Compare your MP3-listening habits
February 9, 2003 6:33 PM   Subscribe

Learn and compare your MP3 listening habits (via Waxy)
posted by oissubke (35 comments total)
 
This is the downside of the technology. I'm apparently the only showtunes fan.
posted by mathowie at 6:43 PM on February 9, 2003


I think this is a front for the RIAA.

You better watch your ass, Matt.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:53 PM on February 9, 2003


If it makes you feel any better, there dosen't seem to be a burgeoning Joe South fan club either...
posted by jonmc at 6:54 PM on February 9, 2003


...or a big crowd of Charlie Parker enthusiasts...
posted by dogwelder at 7:02 PM on February 9, 2003


I see mathowie and jonmc and anildash and eyeballkid and waxpancake. And me.

I'm really hopelessly addicted to this since I read about it on eyeballkid's weblog. Bad, bad Audioscrobbler.
posted by iconomy at 7:05 PM on February 9, 2003


Wath the number of users going up: right now it has 258 audioscrobblers, 135343 songs played, 256 guests and 22 members online.

I hate asking this: what are the privacy policies behind this site? Who is Richard Jones?
posted by MzB at 7:19 PM on February 9, 2003


sorry, "watch"
posted by MzB at 7:21 PM on February 9, 2003


If it was a RIAA front, what could they get out of it? You can't download any music, and my music comes from my own CD collection.
posted by mathowie at 7:30 PM on February 9, 2003


"What is a scrobbler?"

"A device that scrobbles, silly."

Signed up about a week ago, haven't listened to anything but streams off the net yet, so not much fun. I wonder what the algorithms for deciding what similar are....
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:40 PM on February 9, 2003


This is really pretty cool. It's like those scripts i've seen around that publish you're entire music collection or what you are playing at that moment for the web without having to host it on your server or set it up yourself.

As soon as they have a version for iTunes I plan to give this a shot, although judging from my iTunes most played list, my Audioscrobbler page will probably look something like this:

1)Bjork
2)Bjork
3)Bjork
etc.
posted by untuckedshirts at 7:59 PM on February 9, 2003


this is very cool. Training it will be fun as well.
posted by condour75 at 8:03 PM on February 9, 2003


I just think that this is hilarious. The pancake never ceases to amaze.
posted by oissubke at 9:04 PM on February 9, 2003


Yeah I'm having fun with this; I've seen similar things in the past, but they've all generally been commercial and crappy. This is good, because it lets you find out for yourself what "similar music" other people are listening to, rather than just force feeding you pathetic, pre-programmed bands. The system can, of course, fall over in two situations:

1) Mp3 collections that are too typical. If your playlist is nothing but Linkin Park, Korn, Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock, the software probably isn't going to have much to offer you in new suggestions.

2) Even more interesting - diverse mp3 collections. My current playlist has Miles Davis alongside Godspeed You Black Emperor, alongside Tom Waits, alongside Joy Division, alongside Beat Happening. What coherent suggestions will it come up with for me?

Ultimately, it would be good if the site linked artists people are listening to, to biographies of the artists, say, at AllMusic.
posted by Jimbob at 11:56 PM on February 9, 2003


Looks like a good site. I could always just make up info for my submissions. I like that the number one band is radiohead, and I like about 75% of the the top 100 bands. Nice to know that there aren't a lot of users with bad taste on it.

I havn't looked yet to see if there's an api, but I'd be interested in hacking an extractor onto my empeg, since all my listening in my car, and most of the listening in my living room is done on it. The powerbook/itunes gets the rest, I'm sure there'll be a plugin for it soon.
posted by klaruz at 12:02 AM on February 10, 2003


...my Audioscrobbler page will probably look something like this:

1)Bjork
2)Bjork
3)Bjork


You sound suspiciously like someone I know.
posted by themadjuggler at 12:03 AM on February 10, 2003


I'm not sure if this approaches the coolness of the global network of dreams...
posted by azazello at 12:40 AM on February 10, 2003


If I could only be bothered to use winamp, I'd be all over this.
posted by walrus at 3:23 AM on February 10, 2003


If I could only be bothered to use winamp, I'd be all over this.

Agreed. I compared winamp simultaneously to bearshare, and winamp lost unanimously and undoubtedly, although I loved the multicolored text functions and simplicity. I guess there just weren't enough users.
posted by hama7 at 3:51 AM on February 10, 2003


Got me a little confused there, hama7.

I understood bearshare to be a filesharing utility, whereas winamp is an mp3 player/jukebox utility. I would use winamp for playback (I understand it to have a light footprint and to be highly stable software), except that I have been unable to beat musicmatch for encoding purposes, and I don't want to bloat my system with extra software (musicmatch does playback very well too, although it is far from lightweight, processing-wise). On the plus side, winamp seems to be the target of choice for funky, little, web-enabled applications like audioscrobbler, so perhaps I'll give the whole thing a re-think. All this, I was hoping to say in less words.

Of course, you could be getting muddled with winMX, which I believe is a similar piece of software to bearshare.
posted by walrus at 5:23 AM on February 10, 2003


The wording on the artist similarity map could use some tweaking. I just about lost my breakfast when I read this...

Information for 'Radiohead'
Similar sounding artists: Ratt, Red Hot Chili Peppers


[shiver]
posted by cratchit at 8:23 AM on February 10, 2003


Gnod's is also very very cool.
posted by scarabic at 8:54 AM on February 10, 2003


Now the whole world shall know how much I like the Handsome Family! Hahahahahahahaaaa!
posted by black8 at 9:00 AM on February 10, 2003


An iTunes plugin is coming soon, along with syndicated recent playlists. (So you'll be able to list the last five songs you've listened to on your weblog.)
posted by waxpancake at 9:16 AM on February 10, 2003


Ultimately, it would be good if the site linked artists people are listening to, to biographies of the artists, say, at AllMusic.

Unfortunately, AllMusic doesn't provide an API to access their (great) database, unless you shell out a whole bunch of money.
posted by SweetJesus at 10:10 AM on February 10, 2003


Ack. Yet more places for me to waste my time!
posted by woil at 10:38 AM on February 10, 2003


Spoke to RJ (via ICQ) and he's in England, not associated with the RIAA. I alerted him to this page, and he's going to post more stuff to the FAQ in response to some questions posted here.
posted by woil at 2:59 PM on February 10, 2003


Imagine a peer-to-peer file sharing application that will overnight automatically download 100 mp3 files from bands "related" to the bands in your existing mp3 collection...
posted by willem at 3:58 PM on February 10, 2003


Imagine a peer-to-peer file sharing application that will overnight automatically download 100 mp3 files from bands "related" to the bands in your existing mp3 collection...

muahahahah! Of course, I would find waking up to 300-400 MB of new music every morning quite daunting. A programmable number would be v. useful, though. Hmm...time to hone some programming skills.
posted by quasistoic at 4:53 PM on February 10, 2003


I like this! Thanks for the link, oissubke. I've always been curious about my listening habits and now I can get all the facts...on all kinds of people. Cool.

Imagine a peer-to-peer file sharing application that will overnight automatically download 100 mp3 files from bands "related" to the bands in your existing mp3 collection...

Interesting thought, willem. I'd like that, too. In the meantime, I'll listen to my vince guaraldi and Wilco and dream.
posted by ashbury at 5:54 PM on February 10, 2003


The group Reel Big Fish is in the top ten. I've never heard of them so I checked out who liked the group and came up with this page. Obviously there are very easy ways of skewing the results. If one person has listened to a group 1111 times (at the last viewing of the user page), then the group isn't really that popular and not belonging in the top ten. No surprise, just sayin'.
posted by ashbury at 6:12 PM on February 10, 2003


Of course, you could be getting muddled with winMX, which I believe is a similar piece of software to bearshare.

walrus:Ah yes, sir. You are correct. I've always been a bit of an ass. Thanks for the clarification.

Winamp kept getting into fights with my realplayer and windowsmedia, so I sent it to the principal's office. Maybe it's time to reconsider...
posted by hama7 at 8:26 PM on February 10, 2003


RJ informed me this morning (Tuesday) that his host is giving him hell about traffic, and he's looking for a new one.
posted by woil at 9:25 AM on February 11, 2003


Email I just received from RJ (I had the feeling this would happen as soon as I saw the link here):

Subject: Audioscrobbler News

As of about 30mins ago, Audioscrobbler.com is offline.
This is because the company I pay to host my site have suspended my account because of the large amoun of traffic, which was slowing down their webserver for other customers.

It would seem that the sudden increase in users enerated too much traffic for their webserver to handle.

I will move the site to new servers soon, the website will not be offline for long.. I'll email you again when I know more.

Please DO NOT reply to the email address this email is from. Please use rwj100@soton.ac.uk
to contact me.

Thankyou for your patience and positive feedback, Hope to be back online again very soon!
RJ

----
PS: I'm open to suggestions for good, reasonably priced places to
host Audioscrobbler. I need php,mysql,linux shell account. Fairly
cheap, as I'm a poor student :)
posted by iconomy at 1:11 PM on February 11, 2003


RJ is Richard Jones, a uni student in Southampton, UK - and Audioscrobbler is a university project. The connection is as secure as any HTTP. He has no intention of ever violating anyone's privacy or selling any individual data (though at some point the actual raw database data could have some value.) He is hoping to have the site back online this weekend. The hope is his University may offer to open up its firewall and dedicate a server for him to do it on. Keep your fingers crossed.
posted by sixdifferentways at 3:08 PM on February 12, 2003


The audioscrobbler website is currently being hosted here, but I'm not sure if the software is configured to send music information to the new servers yet.
posted by quasistoic at 9:19 PM on February 18, 2003


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