My Music Revolution

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The way I am listening to music is changing nowadays. It is getting better actually, and as music is important for me I appreciate this development. So, in fact listening to music and most importantly finding new good music is not easy and does not happen by it's own. But at least - its getting easier now.

Napster Logo Some years ago it blew my mind to get the 10gb-music-library of some dude of another dude of mine. It was about the same time when the thing called Napster started. Still remember that thing? Ask your grandma if not. Back then I was finding new good music by browsing my mp3 library and just trying some bands with cool names. Additionally there was the radio and friends - and when I found a cool song, I downloaded it with Napster. By the way, with an ISDN internet connection, so a 4mb song took about one hour. But still, compared to the alternatives at that time, it was really exciting for a music lover! If you like a song that you just heard on the radio, you could instantly download it, and play it at the next occasion to your friends and gain some coolness points!

That is history but what do I like about the current developments? At first I love the iPod. Of course. And the thing I like most is the shuffle feature, which is my personal DJ. Somehow the shuffle algorithm is really good working for my purposes. It stays roughly in the same genre for a couple of songs, but time by time it surprises me with never heard stuff from my library. And as I listen to my iPod during travelling from A to B (or from B[remen] to B[remerhaven]), and that makes 1-4 hours per day, I spend a considerable amount of time with my beloved. So, moving to Bremen somehow refreshed the nearly broken relationship with my iPod :)

Radio Valderama The other thing which is quite cool is last.fm, although it lost some of the spirit when it was sold in May 2007 to CBS (one example: before the deal, it was possible to become a pro-user by donating any amount of money, now you have fixed rates.) So, how last.fm works? It gathers information about you music-taste on various ways and offers an online radio stream personalized for you (if you are a pro-user). The result is similar to the iPod Shuffle thing: you get new music which most probably fits to your taste. And it really works! You might have already recognized, that the valderama radio on the left is based on my last.fm profile. If not, try it - its cool, and as I trust last.fm, I promise to hear good music - or at least music that I like. (Althought I have no real personalized stream, as I am not a pro-user)

Lastly I want to mention some other cool things coming along with the "internet-music revolution":

  1. The Weblog of Textor - MC of Kinderzimmer Productions
  2. The new Texta-Video and also the old one
  3. The Hype Machine, a music blog aggregator
  4. And finally Attwenger on the Internet: Their first Audio Cassette (mp3) and Plottentölla mp3

For now that should be enough :)