walkah: music

I happen to think last.fm is one of the best social sites on the 'net. I love the way it stays out of the way - requires very little interaction from me and it gives me recommendations in return: artists, albums and even concerts.

Recently, my favourite "tool" for last.fm, iScrobbler,released version 2.0. There are lots of new features, but the coolest I have to say is:

Full Radio support (played through iTunes).

What that means is you can use last.fm radio from iTunes (so, usual iTunes behaviour still applies). As someone who is frequently away from his entire music collection... I love that.

i love live music. i've made sort of a commitment to myself to see a lot more of it. but, here's the thing: i want the internet to tell me when and where the concerts i want to see are.

i think i'm not alone... there are a bunch of "getting close" options. first, is this mashup of two of my favourite sites/services, upcoming and last.fm. this is a good start (apart from the "rough" interface), last.fm knows a whole lot about my listening habits. however, the results are less than satisfactory since upcoming only contains the concerts that people have posted - and, while it's great for tech conferences, upcoming just hasn't attracted bands, labels, etc.

next, i stumbled upon ontour. this is nice - there is actually a dashboard widget that scans your itunes library and matches against upcoming concerts in its impressive (albeit apparently closed / proprietary) list of concert information. my beef here? my music collection isn't actually in my local itunes library. my music collection doesn't fit on my powerbook. truth is, last.fm knows best what i'm listening to these days.

the most complete concert listings still seem to be in local weekly magazines. problem is - at least here in toronto, the two main weeklies: now and eye don't actually export or syndicate their concert listings in a usable format (for a last.fm mashup). hell, i can't even get a feed of new concert announcements. consider that a call out.

apparently, last.fm has had some of the same ideas - their latest beta includes events! the cool thing here is last.fm is pretty good with recommendations - they might actually be able to tell me something *new* to see. time will tell how complete the listings will end up being. i am hopeful, though, since last.fm does actively recruit music labels.

am i missing something? where else are people watching online for local concert listings?

it's been quite a while since I blogged anything that wasn't tech-related. i haven't been good about blogging period. so, consider this an attempt to right some wrongs.

i've realized i have a new singer/songwriter obsession. his name is mason jennings. if you're someone that's spoken to me in the last few weeks, chances are good i've mentioned him, or told you to check out a song, or perhaps quoted a verse or two. the kids and i even have sing-alongs on the couple songs i've learned to play.

i find it interesting that in my collection of some 15,000 mp3s that certain artists are able to bubble to the top like this. while he's not quite mike doughty in terms of play count, my last.fm charts will attest to the fact that he's been in heavy rotation.

much to my delight - i discovered that he's actually playing toronto in september - and on a tuesday night (I can actually go!). so, i'm gonna check it out - who's coming?

i finally got to satiate the obsession for an evening. that's right, mike doughty was in town last night. i was there, i got the t-shirt - it's a nice t-shirt too.

i must say, the concert rocked. i really like his solo guitar sound - and the stage banter. it's *all* about the stage banter. the rivoli turned out to be a great venue too - very cozy - and i was right in the front row (like a good fan boy should be).

the show was quite a bit different from when he was here last year (at lee's palace), most notably with the addition of "handsome dan chen" (his toronto-native keyboard player). but he also didn't do a lot of the "usual" stuff - no firetruck, no janine, no loud and obnoxious sing-along. that said, there were plenty of highlights - from opening with "bustin' up a starbux" to "st. louise is listening" in the encore - and all the "victory" in between.

i had a blast. check the pics on flickr ... i also have almost 30 seconds of video (just shot with my canon sd200) of the pre-chorus from bustin' up a starbux that i'll try and get online at somepoint. (perhaps on ourmedia?).

to sum it up: small rock (or medium rock) ... well.... rocks :)

UPDATE: mike just posted his recap of the toronto show on his blog ... anyone recognize the guy in the front left corner of the 2nd picture? ;)

tags: toronto, concert, music, doughty

as was made public yesterday on both sites, the netjuke and jinzora projects have decided to merge - to create what I think will be the ultimate in web-based jukebox / music management software.

those of you playing along at home know that I've been involved in the netjuke project for a while now - and there hasn't been much by way of news to report. like several free software projects, we've suffered from lack of resources. basically, the team has consisted of three of us - two of us are always swamped with work, and the other is a full time student. this means, that while we have great ideas and vision of what something like netjuke2 could be - we've spent a long time not really getting as far as we'd like.

in comes jinzora, a project that is making headway much more rapidly. while consisting principally of only two people - they each have far more time to devote to the project - and it shows.

so, I had a brief skype call with Ross Carlson (lead from the jinzora prjoect) yesterday for introductions, etc. and i must say i'm pretty psyched. this should give me a chance to (in my copious spare time) get some of my ideas actually implemented and unleashed on the world. stay tuned :)

... and proud of it.

it's recently come to my attention that i have a bit of an addiction. i'm seriously hooked on the tunes, writings, ramblings, etc of mike doughty. if you don't know - he's the dude that used to front soul coughing. not since my early obsession with rush have i done things like this, but lately i've:

• read every single post on his blog
• saw him at lee's palace in toronto - bought an autographed copy of rockitty-roll (his solo EP).
• pre-ordered a copy of his re-release of "Skittish/Rockity Roll" - with a tshirt
• pre-ordered of his first "official" solo album haughty melodic
• ordered tickets to see him play the rivoli in Toronto in May.
• not to mention, i'm in the top 20 for "mike doughty fans" over at audioscrobbler (he's my #2 on my top artists list).

yep. it scares me too. but the worst part, is when i was in paris recently, my brother and i walked by a starbux that had it's front window smashed and the *first* thing i thought was "bustin' up a starbux". but, wait... it gets worse. i actually took this picture and emailed him!! worse, though... i never got a response :( though, i can't blame him. i wouldn't respond to me either.

i'm not totally sure what's gotten into me. perhaps it's too much time alone in the basement. but mike - if you're reading (and I'm *sure* you are) - I'll see you in May and keep on rockin'.

do you scrobble? i do. i'm completely addicted. this is "social networking" in a way that i can really appreciate. for those of you that don't know... :

Audioscrobbler builds a profile of your musical taste using a plugin for your media player (Winamp, iTunes, XMMS etc..). Plugins send the name of every song you play to the Audioscrobbler server, which updates your musical profile with the new song. Every person with a plugin has their own page on this site which shows their listening statistics. The system automatically matches you to people with a similar music taste, and generates personalised recommendations.

the best part of audioscrobbler, is that it is incredibly low impact. all you have to do (presuming you've installed one of the "plugins") is listen to music as you normally would. there's no need to constantly login to check for new messages, or otherwise update information - the site silently tracks your habits, and does a lot of the work. on it's own. just by tracking your listening habits, audioscrobbler does a good job of picking your "musical neighbors" and making musical "recommendations". it's interest-based networking without all the hassle.

plus, i love checking to see my "top artists" and "top songs" to see if they line up with what i know my favourites to be. (so far - pretty good). there's also the sister site last.fm where you can get personalized online radio based on your listening preferences.

to top it all off, there's a highly active, and accessible development community. i poked my head in their IRC channel, and found them to be helpful and responsive.

i must say, i'm addicted. checkout my profile. and if you don't already, start scrobbling!

consider me officially putting this on my christmas wishlist:

i just noticed over at mike doughty's blog, that mike has officially signed with ATO records. in the short term, it means that he's re-releasing skittish as part of a two disc set that will include rockity roll and some songs of evenhand and other goodies. that's awesome news, 'cause i had to download skittish, 'cause i waited too long (until after he'd sold all his copies) to buy myself a copy. though, i bought rockity roll from the man himself (money that went straight to his gas tank, i presume).

btw, anyone else here think that mike should run a drupal-based community? mike: have your people call my people.

so, i realize it's a couple days late... but on sunday chad and i took in the rush's 30th anniversary tour show at the molson amphitheatre. two words: it rocked. watching neil peart live always makes me regret that my drums are in storage. anyway, we had so damned much fun, we bought t-shirts. it's been over 10 years since i bought a concert t-shirt, it was that good. not bad for a bunch of old dudes.

if you like rush, and their coming to your town - check it out.

it looks like they might be giants (of all people) have finally caught on to what (i think) is a positive step toward the future of music distribution. they've opened they're own music store. that's right. owned and operated by the artists. they're selling DRM-free mp3's of a couple albums online - directly.

blake and i have discussed a couple times, that this would be an awesome outlet for netjuke. i hope more and more artists will realize the power they can have with this approach (and i hope that netjuke becomes their platform of choice). it's been a long time since i've listened to any they might be giants... but i think i'll buy an album based on principle. :)