Joining last.fm

I had a conversation with the coworker about how after listening to the recent Boyz II Men album of Motown hits, he realized he much prefers older music and how true songsmiths don't exist any longer (although he was careful to state his love for contemporary artists like Amy Winehouse and John Legend) since radio pop nowadays can't evoke the same kinds of feelings that songs did back when he was a child, the kinds of songs that can reveal new emotions to you that you had never experienced, and so forth.  I countered that this isn't surprising if one were to only listen to watered-down Top 40 hits, but that the simplicity of music publishing means that not only do we have access to a lot more music now than ever before (even if this also results in a larger amount of garbage).  We have specific genres and cross-over mashups that cater to every single niche one can imagine, even including artists like Stephin Merritt who are probably better known as lyricists than a vocal or live performer.  Coincidentally, I told him, he had even brought this up in the week of SXSW, one of the single largest music festivals in the world, and just happens to showcase international music talent that all have their own large followings but we've most likely never heard of, even in passing, unless it was from a friend's personal recommendation or from some indie rag.  The point being, radio won't find you the music you enjoy, particularly if you take music as seriously as he does - it'll only feed you what they believe the masses want to hear.

So on that note, I signed into last.fm today on a whim just to see how their social music networking and recommendation system performs.  I asked Hube to sign up too, if only to see how his pattern of j-pop crossed with 70's Americana might influence the system.  So far, I'm confused why it immediately grabbed my iTunes playlist from work, where the bulk of the songs are from my Alex Ross de-DRM'ing project over Christmas, but has neglected my playlist from home.  Still, I guess "overall results" will eventually normalize in time with the random mess of songs that are constantly playing at home.  Tonight, I'm just skimming through and listening to everything I haven't bothered with in months/years and catching up on new releases I've missed from bands I've enjoyed.  As Penny put it, "if you ever get lonely, you just go to the record store and visit all your friends..."

(find me here)