09
02
2006
Posted by: Shannon in Uncategorized, tags: frenz, music, sound & fury
is the in thing this week, apparently.
I won’t be joining unless I eventually succumb to peer pressure. I don’t want people to know about every piece of music I listen to! What happened to privacy?
And I already have too much music to listen to without needing yet another source of ‘recommendations’.
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2006 at 9:32 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 9th, 2006 at 9:47 pm - Edit
You can be such a spoiler! And it may be the in thing this week but I joined like, all of last week, so ner, hehehe. I like sharing music and don’t care too much about what others are going to read into my musical selections online. I’m especially looking forward to the development of the cyclic defrost group. I’ve attended Frigid nights and listened to the Paradigm Shift for years now but the last fm space will be completely organic and democratic. The radio station tracks are submitted by members of the group and reflect our diverse interests. I think that’s cool, and if I dare say in my limited knowledge, innovative.
February 9th, 2006 at 10:34 pm - Edit
I’m with Shannon on this one. What happened to talking to people about what you’ve been listening to and making recommendations personally? Even if that is through mediated communication such as email and blogs. I value my privacy far too much to set up a space that automatically broadcasts what I am doing. That’s a lot of unmoderated data to leave lying around on a web page.
February 10th, 2006 at 12:51 am - Edit
There’s nothing wrong with making recommendations personally at all, but sometimes it’s nice to widen the sphere a bit. I’ve found new bands I really enjoy since being on last.fm and to me it doesn’t really feel any different to blogging. In fact, I think I (directly) reveal more of myself in my blog than I do through a few track listings on a website. Maybe I should have more respect for my privacy but I just don’t. The benefits of opening myself up online (through emails/blogging/forums) have been greater than any percieved loss of anonymity. Perhaps I will regret it all when I’m older but until I learn better, I’m happy to experiment.
February 10th, 2006 at 11:41 am - Edit
Surveillance is so pervasive that it’s now recreational!
February 10th, 2006 at 2:58 pm - Edit
I still think it’s a fine line of difference between blogging and last.fm. For example, when Jasper blogs he writes what he’s listening to in each post. You guys have radio shows and list your top fives/tens/favourite music on a regular basis, so why the concern that people might hear a little more of what you play? If it’s moderation you want, you can always turn off your plugin and turn it back on whenever you like. You don’t have to use your real name or submit any personal details online. And if I was in a band or something it would be a great place to meet people who may come along to your gigs and listen to your music.
Anyway. I should shut up about it now. If anything bad happens to me because of last.fm you guys can be the first to say I told you so.
February 10th, 2006 at 3:30 pm - Edit
The surveilance is based on creating average statistics of what people listen to. If they continue the analysis up to 2nd or higher-order (i.e probability that someone listens to X and also Y) the analysis soon becomes too computationally intense.
My point is, the information they gain first and foremost loses the individual and at most produces vaguely statistically defined subgroups of the whole population. Moreover such statistics are extremly biased (i.e a poor aproximation of the population). More invasive statistics are generated simply by use of your credit card or eftpos.
last.fm is the least of your worries so far as privacy is concerned.
February 10th, 2006 at 3:34 pm - Edit
You’re right, some posers are clearly moderating what is displayed in order to create or maintain a hip image (as if they never listen to anything uncool). But that defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? Might as well just stick with the occasional blog post about what one likes.
Look, as usual, I don’t care what people do as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. Personally, privacy is too important an issue for me to ignore, both in principle and in practice (as anyone who has been stalked would understand).
(And yes, I also try to pay in cash where possible.)
February 10th, 2006 at 8:28 pm - Edit
Actually the recommendations thing works quite well - people DO personally contact you, and then you can hear what they are recommending - which is nice.
The radio feature is much better than the Yahoo Music player - in that it seems to play things that are relelvant based on communal tastes.
The stats are held under a Creative Commons license - but yes, it is surveillance as recreation. If we are being cynical then no doubt Google or Yahoo will buy it out soon.
By the same token, there are a lot of good things that can come out of sharing tastes as Renae has been saying - just like going round to a mate’s place and hearing something new - except its not geographically confined. Taste clusters are interesting things to observe.
Are posers really manipulating what is displayed? I don’t know - maybe they are, but I’m certainly not. Its certainly less manipulable than posting your fave tracks on a blog - and I’m not quite sure why you’d bother?
February 10th, 2006 at 9:02 pm - Edit
With broadband & p2p, hearing something after hearing about it is not an issue. Not to mention audio blogs, podcasts, radio, magazines, etc, most of which aren’t geographically confined (to my geography).
I’ve never used Yahoo music player. Again, not interested.
Sharing tastes is great, I do it all the time. My friends are among the most musically informed people around. As I said, I have enough sources of recommendations already, and many hundreds of hours of music on my computer and my CD shelves that I’ve still to hear.
Why would people manipulate what’s displayed? I guess you’d have to ask them. But if everything I’ve seen there is legit then many people really need to broaden their tastes, to include unrelated genres and eras, and ‘mainstream’ and truly ‘underground’ (or ‘outsider’) music, in addition to the various predictable forms of ‘indie’ (dance, folk or otherwise). It seems to me that these communities are more likely to reinforce certain tastes - hipsterism masquerading as eclecticism.
Why post about about my favourite music on my blog? Because it’s contextualized - for example listing the music I listened to after Charles died, after several posts about him. It’s much more personal and interesting (to myself and perhaps others) than mere lists of lists.
And a sense of community is very much a part of blogging, and in a less contrived way than Last.fm appears to me. I don’t know everyone who reads this blog, but I do know many of them; and I’ve gotten to know many people through it too - for lots of different reasons (cos this blog covers lots of topics). Some people I only know online, but blogging also bleeds into ‘real life’ too. For example, I’m going to see Broken Social Scene soon with some regular commenters, because of discussions on this blog.
Again, if you want to do the Last.fm thing, then good for you, just don’t expect me to cheer. I’m sure it’s a useful promotional avenue for your various ventures, but it’s not so useful or interesting for me. Last.fm is mildly interesting as a social experiment, and I’ll observe the results, but I won’t participate.
Btw, Audioscrobbler has been around for a couple of years - I thought the same of it then as I do now. I don’t know how many times I have to keep saying this, but privacy is important to me (eg I also stealth surf - especially when it comes to Google searches). Surveillance is everywhere, but I do what I can to minimize my exposure.
February 10th, 2006 at 11:42 pm - Edit
What I’ve seen on Last.fm has been pretty broad - but sure, probably the current userbase is very hipster/indie oriented . . . it would be because of the requirement to a) listen to music on your computer/music player and b) have a network connection on that computer . . . . Pretty much ever country chart I’ve looked at has had Radiohead at #1.
Its blogging and forum tools it offers is not too bad and they’ve added a wiki thing to the band pages so in some ways it is going to start becoming like Discogs and FreeDB.
Anyway, we’re just giving it a go - one of my workmates put me on to it while we were scoping a work project that incorporates social networking and folksonomy tools. If it ends up bringing more people to read Cyclic from other countries and cities then that’s great.
There’s always a trade off with privacy on the net - do you use del.icio.us? or any subscription-based services?
February 11th, 2006 at 12:17 pm - Edit
Radiohead country? FFS!
The wiki thing sounds interesting. I’m a BIG fan of wikis, and am developing one for Australian experimental music as part of my PhD.
Unsurprisingly, I don’t use del.icio.us or similar services. The only things I subscribe to online are RSS feeds and a decreasing number of email discussion lists (where I always set my subscription status to ‘hidden’ where possible).
I agree there is always a tradeoff with privacy. This begs the question - why blog? I feel that blogging is a form of publishing over which I have some control. Eg I can moderate comments and IP ban people. I can make posts private.
Although I say a lot on this blog, there are many things that I don’t reveal. I have good reasons for this.
Starting a blog took a lot of courage and I still have doubts about whether I should be doing it (I’ve come close to deleting this blog on several occasions). But so far the benefits have outweighed the risks - I’ve met so many brilliant, wonderful people through blogging, and it seems to happen quite organically.
By comparison, social networking sites such as Last.fm and Myspace just seem desperate to me - like they’re thinly veiled singles/personal ad sites. I guess that affect is ripe for social experimentation, but to me it’s icky. I already have enough amazing friends in my life without needing to proposition strangers.
February 11th, 2006 at 3:04 pm - Edit
Yeah I understand your concern - especially after those incidents.
I guess blogging and other activities are in some ways about taking some control over your online identity. I expect that it is better to have some self-representation when you are Googled than not - again, as far as privacy goes, the tentacles of Google reach pretty far if you work anywhere with a public online presence.
The Radiohead thing - I meant ‘country charts’ as in national charts! Not country as in twang and hay. Heh heh. eg. http://www.last.fm/place/Australia
The Last wiki thing is a bit of a mash between the music entires in wikipedia and discogs. Apparently the Musicbrainz folk (who I think are part of or at least closely associated with Last) are also from the FreeDB crew with the intention being that Musicbrainz will take over from FreeDB at some point. And, Last IS the same as Audioscrobbler.
February 11th, 2006 at 3:45 pm - Edit
Yeah it’s unfortunate that a lot of my activities (performing, organising, curating, teaching, writing) have a public dimension, which leaves a trail, but that just comes with the territory. I couldn’t imagine how horrible it would be to be a celebrity of any kind. I mean, the underground chose me as much as I chose it (due to overwhelming indifference or incompetence from those who might have helped spread the word) but in retrospect, that’s for the best. If anything, my politics have become more radical as I’ve gotten older - these days I want as little to do with capitalism as possible, which is one reason why I’m no longer interested in CDs, for example.
National charts - gotcha. That was bloody funny! =) Think I’ll go listen to some Dolly Parton now (seriously!). One thing I would have never predicted is that I’ve become a huge bluegrass fan over the past few years…
If Last/Musicbrainz makes Discogs redundant I’ll be the first to cheer. I fucking hate Discogs! (And I’m generally not a hater.) When I was going through those troubles I mentioned, I requested that they remove my contact details - and they refused! Can you believe that? I ended up having to say that I would change my details without notifying them, rendering their info useless. That worked, but then they did something else (which I won’t describe) which further compromised my privacy.
The Discogs site is also a mess, with multiple conflicting entries, no chronological listings, etc. And the reviews are the most IDM fanboy/hipster drivel I’ve ever seen - even worse than Pitchfork! And when my email address was up there, I got more spam from Italian house music promoters than I ever got for viagra. Fuck Discogs, I hope they go down.
And yes I know Last is Audioscrobbler, that’s why I’m so bemused that it has recently become so trendy.
February 11th, 2006 at 4:26 pm - Edit
That is crazy about Discogs.
I’m not sure Last is suddenly trendy. Maybe it is now starting to reach a critical mass of users which is why is appearing more and more - and the new feature set they released yesterday - the artist wiki, in-browser track previews etc - mean they are definitely trying to expand rapidly as well.
February 12th, 2006 at 12:56 am - Edit
gentlemen
been reading all comments with interest, thought i’d go have a look for myself
found out from here
http://www.last.fm/music/League+of+Infinite+Justice
that a similar artist to loij is morcheeba
hmmm…..more fucking rubbish on the internet, quelle surprise
February 12th, 2006 at 2:58 am - Edit
hey guys - long time no drinkies - the “surfie” from Brisbane pronounces that League of Infinite Justice compared to Morcheeba is like Derek and Clive to Cheech and Chong
February 12th, 2006 at 9:21 am - Edit
hey adrian
yeah but that’s just because not enough people have listened to LOIJ! and those that have have also listened to Morcheeba. as more people do listen then more relevant similarities will appear/emerge.
i am not sure but i expect if you tagged your music in Last appropriately it might make better connection based on tagging rather than just what your biggest fans (meaning people who play LOIJ a lot) also play.
as i was saying on my blog the other day, the biggest fan of The Herd is also a big fan of Jethro Tull and Coldplay. but because they are tagged as aussie hip hop etc and a lot of people have played them, they get similaraties with other frequently played aussie hip hop acts.
February 12th, 2006 at 6:37 pm - Edit
OK you lot - cos I love you (and hate myself) so much, I’ve gone and created an account. (Actually, Julian joining was the last straw.)
All of my reservations still stand, especially the data mining and other privacy concerns, and the icky dating site vibe, but I mainly want to make sure that Alias Frequencies is accurately represented (when I get around to adding that info) if this thing is going to be as significant as you apparently reckon.
Fucking peer pressure…
Oh, and hi ][oyd - great to see you here! =)
February 12th, 2006 at 6:55 pm - Edit
hi shannon. d00d, your musik tayste R0X0RZ! wanna date? ;-) yo, and welcome to the scrobbler. you might find that the radio throws up some interesting things, i know it has for me.
February 12th, 2006 at 7:04 pm - Edit
Whoa…what a hot debacle. Just wanted to let you know Shannon that I took the liberty of adding Puzahki tracks to the “hipster cesspool” that is Last. I was gonna keep that dirty little secret to myself but since your one of us now I suppose I can fess up. ;)
February 12th, 2006 at 7:38 pm - Edit
This is way too weird. I can’t believe you caved.
February 12th, 2006 at 8:25 pm - Edit
Hey, I’m a complicated man.
And a hypocrite.
February 13th, 2006 at 10:08 pm - Edit
ha! hey shannon… what i’ve learned from your set list so far is that you’ve been flogging ‘Stars’ album ‘Heart’. This is one killer pop album (that is if, like me, you appreciate ridiculously pretty pop tunes) You’ve inspired me to put it back on. You an me (and maybe scottart, and renae by the looks of it) are going to skew the cyclic defrost group chart… I regret i played a couple of noto albums this morning because i’m writing an article on the sucker… other than that its hard core indie pop!
February 13th, 2006 at 10:27 pm - Edit
Yeah I tend to get obsessed with albums and ‘Heart’ is the album for me right now, as I’m in a sappy mood…
But everything changes, and it’s only a matter of time before the collage, sound art, noise, breakcore, etc. show up.
But yr right I think we will be skewing charts and hopefully influencing people with our (indie) pop tastes!
February 13th, 2006 at 10:38 pm - Edit
i’m playing some stars to see if we can get it into the cyclic defrost charts.. Ahh the old manipulate the charts number… its like in the good old days (when people bought records from stores) that labels would send people to survey stores to buy up all the singles from an act to see if they could push it up the chart that week. Myabe they still do that?
February 13th, 2006 at 11:37 pm - Edit
The idea of listening as performance is an interesting one. I’m gonna have to think about that some more…
March 8th, 2006 at 3:56 am - Edit
As per apost on Shannon’s blog I tried out Last.fm. I wasn’t really sure what to think about it at the time so I just signed up to give it a go. Essentially I think the radio driven by a community is an interesting concept- though I have never been able use the net