While working on a related project, I came across MusicBrainz (with an associated Mac
OS X application with an awesome "i*" name: iEatBrainz) and
AudioScrobbler /
Last.fm. Let me just say that Last.fm
-- for whatever reason it was named that -- is truly and aptly named:
this is the last radio you will ever need. If this technology hasn't
been incorporated into XM radio and it's radio-a-likes, it soon will
be. Otherwise someone else will do it, and they'll be out of business.
Let's say that you don't want to listen to your own music collection;
you want to spice things up and hear something new... but familiar.
Let's say you're in a particular mood and you really want to hear
something like the fantastic folk stylings of Shawn Colvin. Well, open
up the Last.fm player, type "Shawn Colvin" and you are now listening to
personalized radio with a random playlist built by Last.fm to provide
music that is similar or the same as Shawn Colvin.
Already, I have discovered two new female vocalists I'd never heard of
who I now adore, as well as an old-style punk band that I want to hear
more of.
This is the best thing that has ever happened to radio, and quite
frankly, I'm surprised it's taken so long to get this started. It's
going to be a hell of a ride from here on in, with this technology...
this is just the beginning of end-user-tailored broadcast media.
I've been using iEatBrainz and the MusicBrainz db to go through the
hundreds of old MP3s I have that I ripped before rippers connected to
CDDB/FreeDB... so many files with no ID3 tags. This is enabling me to
perform organization tasks in my music library that I have been putting
off for ages. It was just too painful. But now that iEatBrainz, I have
music superpowers.
All this has made the new project I am working on even more exciting :-)
Ben Harper - She's Only Happy in the Sun (Tuesday, 1:41pm MST)
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