The “Opera Idol” video set me to thinking about the transcendent power of music. When I’m asked what kind of music I like, I say something like, “Good music, composed and performed with skill and passion.” This answer might seem vague or flippant, so I always follow it with an explanation of how I relate to music… and it goes something like this:
Good music moves people. It cuts through listeners’ preconceptions of musical genres, styles, eras and so forth and compels them to stop and listen. We all love music and all have our own tastes, which is as it should be. I just get a unique thrill out of seeing when art (here, music) gives people a taste of something they didn’t expect, and they find out that they like it. I love it even more when it happens to me – which it does, regularly. As a result of this phenomenon, my music collection now ranges from Josquin to Ludacris, and increasingly many points in between. BUT – there’s always more good music out there.
It was with that in mind that I recently made a profile on the music/social networking site Last.fm. I’d considered Pandora.com too, but I had problems making sense of the Pandora interface. I figured if Last.fm was good enough for my brother it was good enough for me, since he knows at least as much about music as I do and way, way more about tech/the web. At this moment he is the only occupant of the “Friends” section of my Last.fm profile, where his avatar sits next to a link that says with seeming disdain, “See all 1 friends.”
Any other Last.fm users reading this? Care to give my brother some company in the “Friends” box, and help wipe the smirk off that link’s face? Also, any opinions on whether or not I should I put a nifty Last.fm playlist widget (pictured at right) in this blog’s sidebar? Note it would not automatically play when you load this page (you click on the play button or a track title) – I hate pages that play music at me without asking, so I would never do that to you.
Tags: last.fm, music, web design, websites, widgets
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Check, check 1-2…1-2…
Dig the props in your blog. Respect.
I added that new LastFM widgit to my site a while ago, but decided that I didn’t like it. It shows your recent tracks while you are listening, but if you haven’t been scrobbling for some amount of time it becomes a LastFM ad. Blech…ads…. There is a work around: Instead of using that wigit, use the older image-based LastFM recent tracks charts here. The image charts seem to keep showing your last tracks even if it’s been days since you scrobbled.
I’ve recently begun modifying this LastFM drupal module and that is what I’m using on my site now. It uses PHP5 XML libraries to get your most recent tracks. It then caches your tracks to a file, which means that they are always there, even if the LastFM servers are non-responsive, as they will be sometimes. My modifications so far have been to add the day/time that the track was played and adjust the time based on the timezone set in your Drupal site. Aside from that I’ve hacked in tables and font size for formatting and added a “More Tracks” link. My future plans include using JQuery (an AJAX library supported by Drupal) to enable scrolling of track names and perhaps onMouseOver album covers like the fancy LastFM widgit.
As to the question of whether you should add Recent Tracks to your blog, you have to admit that it falls into the “why do I care?” category and makes the site look more “personal” and less “professional.”
When you get a chance try playing your neighbor’s “radio stations” on LastFM. You get to hear full tracks – nice way to discover new music.
How are you scrobbling? I wonder if there is an iPod/iTunes plugin that scrobbles. I have a scrobbler plugin for SlimServer which serves my SlimDevices Squeezeboxes at either end of the apartment. Since I stream most of the music I listen to at work via my home SlimServer, most of what I listen to gets submitted to LastFM.
…Thanks for coming out. Well be here every Friday night. Don’t forget to tip your servers…
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Brian, Thanks for the tip on the image-based Last.fm charts. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to pull one in or not… I’m thinking I might do so, but not in the sidebar: I was thinking of making a corner of the “About” page that would be sort of a “silly widgets, toys and all that kind of MySpace-y stuff” section. That way it would’nt be hanging out in the sidebar or anything every time you visit the blog, but it would be down in the sub-page for those who want to go find it.
I’ve been scrobbling from iTunes at home. My work environment isn’t conducive to music, so I’m not rockin’ any kind of cool home server setup like you have (even if I knew how to configure something like that).
I have tried listening to some of my neighbors’ radio stations on Last.fm. I’ve heard some interesting stuff, but also a lot of pretty random stuff. I think maybe the site’s parameters for associating one artist with another can be pretty wide. For example, I’m not sure how my scrobbled tracks of Louis Armstrong’s early Hot Fives & Sevens, Django Reinhardt, some Ella, the Nat King Cole Trio, a little Tony Bennett with Bill Evans, etc, add up to a steady stream of crunchy Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis free jazz. Similarly, it seems that my two Green Day discs have touched off a whole slew of random 90′s – 00′s prog rock: blink-182, Good Charlotte, My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, etc, none of whom have the kind of incisive wit that drew me to Green Day.
C’est la vie. There are plenty of other ways to customize what Last.fm plays to you, so I’m still pretty happy with it.
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