I’ve used Last.fm for years now but I was really getting annoyed at it because the player didn’t integrate with my media controls. Such an easy thing to do and so very useful. How could this be left off? Well I’m happy to say they’ve finally gotten around to fixing it.

On a side note, I’d love to know more about their business model, they are clearly motivated by some things other than the B2C business that I’m a subscriber to and those interests seem to make more of an impression on them than other B2B businesses with a strong B2C brand.

Kabuki and I were supposed to go see the Civil Wars last night in concert but we were both so busy we ended up passing. If you don’t know the Civil Wars you should immediately go out and buy their Barton Hollow which is their only studio album. Sadly we will never get the chance to see them again as they broke up immediately following the show and in the middle of their tour. We were informed by a Facebook post to their fan page saying the the differences were irreconcilable. The message — at least most of it — is below. I guess they do say they hope to be able to create new music in 2013 but my guess is that’s just a nice thought … they’re almost surely through after this kind of abrupt shift. What a shame.

 

It’s been 18 years since Rage Against the Machine released “Killing in the name of”. I know it’s all just vitriolic teenage rage but damn its still good sometimes.

I’ve used Internet Radio services for years. Mainly on-again, off-again. The past few months, however, I’ve started really getting into last.fm. If you haven’t tried it out you should. It can be listened to on your computer, on your ipod/iphone (probably other mobile platforms too but I haven’t checked), as well as music streaming services like Squeezebox. It’s broad availability is a strength but without a high quality music stream it wouldn’t have much appeal. Fortunately that is another area where last.fm shines … it does this by monitoring your listening habits and using that behaviour to refine your music likes and dislikes. Beyond just monitoring your listening habits on last.fm it also takes an inventory of your MP3 library and can also monitor your listening on your ipod, itunes, and windows media player. In very little time you’ll find yourself listening to a combination of music you know and love as well as new music that has a reasonably good chance of fitting your musical tastes.

My music ID on last.fm is ksnyder68. Add me as a friend if you end up joining.

Just checked my digital music collection and realised I’m now at 193gb’s of music! Yowza. That’s a lot of music. Not sure what that translates into an actual number of songs but it must be 15,000 or so. My new backup solution better f’ing work. I’ll never be in the mood to redo this monstrosity.

Kinda digging the self-titled Three Days Grace album. It’s harder driving than most of the music I’m listening to these days but good for when you’re having an angry rant.

When you’re not fucking around with your audio listening equipment you have to consider Sennheiser as one of the top brands (admittedly they also play into the more dreary consumer space too). The HD 650 is at the top of the stack for open air dynamic headphones; often referred to as a “Reference Headphone”. Like the sound of that? Well I’m digging the sound quality of the 650’s. Very solid response through the whole audio spectrum especially now that I have my Xonar Essence STX driving the D-to-A conversion and amplification. If you’re going to have something strapped to your head you might as well have it be comfortable and delivery high-quality music to your ears. Right? Right. Get online and buy yourself one if you care for yourself.