Last.FM: The Social Music Revolution

I've done it as long as I can remember. In fact, every self-respecting music fan does it. Making harsh judgments about someone's character based entirely on their musical taste is really what music is all about. This sounds terrible and that's because it is. But, music defines you. It influences who your friends are, how you dress, even how you talk. So, musical prejudice just makes sense. I'm not saying its morally right, but it is factually correct.

Last.FM is the latest manifestation of the internet community and, unlike My Space and Facebook, has a stated purpose with slightly more weight then "To make friends." Last.FM is actually a pretty useful thing ("useful" of course only applies here if you also consider music "necessary"). It observes the music you listen to, builds a profile based on your tastes and, heres the rub, connects you to people with similar tastes. It builds musical cliques for you. Now, as I've already stated, I hole-heartedly believe that music is a powerful adhesive in inter-personal relationships. But, Last.FM scares me.

It's the charts, I think. There is something chilling about seeing esotericism laid out in charts and graphs. There's even a "taste-o-meter" which figures exactly how "musically compatible" you are with someone. This, admittedly, is pretty cool. The idea behind it being that if you are highly compatible with someone the two of you can share music and form a happy little internet relationship. The crazy thing about it, though, is that people make conscious efforts to raise their compatibility ratings with others, even those that they know from real life.

The two of them will actually go as far as to commit themselves to listening to the exact same music so that a website will tell them that their friendship is acceptable. The "taste-o-meter" is based on the music you've recently been listening to, which is recorded and displayed for all to see and judge. And they do judge. Again, people will change their listening habits just so that a certain artist will show up as #1 on their "Top Artists" list. (And I know this because I do it all the time.)

Because of the publicity given to users' musical preference, avid Last.FM-ers quite literally sculpt their profiles. They carefully choose what they listen to so as not to be judged or to be judged in a formulated way. A friend of mine is heavily into Prog Rock (which is the magic-eye picture of the music world. You have to cross your eyes to get it and once you do, you can't see anything else.) His entire profile screams ambient and progressive metal. Both of these genres are basically a secret club. I've spent years looking for their tree-house. I like to mess with people.

So, in order to properly mess with him, I set his iTunes to play The Beatles "Obla-di Obla-da" on an infinite loop. After that had played through a few dozen times, I sprinkled in a couple play-throughs of The Darkness' "Thing Called Loved." That act itself was only made funny by Friend's reaction. The reaction was as follows: He played the heaviest album he has (I don't remember the artist or album name but I'm guessing it was something like "Punt the Demon" by The Flaming Robot Zombies) on a loop for hours. This story proves a point. I think. Maybe. No, I'm sure it does. That point will be discussed in the next paragraph.

Elitism is a natural, beautiful thing. It's social Darwinism and music provides the perfect lense for it. The problem with genre-ism, when applied to Last.FM, is that it takes place in such a pliable medium as the internet. I'm willing to bet that a majority of people on Last.FM disable the software before listening to their real music (again, I know this because I do it). It just seems like so much effort to gain the acceptance of people who you will probably never meet. Besides, your music is probably terrible anyway.