I’ve become a “scrobbling” addict lately. I’m especially concerned with my last.fm profile accurately demonstrating my overall musical tastes, so I’ll tailor my day-to-day listening to try and balance out any temporary flights of fancy I might have (Like the Monkees binge I’m on right now, thanks to Merlin.).
Nothing feeds into this obsession more than this Mainstream-o-meter, which compares your top 30 artists with everyone else. My results are skewed due to a couple audiobooks and a few artists that really shouldn’t be ranked as high on my list as they actually are currently.
Interesting observations that illustrate an obvious “last.fm users vs. the rest of the real world” bias:
- Elliot Smith and Sufjan Stevens are more “mainstream” than The Beach Boys.
- The Beatles and Radiohead are both above 100%, they are so mainstream.
- Tom Waits, Van Morrison, Elvis Costello and Tori Amos all seem surprisingly low.
(via Brandon’s del.icio.us)
Wow, I’m way less mainstream than I expected (30%). However, all of my fave bands ARE apparently incredibly mainstream.
However, I think last.fm users would tend toward the more technical crowd (since it’s kind of a pain to get set up, plus its a social site, plus you have to care enough about id3 tags for it to work correctly), so I’m not surprised that Nine Inch Nails and Tool score so high, as they are popular with tech types.
I’d be interested to see how mainstreamy something like Britney Spears is, since I imagine she would be underrepresented with a tech crowd. However, to find out, I would need to download Britney Spears and listen to her enough to make an impact on my last.fm :/
I am only 16.60% mainstream. You = sellout.
Rod: Or just find a user with Britney in their top 30.
Matt: Yeah, you’re all hardcore & shit.
So yeah…
Brit: 35%, Madonna: 59% and Kylie Minogue doesn’t even rate.
I would definitely say the last.fm crowd is not exactly “mainstream”…
How hardcore I am: adding Hanson’s “Mmm Bop” to my 5 star playlist. I love the way those girls sing!
My mainstreamness is shrinking: 17.21%