So, I was messing about on the Internet this week trying to do a bazillion things at once, and I somehow stumbled upon the Radio link at the top of the Last.fm home page.

Ok, let me backup. Last.fm is an audio scrobbler, which is a funny phrase that means it tracks all the music you play on your computer. (Well, all the music you play in programs supported by the plugin, like iTunes, WinAmp, etc. I think it can also download your iPod stats.) I’ve used Last.fm to track my songs for years now, and you can see my stats here. (Please ignore the Bieber. I was just experimenting. I didn’t inhale.)

Ok, back to where I was. If you click on the “Your Library Radio” link in the sidebar of the Radio page a widget loads that starts playing songs that you’ve scrobbled. It’s like having your MP3 collection with you anywhere, which is handy for me because I keep all my music on an external hard drive that I don’t like to lug [...]

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I have listened to “Read My Mind” by The Killers 87 times. I have no excuse for this. It’s a good pop song, but 87 times? 87 times?! It’s a four-minutes long, which means I’ve spent almost 6 hours of my life listening to this song. The number is probably even higher because it doesn’t count all the times I listened to that track in my car.

The Last.fm plug-in I have installed in WinAmp and iTunes counts every MP3 I play on my computer and calculates these embarrassing statistics for me. It almost seems like an invasion of privacy putting my actual musical preferences out there, instead of just what I tell people I like. It’s like the difference between all the healthy stuff in your food diary and the Oreos you’re actually stuffing in your mouth and “forgetting” to write down. We tend to judge people by what they do and don’t like. Whenever I have friends or family over for the first time, they go right for my bookcase, trying to glean insight [...]

• Continue reading "Play it again..and again…and again"