Last.fm events list

[dougo]

A few years ago I started using Audioscrobbler, a plugin that keeps track of every audio file I play and uploads the information to a central database. I guess some would consider that to be a Big-Brother-esque invasion of privacy, but it's voluntary (and you can delete particular tracks you don't want it to know about) so it's no big deal. It's nice to keep track of my listening trends, although it's annoying that since they transformed into Last.fm there's no apparent way to download your full history, only the charts that they choose to compile, which give a somewhat skewed view of my music tastes. For example, their artists chart ranks artists by total number of track plays, which doesn't take into account track lengths: it thinks I've listened to the Futureheads and Kinski about the same amount, but the average track length of the latter is probably twice the former. And the albums chart is practically useless: it simply adds together all the track counts for each track on the album, so not surprisingly an album with 22 tracks is at the top of my list. (I'm also noticing that Black Rebel Motorcycle Club doesn't even show up on my list, even though they're all over my tracks chart. Not sure what happened there.)

Anyway, up to now all this record-keeping was purely for my own curiosity, but now they've added a new feature that's actually really useful: Recommended Events (that link only works if you're logged in). That's a display of upcoming local concerts featuring artists that it knows you like, thinks you might like, or that your friends have said they're attending (here's my list, though I'm being kind of conservative about adding to it). I used to check the WMBR concert report page pretty regularly to find out about shows, but lately I've fallen out of the habit. But this list is more narrowly targeted to shows I'd like, so I'm more likely to check it, and consequently more likely to actually go to shows.

Comments

[pfranzosa.livejournal.com]

I noticed the calendar feature too...pretty nice. If you are an iTunes user you can get a nice plugin, iConcertCal, that goes through your iTunes database and then scours a number of online databases of shows (Jambase, The List and Tour Filter) to generate a nice calendar of shows based on bands that you have in your collecion. I find it cool when a show pops up for a band I didn't even remember I owned any music from!