Tuesday, May 9

I'm my own grandpa

Time for another New Music Tuesday! Asthmatic Kitty announced a while back that it would release the unused material from Sufjan Stevens's Illinois as The Avalanche: Outtakes and Extras from the Illinois Album! 4 of the tracks have since been leaked on the internet, and can be found various places (one is here).

I tracked them down after I saw unfamiliar track names on Sufjan's Last.fm page. Last.fm allows users to download a plugin that records music data from most media players. It catalogues everything and builds a music profile based on your listening habits. Neighbors are generated based on shared musical taste. This is a good system for finding new artists recommendations tailored to your past listening history. I started an account ages ago, didn't use it for a while, and had problems with data submission. Since I'd never liked my username (pseudonym27), I just decided to start over with a new account. It took about 400 tracks to generate neighbors, and I wondered if my old account would show up when they were created. Sure enough, pseudonym27 is HarrietVane's top neighbor. Too bad the only person with my musical taste is me.

So if you have an internet connection and listen to music on your computer, consider giving Last.fm a try.

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