The social music revolution

Ahh wednesday and back at work, punching repetitive data into an ancient database. Warning: If you ever need to punch huge amounts of repetitive data into an ancient database, do NOT listen to Sunn o)))! You will go crazy, especially if you haven't had enough sleep (get away from me wicked goblins!!).
Hrm, anyway...today I was gonna tell you about the magic that is last.fm. Attentive readers (or more like readers who's head or eyes turn left), have noticed that I have a chart on my sidebar stating the top 10 bands I've been listening to the previous week. Now I don't punch those numbers in myself (I get enough of that at work), the nifty website last.fm and their audioscrobler tool does that for me. A sort of voluntary spyware in my iTunes player. Based on the data it collects, it can generate all sorts of fancy charts and stuff, for example my most played song is Asobi Seksu: New Years (a f*cking brilliant track), and my most played artist is Pixies. Now besides reconfirming yourself in your excellent taste, you can of course also see how your friends tastes compare against yours (in other words, how superior your taste is). It also has a streaming radio function, that will play you tracks it thinks you like, based on the music you play.
Now this is all well and good, but just recently it added a new function called 'events', which is very handy indeed. You put in your hometown, and then it automatically recommends future concerts, again based on the music you submit, and it does this extremely well. I'm going to see Sparklehorse and Yo La Tengo this weekend, both of which it recommended, plus a lot of concerts I didn't even know about (NIN in april yay). It also shows which concerts your friends are going to, so that you can beg to tag along or condemn them for wasting their money, and you can add shows that isn't listed (but it seems to get most of them), there is even a iCal (calender for Mac) feed, that automatically puts the concerts I'm going to in my calendar. It's brilliant and very web 2.0'ish.

Of course it's all free and very easy to use. I suggest you give it a try if your interested in music, and you hear on your computer (iPod scrobbling is a bit of a pain, but doable). You can get it here. Then add me as a friend - my nick is Sepruda.

Back to work *sigh*.