Enjoy the Silence

A number of years ago (2001 I think) I signed up to what was then called audioscrrobler (now the corporation known as last.fm). The theory was simple, you install a plugin on your favorite mp3 player and for every track you play, the plugin will send the details back to the central server. Then a number of statistics are complied, you can compare your taste to other users but more importantly, you can see what you've been listening to over the months, see the top ten artists, albums, genres etcetera.

Here's the problem, after a few weeks I got bored of and stopped using it but I neglected to remove the plugin. A few months after that a friend suggested I use this service as it's so great! I told him I've already signed up and showed off my profile, not realising that it had been running in the backgroud all this time and I have to say I was in for a bit of a shocker.

Number one by far was Nina Simone, no surprise there, I have a number of her albums and love her music. Number two one the other hand, made me step back a bit, it was MeatLoaf. After, rather embarrassingly admitting to liking Joss Stone, I'm proud to say that MeatLoaf is great! Number three was a bit weird, Evanescence, a Christian (I think) rock band and their first album blew me away, it got air time at least once a day back then.

Looking at the list, I see Metallica in between Aretha Franklin and Ella Fitzgerald. I see Moby, REM and Shakira (in that order). Eric Clapton, Dead can Dance, Michael Jackson even Joy Division got a look in. My friend looked at me shaking his head. I didn't, until then, know the full extent of the randomness of my taste in music (I call it eclectic by the way). People need to know that there is more out there then just pop so why not, every now and then, pick up something that you've never heard before, you might just like it.