h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Wow. I've finally found time to check out Last FM. It's absolutely astonishing. I've already fallen in love with a Norwegian singer called Ane Brun, recommended to me by the site, and I'm having great fun being amazed that bands like Dumpy's Rusty Nuts and Lard really are on there.

I'm at http://www.last.fm/user/Skankyrich

A track I listened to a short time ago has a rather adult title, incidentally. I'd give it an hour if you don't like swearing...

Jesus. There's a h2g2 group there!

Sadly I spend less time on there other than I would if My monitors and soundcard werne't useually tied up with other musical happenings I'll try to remember to open that* Email I got earlier... later on and add you to the 'friends' feature on there then I can snoop in at waht your listening to and you can have a good laugh at some of my more dubious musical 'tastes' and maybe a and hopefully at some of my obscurer listenings (I tried unsucessfully to find room in my bedroom to hook up an old PC to the HiFi just to stream last.fm, but sadly the soundcard in that old PC is just too pants for words )

I suppose that with heavy use you'd eventually be able to see who you listen to most. At the moment, it looks like I have an unhealthy obsession with young Scandinavian women.

Welcome to where it is at!!!

BTW Incantation is:

http://www.discogs.com/release/807318

You didn't see me!



MMF

Denied by the Nanny Filter.

Beg pardon?

I think that means he's denied access at work to that website.

Oh, cock

I reckon you should be expecting an email from h2g2, forthwith and without prejudice

Last FM actually throws the future of everything into doubt. My first thought was 'the CD is dead' - why would I ever need one again?

Well, because the Internet isn't fully portable yet - not at a price the masses can afford, anyway. But how long will it be before you can plug your Last FM account into your car stereo and access all the tunes you love as you drive along? You can do that at the moment, although only through an awkward connection from your mobile to a headphone socket or via a substantial charge.

The question is - would you pay £10 a month for unlimited access to every song ever recorded if you could access it anywhere? You have a New Year's party and need Auld Lang Syne. You hit congestion and need to hear the Stereophonics' 'Traffic'. You have a bad morning at work and need a Holiday in Cambodia. Whatever. A couple of clicks and you have it. And if the record companies were clever enough, it would all get filtered to them by number of plays of each song. And if the musicians were clever enough, they'd skip the record companies, promote their own music and keep all the money themselves.

I'd pay for a device that would link to Last FM (or wherever) and that I could plug into my car stereo or whatever and hear the songs in my library. I think that's the future.

But seriously, have only Magwitch, 2legs and MMF got a Last FM account?

Roymondo... err socket is on there.... DragonQueen is too, and... there must be others

I don't think we're far off what your describing; Very soon I'll have a nifty ickle netbook and when I get things sorted (and if I can afford it), I'll get a 3G wireless card for it; internet anywhere, and betcha when I'm on the train I'll be using it to stream lastfm, and of course if you wanted it'd be a doddle to hook it into a car HiFi, my bedroom HiFi etc
I'm almost included to agree, as regards such an idea effectively spelling the ends of CDs, if it wasn't for the sizible but small amount of real* HiFi audiophiles, for whom the lack of media on SACD is annoying and for whom vinyl is still one of the best formats (and sadly I probably just about fall into this group )
But that is a minority I recon... and sometimes vinyl and a £2K HiFi just isn't practible so on the train its an MP3 player.... in teh car its a little car hifi ... So eventually yeh... I think media streaming on mobile phones is somthign not taking off as much as the companys would like; they're trying to charge rediculus sums for you to 'buy' per track.... whilst people can just copy music over to the phone for free from their PC that ain't going to work.... But put a virtually complete back catalogue of everythign ever recorded via something such as Last fm as a feature on the phone... for a realistic* price....

If you're at a New Year's party and you need Auld Lang Syne, I think the deal is that you sing it

I'm not a fan of the 'On demand' world. I like listening to the radio and discovering what someone has chosen for me to listen to. Similarly with television, if I had it. And now that I find myself in possession of a terabyte (a word which the Firefox spellchecker doesn't recognise... ) of television programmes, I still like to watch I Didn't Know You Cared on a Tuesday night, The Good Life on a Friday night and Ever Decreasing Circles on a Sunday night. It just seems right that way.

Oh, and Horizon on a Monday night and Newsnight at 10.30pm.

Exactly.... Actually having just rediscovered my vinyl collection for the ... erre second or third time thanks to the new HiFi gear I got, I've noticed the amoutnof vinyl still availible, true its about twice the price of the bluddy CDs and its higher quality vinyl pressings for a niche market I guess....
But as with all this stuff... it has to be what suits what your doing.... hell we still listen to Dutch ... err.... can't remember waht its called radio satation when I'm back at my Dads as they pick it up on FM and its an awful signal really but its just a station that plays a good mix of rock music

That's it, fairly exactly. I haven't spent more than £30 on music this year. I've lost track of who's making music I like over the last three or four years, so I haven't bothered to keep tabs. There's a lot of people I've spoken to who would pay £10 a month rather than £30 a year - and these are people who download torrents and generally get everything for free anyway.

Last FM is a revelation. There are dozens of people out there making music I love; most of them in Sweden or Cuba, apparently, all of them recommended to me by the site, and all people who deserve my money. So if I were to pay £10 a month to Last FM and listened to 1000 songs in the month, everyone would get 1p a listen. I'm listening to The Cardigans now, not a major band by any means - they'd have earned £130,000 on this pay scale. Dylan would be worth four million.

I think it's the future, and there's an article in AWW that seems remarkably prescient all of a sudden. I'll have to dig it out

Sorry, Gosho, I spent ages writing that reply

You say:

'I'm not a fan of the 'On demand' world. I like listening to the radio and discovering what someone has chosen for me to listen to.'

But Last works on a global wiki. Put simply, if enough people say that fans of band X will also like band Y, then people who play a lot of band X will find that Last eventually suggests that band Y might be worth a listen. It's not 'someone' choosing what you might want to listen to - it's the world. And if you have a clever and eclectic taste in music the site's recommendations will reflect that.

It's a personal John Peel, and I know you'll want the exchange rate to drop so you can come and punch me for that. But use it enough and it becomes true. Ever heard of Ane Brun? Nah, me neither. But Last looked at my music and recommended her. My most listened to artist on the site now? Ane Brun. It works. It's a bit scary, but it works.