Between Rhapsody and Last.fm, I've pretty much became a music lover again. Well, I've always loved music, but there was a long period of time when I wasn't buying a lot of new music, and I certainly wasn't trying to find anything new to listen to.
I've pretty much spent the last hour on Last.fm finding new things to listen to through Rhapsody. I've also been simultaneously reading feeds and I discovered a post on Lifehacker about Fifteen Last.fm Power Tweaks. That's where I discovered this fun little Last.fm Mainstream-O-Meter. This simple little app looks at your Last.fm tracks and calculates how mainstream you are. Apparently with my total tracks I'm 41.27% mainstream. With my weekly tracks I'm 36.15% mainstream. I actually expected it to be higher, but I'm pretty happy with that! I don't mind clicking around other people's profiles, or checking out my recommendation channel and looking at new stuff, but I do also have to thank Andy for his music recommendations, it makes it easier when the great music shows up in your inbox.
I'm happy that I can finally start using Last.fm again. If you've been following my music journeys here you probably know that I haven't been able to use Last.fm due to its incompatibility with Rhapsody. There is a scrobbler for Rhapsody out there but it never worked for me. Finally I discovered Yottamusic. At first I didn't get Yottamusic, it's really just another website that allows me to listen to music through Rhapsody, if you have a Rhapsody account then you can access the music catalog like you would Rhapsody. Rhapsody already has their own online player so technically Yottamusic is a bit redundant. The websites are supposed to sync, so if I listen to something in Yottamusic then it will show up in my Rhapsody listening history. Of course I was pleasantly surprised to discover that things I listen to through Yottamusic can be scrobbled to my Last.fm account. Actually the whole thing is kinda messed up because if Yottamusic can be a bridge to Last.fm, why can't Rhapsody just incorporate Last.fm support into its player already? Of course I seemed to have found a workaround to my whole Last.fm problem so I guess I shouldn't complain.
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Yay, you're scrobbling.
According to the mainstream-o-meter thingy I'm 20.19% mainstream. Mostly brought down by Melanie Fudge (a great independent artist I found in Second Life) counting as 0% mainstream, and Buffseeds, Idlewild, The Feeling and Ash also being low on the scale... although the last 3 are reasonably popular UK groups, so I wonder if there's an element of US-centricity to it. It's a pretty neat tool though, good find.
You're right, I'm sure there is some US-centricity to the meter.
I've noticed that you've introduced me to a lot of UK groups that I never would've picked up before. Although I think I'm becoming more adventurous with the US groups too. I like browsing through my recommendations and just picking a new band at random.
I still like listening to what would be considered mainstream on the radio though too.
I keep meaning to post an entry about how my music discovery habits have changed - from TV shows like Buffy to online MP3 browsing to Second Life to MySpace to Last.FM (with recommendations from all kinds of friends along the way!) ... I seem to have ended up reasonably eclectic.
It's amazing how much of a huge market TV shows and commercials are for music now. I know I've discovered several bands through commercials.
The one I'm thinking of recently is during the Winter Olympics over here they features Flipsyde's song, "Someday" and I just fell in love with it. I even actually bought the CD and it's one of my favorites! They came up low on the mainstream-o-meter, but if I hadn't heard that song on those commercials I wouldn't have even bought the CD.
I did read a few articles recently about the ringtone market, but I'm not sure if that's going to last. Sure I paid money for my ringtone, (Beastie Boys, "Whatcha Want"), but I only did it because I love the group AND I thought it was the perfect song for a ringtone. At the moment I think ringtones are a bit overpriced.