Scrobbl.icio.us
So Audioscrobbler just had a super-sexy (ish) new makeover, and moved on from gentle nuzzling with that LastFM thing to full-blown frottage in the back of their Dad’s Ford Fiesta. It looks vastly prettier now, although I’m unsure how much has actually changed about the mechanics of the site; I’ll have to have a fiddle around. The idea of automatically-generated personal radio stations is pretty neat, I must admit, but then again… don’t you want that element of surprise from your radio? The “Peel Factor”, let us call it. If I’m just served up a diet of The Postal Service, Modest Mouse and early My Life Story B-sides, I’ll not be too impressed. I demand exposure to Norwegian Fantasy Metal, dammit! But hey, we shall see. The Discovery Mode option, while only available to subscribers, seems at least a step in the right direction.
At the very least, once RSS comes online, it opens up the possibility that people might find themselves actually podcasting by accident, which surely opens up whole new areas of bland middle-class farce for a futuristic RoboAyckbourn.
And hey! Tags! Nice! But… yeah, useless. I can’t even remember to put my CDs back in the right case – you think I can tag my songs? Ha! But very generous of yous, anyway. And my sidebar music pluginwidgetdoodah’s working properly again. (No it’s not.)
Anyway, the point I was getting towards is, that I was going to write a full blown comment on the new interface (it’s moderately buggered for those of us whose compulsive bookmarks-opening leaves us with limited screen real estate; the various elements tend to overlap in a deeply cack-assed way), and I’m sure it would all have been terribly insightful and stuff… but then I caught sight of my “most listened-to artists” list, and was caught somewhat static by a musical doosra. Essentially:
…Holy living Christ, I am so gay.
Go easy on the melodic / indie stuff there.
Comment by Ben — August 10, 2005 @ 12:03 pm
You want to see the vast amounts of even more melodic indie stuff further down the list. Arcade Fire, Decemberists, Neutral Milk Hotel, not to mention listening to that Frou Frou song from Garden State on repeat for hours on end…
Comment by Tom — August 10, 2005 @ 12:52 pm
Well, on the gay music scene stuff, I was just about the download Go West by the Pet Shop Boys, but seeing this dire warning posted by your good self, I thought better of it.
Comment by Ben — August 10, 2005 @ 2:43 pm
It was not so much a warning, merely an observation.
However, if you’re downloading PSB songs, you’ve gotta check Suburbia, It’s A Sin, West End Girls and Being Boring before you hit Go West. They are 100% of awesome.
Comment by Tom — August 10, 2005 @ 3:13 pm
Just in, you can add Gary Jules’ Mad World to that. Saw Donnie Darko the other night, which reminded me to get it as an MP3.
Comment by Ben — August 10, 2005 @ 11:37 pm
Yeah, that’s somewhere on my list as well. As is the Tears For Fears original, which is also good, with a magnificent horn glissando bit in it that’s missing from Jules and Andrews’ version.
Comment by Tom — August 11, 2005 @ 1:10 am
Christ. A Siberian peat-bog the size of France and Germany put together is thawing and may release huge amounts of Methane gas. Thanks, George.
Comment by Ben — August 11, 2005 @ 10:59 am
Incidentally, funny thing happened today. I went into St Austell to get my hair cut, among other things, and for the first time in my life, the radio in a commercial premises was playing a decent song – I Predict a Riot by the Kaiser Chiefs.
Comment by Ben — August 11, 2005 @ 4:47 pm
The new last.fm/Audioscrobbler sucks ass, in my opinion. The design is pretty enough, but it’s too crowded, the page breaks (badly) if your resolution isn’t big, there’s too little contrast on many elements, they still call groups “Groups” (IMHO too confusing with actual musical groups), there’s too many unlabelled buttons, the profile editor is awful – they’ve taken a nice idea – song tagging a la Flickr – but then stuck it on a crappy overweight interface rather than something nice and light and Ajaxy, and the RSS feeds have gone (well not gone, but they’re doing a good job of pretending they don’t exist), which is an arse as I’d just perfected the “Work out what album I’m playing” Wordpress plugin I’d been playing with. It’s a bit of a mare to use, in general.
Ack, I should really be moaning about this on my own blog, shouldn’t I?
PS I added you to my friends list, so do the same to me. Ta.
Comment by Chris — August 13, 2005 @ 4:15 pm