Jim's Brain Online

A while back, I mentioned that I use Audioscrobbler, a music service that tracks your music use. Having recently undergone some changes, the services related to Audioscrobbler have moved over to last.fm.

One thing that's cool about it is that you can listen to a stream based on your music choices. This is convenient when you don't have your music collection immediately available. In my case this means that I can indulge my interests in jazz, alternative rock, '70's era progressive rock, blues, classical music and um... Japanese pop?

I don't mind Japanese pop music, but it isn't really an interest. One might reasonably ask how that would happen.

My best guess goes like this. Last.fm chooses what you listen to based on not just what you listen to, but also on what people with similar music interests listen to.

Though a genre with worldwide fans, Jazz is not outrageously popular in any particular place. Thus, when I look at the people in my musical neighborhood according to Last.fm, I find people from a lot of different countries: Poland, the Netherlands, the UK, and... Japan.

I haven't run into much Polish, Dutch or current British music yet, but I suppose I might. We'll see.

UPDATE: To my amusement, it turns out that there's a last.fm player that allows you to listen to your preferred music stream. Not surprisingly, the Mac version isn't done yet while the Windows port is. Strangely though, the FreeBSD port is available while the Mac port isn't. I've never seen that happen before. Even odder, the Mac port is available if you're willing to compile it yourself while the FreeBSD port is in instantly installable binary form. This will be quite convenient someday when I make my soundcard work with FreeBSD.