection. Everyone's ID3 tags suck, so things don't really get cataloged right. This is especially hard with Japanese things, but ESPECIALLY with classical music, which I won't even get into here because I don't get into it on last.fm because it would be a crock. (I studied this shit, I'm a music librarian, after all. I have papers written on the uselessness of ID3 tags and the databases that supply them.)
Also, a chronic problem with social tagging is that people are idiots, and the way this manifests on last.fm is like if I say "Play me music with the tag 'upbeat' plz" the thing starts playing these dirges and emo anthems and whiny singer-songwriters, and I'm like "BITCHES, if an artist does not play exclusively peppy music, do not tag them as such unless you're all depressives who consider anything over 65 bpm to be upbeat."
To conclude, no matter how sucky the website is, it's still real fun to play around with and a fun way to learn new things so everyone join and be my friend. At the very least, go to my little playlist that I made to give people an idea of my musical tastes. You can't pick what song you want because it's illegal, so you're just going to have to set aside 45 minutes to listen to the 15 tracks. You'll notice I don't like slow songs or music that's about feelings unless it's by a woman with a silky, jazzy voice.
