Sunday, May 27, 2007

Last.fm update - 20,000 songs yay!

Hey peeps, I have recently reached a landmark on last.fm music profile. Yep, I've past the 20000 song mark so I thought I'd take a quick look at how my charts are doing and make a blog out of it.

I think I remember mentioning in a previous blog when I hit the 10000 song mark and the artists at the top haven't changed much since. Yep, Coheed and Cambria still grace the top spot by a healthy distance, which is probably fair they are probs my fave band, and statistics prove this lol. I remember at the last milestone, Matthew Good Band were higher, once holding 2nd, but they've dropped down a few.

Checking my weekly charts now and again, I am quite proud that I can boast 100+ artists in some weeks, and well that does mean that the not-quote-so-popular artists grow at about the same rate and so there aren't too many fast climbers.

I have been listening to a crap load of MCS and Sparta, or at least what I thought was a crapload, but they currently sit in positions 31 and 28 respectively.

Some that I am suprised are still up there are the likes of bands like Bad Religion, but that is only because I have pretty much their entire discography and well some songs of theirs get played on my huge "All Music" random playlist that I feed winamp with.

The "Top Tracks" chart I was convinced was bugged as songs like Hundred Reasons' No Pretending and Coheed's The Suffering were up there pretty much since I signed up for last.fm and the chart hasn't really changed that much (again I think it's the same songs getting played at the same rate). Anyways, while I listened to the commentary to the playoff final featuring Shrewsbury (they lost sadly :() I decided to loop a small song and see what happens. 42 plays of Von Bondies' Going Down, and I can now confirm that the chart is working, like it always has been, no doubt lol. Yep, that song now sits in third in my all time top tracks (on last.fm).

Contrary to the disappointment of MCS and Sparta's poor performance in the charts, if the rolling charts are taken a look at - genius idea - it turns out those artists are very close to the top. When I discovered the Juliana Theory, their stuff got some heavy play and that has resulted in them lying in 12th.

Last.fm is a great idea, but one of the few criticisms I have is that the lists aren't weighted with how much material you have of a particular artist. Now this can't be implemented using the current online method, but bands like Bad Religion, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden etc are so high simply through attrition rather than geniune plays - don't get me wrong these artists have a load of good songs, just that sometimes the less-favourable songs get played cos they crop up more on the random playlist, simply due to the greater number of songs that belong to a particular artist. The idea of weighted lists is something I'd like to do in my own little music player if it ever gets off the ground.


Looking forward to the next milestone whichever I decide, whether it be 30000, or I wait till 50000. I'd like to think I could possible hit 50000 by the end of the year, and with my music collection growing and growing we'll see if Coheed will ever be knocked off the top spot. My music collection stands at about 40Gig atm, probably half of it I know pretty well and will listen to it comfortably, rather than making the effort of checking out a new artist etc.

I've just got winamp to add up all the songs and here are the results (lol):
I have 9783 songs (damn so close to 10G), which taking the track lengths makes a total length of 652 hours 3 minutes 55 seconds. That works out at just over 27 and a half days. Wow! I didn't realise it was that much. Ok, challenge to the masses, who wants to spend the entire of next February listening to every last song in my possession.

I have just under half of those songs of my mp3 player, and I may be slightly bragging that I can pretty much recognise them from the first few seconds of play - maybe someone would like to challenge me on that lol.

It blows my brain, I may have trouble sleeping, what with comprehending how music that is :S
Take it easy
J-Man.

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