Subtle Market Push: Last.fm Playlist behaviour

As you may have guessed by the time now, I like music quite much. Consequently, I’m always on the search for new music fitting my taste. Obviously, I have accounts at Last.fm, Pandora and Finetune.

On Last.fm, I recently discovered some subtle form of market push. One of my favourite singers, Sissel, released a new album Northern Lights in November, and this album is actively pushed by last.fm: Occasionally when playing music of artists similar to Sissel, I will get a piece of Sissel herself playing as the first track. Despite the 5 or more albums available from Sissel on Last.fm, this track is always(!) a track of the new album.

You can try it for yourself: Start the last.fm standalone player and enter “Sissel” as an artist. Start playing the music. Watch if the first track played is from Sissel. If so, is it from “Northern Lights”? I bet so. (Stop and repeat if the track is not from Sissel)

Finally …

After my very very 2nd Generation iPod (10GB) decided to give up his life, I finally decided to offer myself a new one. If you wonder why I din’t go for a battery replacement then I see three main points here:

1. Replacing the battery in such an old device might cost me a lot o’money
2. I always envied people with newer iPods because of the “On-the-go” Playlist and the possibility to set the rating of a song on the iPod
3. Because of the color screen of the new models

Obviously, the latter might be of no great use for me in general but who knows — I might start using the iPod as a backup for presentations.

As for the model, after pondering the options, sizes, life and the universe in general, I opted for a somehow “moderate” model: The iPod nano (PRODUCT) RED 4GB. For the color: Certainly, because of the red which I like a lot, but also because it’s actually for a good cause to choose a (PRODUCT) RED.

For the size: My wife made the good advice that actually, in one or two years, I might (again) have to change iPod again because of a dead (or almost dead) battery and thus, that 4GB or 8GB actually didn’t matter that much. Which, in turns, matters insofar as that with the money I put apart for buying the iPod 8GB, I can buy an iPod 4GB and some expensivegreat accessories as well.

Expected delivery date: May 17th. Me likes it.

Musicovery: Another fine music discovery service

Yesterday, I stumbled upon a new music discovery service: Musicovery. The (appearently) french service provides an interesting interface to discover new music.

You basically can select genres, moods and/or “danceability”. Muscovery will then present you a collar of songs that will be played one after another. You can skip, change mood, genre etc. as you wish. They have a nice collection of music, too. (Especially if you’re into old french chansons. :))

There are some downsides, though: You can’t save a list of recent songs (As you can with Pandora) and sometimes, the interface switches the genre too fast (For example, if you deactivate a genre, the music will stop and start new). And they should definitely change the “Country” to “uk” if you select the UK flag.

But at a price of roughly USD 2 per month for Hi-Fi music, that’s nothing too negative about that service. I like it.

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