Although this sounds like a monumental number, I assure you that it is not! Alas last.fm is only picking up stats from 9 Feb 2008, and I often listen to music on devices that do not have connection with last.fm, especially on my mobile and at work.
Recently, I was given an iPod and acquired Spotify, so my stats that were coming from my home PC have taken a much needed boost so that I am now in five-figure play numbers like everyone else that I know heh!
For anyone unsure of what last.fm actually is, it is a profile based social networking service which aims to keep a log of all the music that you listen to (on compatible devices/their website) and produces lots and lots of glorious stats and recommendations based on what you’ve been listening to. It’s partly like iTunes Genius, but last.fm got there with Audioscrobbler about 7 years earlier!
10,000th song was ‘Leave Right Now’, by Will Young – a very fine song indeed!
UPDATE: Issue resolved, last.fm’s scrobbler was to blame – TSK!
Taking the unusual step of using my blog to ask for help on the below issue (as I am completely bewildered by the intricacies of iTunes at the moment).
Here’s hoping that something comes of it!
CLICK ME TO ENLARGE SCREEN SHOT
Thanks folks!! x
UPDATE: Issue resolved, last.fm’s scrobbler was to blame – TSK!
Recently, I’ve started using the last.fm player a lot more frequently instead of just using the service for scrobbling, and I have to say, the new radio / radio page is a HUGE improvement!
I like the integrated stats, slideshow, interface, links to events and download info and most noticably, the speed with which the page is able load all this up in – it really is no different to listening to a CD. A vast improvement on the last.fm player of days gone by.
I was listening to Last.fm’s music player yesterday for artists who were similar to the awesome Scissor Sisters (who REALLY need to release some new material soon! NB – new album in the works, though the little-known drummer, Paddy, left late 2008 and before SS premiered new demo material) and I came across a Swedish group called ‘The Ark’.
Some of their music is a little weird/kitsch in my opinion, however I really do like what I’ve heard of it so far.
Unfortunately, obtaining the CDs in this country seem to be very niche and therefore very expensive (e.g. £30 on Play Trade!) , however Last.fm do carry the full track for many of their songs, so it is easy to stream/listen online instead.
Here’s what Last.fm / Wikipedia has to say about the group:
The Ark is a glam rock band from Sweden. The band was formed in 1991 by Ola Salo, Jepson, and Lasse “Leari” Ljungberg. Martin Axén joined the band in 1997, and Sylvester Schlegel in ‘99. Jens Andersson was the last one to officially join, in October 2006. Jens is a familiar face from many The Ark gigs, as he has played the keyboard with the band for several years. Their lyrics are mostly written by singer Ola Salo, and many of them are controversial, especially the earlier ones. For example, the 2002 single ‘Father Of A Son’ is about homosexuals’ right to have children. The band tour Scandinavia, Germany and Italy regularly and were one of the support acts to The Darkness on their 2006 UK tour. The Ark participated in, and won, the Swedish Melodifestivalen 2007 with the song “The Worrying Kind”, written by Ola Salo. The song was also Sweden’s Eurovision 2007 entry and is included on their fourth album, Prayer For The Weekend.
Members:
* Ola Salo (lead singer)
* Mikael Jepson (guitar)
* Martin Axén (guitar)
* Lasse Ljungberg (bass)
* Sylvester Schlegel (drums)
* Jens Andersson (keyboard)
So far they have released four studio albums and an EP:
* Racing with the Rabbits – 1996
* We Are The Ark – 2000
* In Lust We Trust – 2002
* State of the Ark – 2004
* Prayer For The Weekend – 2007
Eurovision Song Contest 2007 Final – Helsinki
Entry for Sweden
Performer: The Ark
Song title: The Worrying Kind
Sang in Position: 12
Final Position: 18
Total Points: 51
Below are a few of the songs that I came across and liked the sound of…
‘One Of Us Is Gonna Die Young’ [cheerful title there!!]
I’ve just checked my Last.fm stats and have discovered that in the seven days since purchasing this soundtrack, it’s already my 3rd most played artist of the last 12 months to date, and my 10th most popular artist of all times (there’s scope for it getting into the Top 5 by the end of the weekend!)… and all in 7 days – madness!
You can also listen to the soundtrack by visiting the Spring Awakening last.fm page and clicking on the little play button next to the track you want to listen to.
Spring Awakening are also on Facebook, and Twitter (in addition to MySpace, YouTube and Bebo I believe).
Remarkable show and score, if you’ve not yet seen it, GET A WIGGLE ON AND GO!
Just came across a Greasemonkey script for Last.Fm which allows you to work out your Landmark scrobbled tracks.
I must say, the whole Greasemonkey thing is relatively new to me – I’ve known about it and what it does etc for quite a while, however I’d not had chance to use it really! Since switching over to Mozilla’s Firefox as my main internet browser the other year (and considering moving over to Flock this year), I’ve been meaning to get more involved in it really, though I’ll have to be content with using other people’s published scripts for the time being as I am useless at writing in JavaScript myself – though I may give Platypus a try!
Greasemonkey’s Wiki gives a little more information on how Greasemonkey works and how to locate/install published scripts – usually they’re posted on http://userscripts.org -however you really should check the coding of any script before you download/install it!
Greasemonkey’s support website, Greasespot, also has plenty of information and support along with the all important link to the Greasemonkey add-in that you need to be able to use it on your open-source browser.
It’s also worth noting that on UserScripts there is an ‘Install’ button on the ‘About’ page for the script you’re looking at, which saves you from having to save the script down as a .user.jss file and re-load it into the Script Manager (which probably won’t allow the script to work properly either!).
Back to Landmark Tracks (follow the link for the script) – this script is basically a look-up table/what I’d term a ‘return script’ that can show you the artist and song that appears at any given number in your scrobbled song database.
It’s probably easier if I show you my landmark tracks below to give you a better idea of what I mean:
Play #1 was Back Again by Boy Kill Boy on 9 Feb 12:54am
Play #50 was Vogue by Madonna on 9 Feb 7:50pm
Play #100 was What a Girl Wants by Christina Aguilera on 10 Feb 6:52pm
Play #500 was Wow by Kylie Minogue on 28 Feb 11:56pm
Play #1000 was Erika – I Dont Know by Erika on 23 Mar 9:34pm
Play #1500 was Somebody’s Eyes by Footloose – Soundtrack on 11 May 2:13pm
Play #2000 was Time by Therese on 25 Jun 11:29pm
Play #2500 was Alright by Red Carpet on 3 Aug 11:55am
Play #3000 was Matchstick Men & Matchstick Cats and Dogs by Houghton Weavers on 20 Sep 1:44pm
Play #3434 was I’m Like A Bird by Nelly Furtado on 19 Dec 12:09am
Basically, through the Greasemonkey menu (on Firefox this is accessed via: Tools ->Greasemonkey->User Script Commands) I just gave the script a starting point of track zero and let it work it all out from there. I specified the play numbers that I was interested in and the script returned the result to me as BBCode so that I could insert them into my Last.Fm page. By using BBCode, I could keep the nifty Last.Fm links to the artist/song pages as appropriate, however I could easily have just taken the text as it was and posted the text without any linking etc – as I have done above. My Last.Fm page shows the links with the BBCode/linking activated where available.
I’ll apologise right now for the output of my own Landmark Tracks – I wish that I’d listened to some more memorable tracks now!! The stats certainly seem to show some of my more eccentric musical tastes – oops!
In celebration of my belated installation of Greasemonkey and all of the HTML page customisation that I am now going to be able to do, I thought I’d post a clip of perhaps the most eccentric of my Landmarks, which would probably be play #3000 – The Houghton Weavers with Matchstick Men & Matchstick Cats and Dogs (in fairness, they were a band I saw when I was little and lived in a small village, AND L.S. Lowry is my absolute favourite artist!!).
I spent several days creating and tweaking a Christmas-y/Party music playlist the other week and had my chance to deploy it last night. Just thought that I’d share it as I think that it really shows my music taste as it is at the moment!
The stats are courtesy of my last.fm plug-in which faithfully recorded all of the details and kept track (no pun intended!) of what the media player had played for me. Not all tracks I’d selected managed to get played and recorded via last.fm unfortunately as I ran out of time, however the bulk of them are listed below, some even seem to appear twice – stupid Windows Media Centre!
Another thing that I noticed whilst on my last.fm page was that P!nk and Kylie are pretty much tied for the number one spot as my most played artist. It’s been a while since I last checked my last.fm stats, so it was quite surprising to see that the lead of these two firm favourites had increased by so much. I’ll feel guilty now though as if I play Kylie twice and miss off P!nk, Kylie will be top, but if I play P!nk but ignore Kylie, she may not reach number one either! WHAT A DILHEMA! Therefore, I think I now have a perfect excuse to listen to both in equal and frequent measure!! hehe
Play listing:
Nelly Furtado – I’m Like A Bird
The Puppini Sisters – Mr. Sandman
Amy Winehouse – Tears Dry on Their Own
Katy Perry – I Kissed a Girl
John and Yoko – Happy Xmas
Duffy – Rain on Your Parade
Kylie Minogue – In My Arms
Bing Crosby – White Christmas
Mud – Lonely This Christmas
Rihanna – Disturbia
Sam Sparrow – Sam Sparrow – Black & Gold
M People – Moving On Up
Take That – Could It Be Magic
The Puppini Sisters – Crazy in Love
Slade – Merry Xmas Everybody
Britney Spears – Womanizer
Gwen Stefani – Early Winter
Cyndi Lauper – Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
Jamelia – Beware of the Dog
Miley Cyrus – 7 Things
Queen – Dont Stop Me Now
Michael Ball – Driving Home for Christmas
James Blunt – 1973
Jennifer Hudson – Spotlight
Adele – Chasing Pavements
Dean Martin – Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow
Beyoncé – If I Were a Boy
Kings of Leon – Sex on Fire
Billie Piper – Last Christmas
Ronan Keating feat. Maire Brennan – Fairytale Of New York
Christina Aguilera – Keeps Getting Better
Céline Dion – I Drove All Night
Jona Lewie – Stop the Cavalry
Girls Aloud – The Promise
Alphabeat – Fascination
The Gossip – Standing In The Way Of Control
Band Aid – Do They Know It’s Christmas
The Beach Boys – Little Saint Nick
Fall Out Boy – What’s This
Mark Brown ft Sarah Cracknell – The Journey Continues
Robyn – Be Mine
Scissor Sisters – I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’
Cher – Believe (DJ motiv8 xenomania mix)
The Puppini Sisters – I will survive
Cliff Richard – Mistletoe And Wine
Nelly Furtado – Maneater
Pink – Who Knew?
Backstreet Boys – Larger Than Life
Elton John – Step Into Christmas
Justin Timberlake – Like I Love You
Jerry Springer the Opera – I Just Wanna Fucking Dance (Wayne G Heaven mix)
KT Tunstall – Suddenly I See
Charlotte Church – Call My Name
Girls Aloud – Sound of the Underground
Busted – Year 3000
The Feeling – I Thought It Was Over
Coldplay – Viva la Vida
Alicia Keys – No One
Paul McCartney – Wonderful Christmas TIme
Aled Jones – Walking in the Air
Katy Perry – Hot n Cold
Kate Nash – Foundations
Rachel Stevens – Sweet Dreams My LA Ex
Amy Macdonald – This Is the Life
Basshunter ft DJ Mental Theo’s Bazzheadz – Now Your Gone
Leona Lewis – Bleeding Love (Radio Edit)
Kylie Minogue – Wow
Justin Timberlake – Cry Me a River
Tom Jones with Cerys From Catatonia – Baby, It’s Cold Outside
Pink – Leave Me Alone (I’m Lonely)
Leona Lewis – Forgive Me
Rachel Stevens – Some Girls
Girls Aloud – The Show
Rihanna – Don’t stop the music
Leona Lewis – Better in Time
Same Difference – We R One
Britney Spears – Piece of Me
Kylie Minogue – Your Disco Needs You
Girls Aloud – Call the Shots
Macy Gray – I Try
Alesha Dixon – The Boy Does Nothing
Britney Spears – Toxic
Peter Bjorn and John – Young Folks (Feat. Victoria Be
Chris de Burgh – A Spaceman Came Travelling
Take That – Patience
Feist – 1234
Franz Ferdinand – Matinee
Kylie Minogue – Santa Baby
Girls Aloud – Sound of the Underground
Gnarles Barkley – Smiley Faces
Backstreet Boys – Larger Than Life
M People – Moving On Up
Kings of Leon – Sex on Fire
Ronan Keating feat. Maire Brennan – Fairytale Of New York
Jona Lewie – Stop the Cavalry
Slade – Merry Xmas Everybody
Franz Ferdinand – Matinee
Girls Aloud – The Promise
Leona Lewis – Forgive Me
The Beach Boys – Little Saint Nick
Scissor Sisters – I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’
The Puppini Sisters – I will survive
Amy Winehouse – Tears Dry on Their Own
Macy Gray – I Try
Christina Aguilera – Keeps Getting Better
The Puppini Sisters – Crazy in Love
Cyndi Lauper – Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
Brenda Lee – Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
Mud – Lonely This Christmas
Madonna – Hung Up
Cliff Richard – Mistletoe And Wine
Will Young – Your Game
Coldplay – Viva la Vida
Girls Aloud – The Show
Britney Spears – Toxic
Eagle-Eye Cherry – Save Tonight
The Saturdays – Up
Nelly Furtado – im like a bird
Rihanna – dont stop the music
Take That – The Greatest Day
Beyoncé – If I Were a Boy
Billie Piper – Last Christmas
Dean Martin – Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow
Backstreet Boys – Larger Than Life
Rachel Stevens – Sweet Dreams My LA Ex
Rihanna – dont stop the music
Alphabeat – Fascination
Aled Jones – Walking in the Air
Céline Dion – I Drove All Night
Busted – Year 3000
Charlotte Church – Call My Name
Just checked my Last.Fm page for the first time this week and I noticed that my charts now show Kylie as my most played artist – woo!
Since I started the profile in February ‘08, Pink! has always dominated my ‘all-time’ favourite artist spot and been a clear leader, however Kylie has shot up from 6th place to 1st this week (probably due, in the main, to me having been to see her concert this week – post to follow!) – hurrah!
Here’s a clip of my favourite Kylie song (Your Disco Needs You) to celebrate!
Last.Fm have recently redesigned their website, with their charts now being in real time, and the option to limit out by week. I really suggest giving it a whirl if you’ve not already done so! D
Position in the Top 20 on the left; Artist in the middle; Total overall plays on the right.
1 Kylie Minogue 102
2 Pink 91
3 Original Broadway Cast 80
4 Jonathan Larson 68
5 Mika 62
6 Elton John 61
7 Michael Ball 57
8 Hairspray 46
9 Madonna 45
10 [unknown] 44
10 Céline Dion 44
12 Metallica 40
13 Robbie Williams 38
14 Westlife 37
15 Shania Twain 35
15 Take That 35
17 Linkin Park 34
17 Eurovision 2008 34
17 Christina Aguilera 34
20 Bon Jovi 33
P
