Online Music Clubs
I’ve joined LastFM and I’m wondering if any of my readers are also members. The UK based social music platform just announced of new functionality within the last.fm website to allow the playing of full-length tracks and albums for free.
I’m also wondering if you people belong to different music clubs and would like to discuss which ones you feel have better features and what those features are.
In the sidebar you will find my top albums quilt and my playlist. If you hover your mouse over the album covers you will see the artists’ names and the album titles.
Do any of us have similar musical taste? So if you are a lastfm member you will get some link love. ;-)
Edit:
Adam gets this link love.
Alabaster gets some too.
And so does Juan.
And Ella and Roads and Richard and B0bbyG too.
i’ve posted a bit about my undying love for last.fm, although the journal recommendations no longer seem to exist. i doubt you and i will wind up as neighbors, although it’s not that i dislike the music you listen to, just that metal mondays are definately pushing my charts, erm… farther from the feminine end of the spectrum.
Hi Adam,
Thanks for dropping in. Somewhere along the line I absorbed the fact that you were into metal. My truth is that I can sing reasonably well and that explains my preference for female vocalists. I’m not exactly stuck in the 80’s and 90’s but I do hearken back to the music of those times because they were good times for me. I hasten to add that I do listen to music made by men. It’s just that when I’m alone I like to turn the music up loud and then wail along with it and, these women sing in the 2 octave range that I also sing in. Have you tried any other music clubs? Is lastfm the best one?
i’ve poked around in iLike, but never really connected with anything (anyone?) there. before oink got shut down, it was a decent scene/club, but the pretext of file-sharing wasn’t exactly great (and certainly not sustainable). soulseek is pretty damn awesome, but shares the problem of oink. other than that, hypemachine is a pretty good tool for finding bloggers with similar tastes, and sampling music sans radio.
oh, and for the record, I can identify – metal or not, it’s easier on a basic level for me to identify/sing along/appreciate male vocalists. although i usually wind up respecting female vocalists more, probably because they are other to my natural bent.
Thanks. I added a link to hypemachine and will start checking it out. I’d really like to broaden my musical taste and I think the best way to do that is to connect with others, who have some music in common with me. Once you can see someone else’s playlists you can begin to pick and choose this and that to give the listening test too.
What I find remarkable is how much Canadian music that is not available in these online clubs. As we have 30% Canadian content on our radio stations here these folks have had an opportunity to get their stuff heard that they didn’t previously have. I’m wondering if the reason I can’t find their music has to do with copyright and other “legal” stuff.
This was very helpful to me, as was the link to Adam’s post. After spending more than an hour coming up with a username not already taken, I finally settled on a radio widget — which I didn’t even have to register for. Lots to explore there, so I guess signing up will come in handy.
Thanks!
i’m not sure where the disconnect with canadian music comes from. Bands from the Toronto scene seem to cross over into the indie rock scene in the US, but I think that canadian pop is fighting a losing battle against the american major labels and their budgets.
@ella,
Hi there and thanks for dropping by. I’m glad that this post and the link from Adam was helpful to you. Life, including working on the keyboard for hours on end, is so much is so much better with music . :-)
@adam
I looked harder and I found some Canadian music. I also agree with your point about competing with American musicians. I’m laughing today because I added over 100 tracks to my playlist and only tagged the first 2 or 3. I forgot to tag the others. :-D
I quite enjoy last.fm. I haven’t really engaged with the community side of it, but I like the lists and statistics. Also I like having a button I can press to point out that I’m enjoying something. And having a playlist of music I know I like ready at any computer with a net connection is damn handy.
It’s also found me some pretty good gigs that I’d not have known about.
I’m intensely aware of how much social netorking represents, essentially, a twisted and invasive marketing tool. But last.fm remains something so useful, and detached enough from political economy (not sure what I mean by that) that I have no issue with it.
Strange, perhaps its just a music thing. Like, I almost want people to understand my musical tastes, just to remind people how much wonderful music is out there.
Anyway, AlabasterC is my username over that way.
Be well.
Welcome Alabaster,
I’m trying to expand the narrow niche I have created that I refer to as “my music”. A lot is old and has “sentimental” value. Both you and Adam have replied, I’ve added you as friends and, I will be crawling through your playlists very soon. :-)
I’m wondering if Collin is listening too. Hmmm… going to rap on his door may be a good idea.
I went to your last.fm page and couldn’t play some tracks… instead the player would shuffle the playlist and play another song… it annoyed me :P
I have an eclectic taste in music. I like from Classical to New Age, from Instrumental to Electronic (trance, etc.), from (80s) pop to Death Metal. However, I don’t like rap, R&B and “de Banda” nor “Norteña” (these are Mexican folk music that some of my co-workers listen to, and which I find annoying).
I like Rock in Spanish, especially from the 80s; some of my favorite rock bands are from Argentina. Russian Rock (when I went to Russia, I got to hear some Russian rock bands and I think they were really good); Japanese Pop/Pop-Rock (I knew about them from the Anime I watch).
Although I don’t understand Russian nor Japanese, I don’t let that to prevent me from enjoying what I believe is good music since they have awesome rhythm.
I also like Chinese and Japanese traditional music… it relaxes me a lot.
Oh, I don’t like romantic/slow songs that much either… they put me to sleep :D
Overall, I’m more of an Alternative Rock/Rock/80s guy :)
I’m gonna put together a list of songs of all the genres I like and will share them with you as soon as it’s ready ;)
Best!
PS. If you’d like to check my favorite rock (in Spanish) band of all time, the number one on my list, check the post I have in the blog my brother and I maintain (is in Spanish, though). The band’s name is Soda Stereo; they are from Argentina.
Hi Juan,
I scooped your comment out of Defensio’s fliter. I don’t know why it was in there but I do keep a close watch. Defensio is working very well otherwise and I hope you are experiencing the same thing with it too.
Setting that aside you and I do have overlapping taste in music. I like alternative rock and 1980’s music too. I do not like opera, metal or rap at all. Other than that I’m pretty much open to most musical genera. I added a Soda Stereo track to my playlist to check out. Remarkably, I also really like traditional Japanese and Chinese music too.
Generally speaking what goes on my playlist is what I like to sing. I have a reasonable voice and used to sing in groups and choirs. I got tired of it because I wasn’t really into the music that was selected for us. Luckily, I’m alone a lot of the time so I can wail away without disturbing anyone. :-D
Hi brightfeather and thanks for this post.
LastFm has long been a regular companion at the keyboard. The recommendations are great and the random play is fine for most uses. Unfortunately, in WordPress.com the tie-up with Sonific Songspot means that we can’t have proper widgets or quilts yet.
I use projectplaylist.com to post specific songs to my blog – the great advantages being that I can post a single song on demand, and because the music is not hosted on my site there are no copyright infringement issues, either.
The technique is a little tricky to master – although I wrote a ‘How to’ post for the wp.com forums once… if I weren’t posting this comment remotely I’d be able to give you the link, so perhaps brightfeather can edit it in later…
To this basic set of instructions, I’d now add that there is an excellent additional search feature to use – if the site doesn’t find your music first time, then you can ask it to search other music consolidators in different countries and that works really well. It’s quite hard to locate that page, though, and I suspect that few people know it’s there…
Hi Roads,
So glad you stopped in and told us about projectplaylist. I found the instructions at this link.