Audioscrobble Gobble
My new favorite software program is a plugin for your digital music player (iTunes, MusicMatch, Winsamp) called Audioscrobbler (www.audioscrobbler.com). Central concept being: you install audioscrobbler and then audioscrobbler every few minutes will post a playlist of your most recently listened to songs up on a website (you can find mine here).
It has some cool things like your Top Played artists (including the number of times said artist has been played), Top Songs, Recent Tracks, and Now Listening. It even comes with an XML feed so you can pull this data and display it on your own website or blog. One drawback is the lack of customizability; I'd like to be able to show say, the last 30 songs I've listened to, but the only let you show the last 10. Given that Audioscrobbler is open-source & written in PHP (an easy, popular, web scripting language), I would'nt be suprised of the next version of Audioscrobbler has far more features.
But the supposed selling point of Audioscrobbler is that after you listen to 100 songs it will connect to you a network of "friends" with similar musical tastes and interests. Are you a big fan of Modest Mouse? Check your network and you can see all the other folks who dig Modest Mouse, plus their playlists. Really big into Kanye West's "Jesus Walks"? Just click it and you can see a list of all the other Kanye West "Jesus Walks" fans out there; including how many times they've listened to that one song.
Still, Audioscrobbler's "network" features do little to extend the social networking of Friendster and Orkut; one might think that by reducing the factor of "connectedness" down to just musical tastes that Audioscrobbler does nothing to avoid one of the biggest and most central problems of the internet: namely that online "communities" are simply groups of one-issue like-minded people avoiding interaction with people even marginally different than themselves.
But, my central complaint against the internet aside, Audioscrobbler is a fun, ridiculously easy-to-use software gadget. Hand-in-hand with my chattablog and theirs, its another great way for me to keep tabs on just what my friends are thinking about and listening to, even if it means they can tell when I'm listening to Tenacious D's "Wonderboy" over and over.
Josiah Q. Roe | By Josiah Roe | 11:23 AM
Comments
You should be less worried about people knowing you like Tenacious D and more worried about the fact that you just listened to Enya.
Posted by: Nick at August 6, 2004 04:37 PM
they're the greatest band in the world, and there's nothin' wrong with a little Enya now an then. Day Without Rain is a great album.
Posted by: gosey at August 6, 2004 04:46 PM
Jared Bostrom's brother, Jordan, used to drive me up the walls by playing Enya full blast (I lived for a semester with Jared and Jordan in the Pettit's basement).
Posted by: Nick at August 6, 2004 07:13 PM
Man I could really go for some cheap prescription drugs and a MILF ride right now. Anybody know where I could....oh wait, sweet never mind!
Posted by: concerned at August 8, 2004 07:51 PM
I worry about creating a collective consciousness of Hillary Duff fans.
Posted by: Phil at August 9, 2004 01:08 PM
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