Radio
These two services Pandora and LastFM are really interesting. My problem, being clueless when it comes to music is never really knowing what to listen to music wise. It’s not that I dislike music but I’ve just never been that into it. Whenever I feel I would like to go and buy some new music I look up at the shelves and see the rakes of albums I bought because I liked a song or somebody recommended it and are now gathering dust. I have not bought any music from a traditional record store in over two years. Eventually I just gave up. Some people may find that unusual but then I find people who listen to music obsessively and become fixated about the details and minutiae as boring as football or petrol heads. Human beings have such an astounding capacity for obsession and minutiae.
What I like about these two services is a) I don’t have to go into a record shop. I hate those places and b) I don’t have to know exactly what I want. I had no idea I like music that features hard rock roots with mild rhythmic syncopation, a vocal centric aesthetic, minor key tonality and groove based composition. But I put one artist I like into Pandora and so far its thrown up lots of stuff I am liking. It uses something called the Music Genome Project to classify music. Right now its playing ‘When Every Colour Turns Black’ by Green Milk From the Planet Orange. Well I couldn’t see myself coming across this album in Tower Records but its not half bad. It’s got a nice rhythmic syncopation and minor key tonality which I favour, the internets told me so. You train up the radio player with the songs you like and let it go. You can also mix up the song choices by adding artists or songs to the stream for variety. Sign ups are supposed to be restricted to the United States but they only ask for a zip code as proof. Stick in any relevant zip code and you should be good to go. The whole service runs in your browser via a flash based radio player, this means access to your radio streams wherever you are online. I’m really liking it so far.
LastFM is more complicated and less intuitive but has lots more interaction. Sign up for a free account, install a plugin and a radioplayer and away you go. It’s much more of an online community with the ability to listen in to your neighbours radio, join groups, comment on songs and generally surf around picking stuff up and dipping in here and there. This is where the web really comes into its own. LastFM uses something called Audioscrobbler a plugin which monitors the songs you play on your pc in your favourite media player Winamp, iTunes etc and then sends the info back to LastFM. When you login and use the LastFM radio player it tailors the music to your known preferences and sends you reccomendations you may like. You can also randomly jump into other peoples radiostreams. It has the feel of a Flickr for music. The web is burgeoning with start up services like this MySpace, Yahoo Music, and Winamp’s Shoutcast music streaming feature which I have also used all spring to mind but this one might have something more.
The web is taking a fascinating direction with services like this. Web based streaming of your own tailored radio station has a particular interesting and sticky feel to it. Like browsing a library, bookstore or the net itself, a little bit of this little bit of that. Traditional radio is so moribund and hidebound at this point it is immured in a creative tomb. Streaming music appears to avoid most of DRM/copyright nightmare soup the industry has created for itself as the music never resides on your hardisk directly. However the actions of the music industry never cease to amaze in this regard.
And the very best thing? No fucking jabbering DJ’s.