Dear Last.FM & Pandora, Please use User Specific/Adjustable Tags for Songs and Artists

Removeable Tags

Hi, this is my first post here. Usually I use Sirius Satellite Radio at home and at work to listen to music. Primarily, because i pay for it. So why wouldn't I. Naturally I've grown tired of it. I've had since 2005. There's always new stuff sure. But personalized radio. now that is cool. So yes i'll say it...the word that should never be heard on last.fm. I use Pandora. Okay it's out sorry. I use pandora and Sirius and last.fm.
One thing i've noticed about online radio, having used these two products is the genres that an artist falls under, because of how users have tagged them.

However. I'll use some prime examples to show how tags have failed us and the community at large.

Tagging Pearl Jam as hardcore rock. Okay it's not that hard core. I love pearl jam, but i hate godsmack, but if i type in Pearl Jam it lumps in Godsmack. Pearl Jam has some loud songs. But I personally consider them to be a progressive rock band. So what i'm saying is tagging should be used only for song titles. Every song is different in an artists playbook.
Look at Great Lake Swimmers, almost all of their stuff is pretty folky and soft rockish and acousticy. I am a huge fan of Onigara. When it first came out I went to Borders, but they didn't have it, I went to iTunes but they didn't have it. So I went somewhere else. My friend mininova. This is a young group, a lot of their stuff sounds the same. They haven't even begun to branch out. They're untainted by commercial success.

Eddie Vedder's latest CD that accompanies the terrific film - Into The Wild, is incredible. It's not a hardcore heavy drum guitarry rock album, it's a from the heart, american masterpiece, both critical of this nation and our ideals and has inspired me to rethink my own. I'd call it an american folk album.

I love to listen to Eddie Vedder, Great Lake Swimmers, Reed Kd, and others.

But when i type in Eddie Vedder on Pandora or Last.fm it plays me Godsmack and Pearl Jam songs in the mixture. I don't like Godsmack. and when i'm listening to folk music i don't want to listen to listen to "Its Evolution baby!" I try to listen to quiet, happy stuff at work so customers aren't all "why are they cursing and screaming on the radio?" That's not right, the software is flawed. It needs to get fixed to better represent my intentions.

I've noticed this with other groups too. City and Colours, the lead singer sings beautiful acoustic rock. It's personal and from the heart. Now because he was formerly in a screamo band his music gets lumped with other screamo/emo bands that just suck imo. I don't want to listen to screamo music with gorgeous relaxing acoustic bands.

So that makes me think that the tags are flawed because it says City and Colours is an emo band because he was in some screamo/emo band before. I don't know what classifies something as emo, but usually its whiny kids singing about a lost relationship with a girl who doesn't love them anymore even though they're barely old enough to have had a chance to consider love. So they're emo, they're emotional, they're suicidal, etc. /wrists and all that terrible stuff. No I do not classify City and Colours anywhere near emo. It's a guy with a guitar. It all sounds very acoustic. It's incredible i can't wait to see him live. I've told my sister to see his show for my birthday (oct 6) on October 5th in NYC at Terminal 5 (wtf that is) with Tegan and Sara.

Users need to be able to select an artist or a song they like and tag that song to their own personal needs. And then when you see similarities in how people rate things you can start recommending things to people. Kind of like netflix ratings and how they recommend movies to me i've never heard of before and usually end up blown away at how compelling they are.

If User-Specific/Adjustable tags isn't the answer, fine, but what is?

-AM321CAN

How Would You Change the Apple iPhone 3G?

What instigated me for this Post:

Let's review what i wouldn't change first, the things i don't find fault in:

Size is adequate: Check!

Screen is adequate: Check!

Numbers of Buttons: Check!

Audio Out: Check!

Speaker Phone: Check

Bluetooth: Check / Err Not.

-----------------------------------------------

Okay now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's look at the phones faults.

1) Ringtones blow! Now that you know my history of using Sony Ericsson Phones. If you've ever had one you know about the Walkman feature which lets you put songs on there and blast them out over your speakerphone. I've taken it out in bars before. They're closing so they turn off the music to try and kick people out. So i take out my phone. Lamer that i am and blast out Boston toons. The owner comes in: "Pablo i thought i told you to turn off the music" so these people GTFO! "I did, it's this guys phone." "oh. Err. k" exit. LOL's from everyone at the bar. what a moron he must have felt like. Poor guy. So phone playing music. Check iPhone does that. Excellent. Now with SE software i can go in there and say okay Play this song as my ringtone that i uploaded via USB. But with the iPhone you have to convert the files to m4rs or mp4rs or something stupid. I mean you can listen to a song from your ipod playlist over the speaker. but you can't use it as your ringtone? that's pretty dumb. eet maka no sense.

http://tinyurl.com/62n748

5 hours later after watching this 5 minute movie I've uploaded 100 ringtones to the iPhone each 30 seconds long, varying stages of the song. Stupid phone that's supposed to be 10x better and costs 10x more to use should have 10x more the power and possibilities of any other phone. Well that's just not the case.

2) Settings blow! You can't change hardly any settings for the phone. Why can't i say "line up icons" or "organize icons by date" or "by alphabet". Everytime an application updates itself it gets moved somewhere else in the dash. Increase Icon size maybe? Lock Safari window horizontal? Vertical? I like to use it in bed and watch youporn, but when my head is on the side and i keep trying to rotate it so it's lvl with my vision i can't because it keeps flipping. That makes browsing the internet painful, among otherthings. Most of the settings are just Yes or No questions On or Off? Application settings for some of the apps i have are: Credits? Are you serious? Bizarre!

3) Weather Blows! It should default to your current location all the time and then let you add others to see those locations too. Weather icon should reflect actual temperature.

4) Maps App sux. Maps app doesn't find it. But local.google does? How does that work?

5) Password? Sheah! Apple Store needs my login everytime i want to download an app. Um. Hello this is my phone. It's mine. Who else is using my phone? Most login things in safari and iphone don't offer to remember passwords?

6) No flash support? um hello. please stop smoking crack. How can you have a phone in the 21st century with no flash support?

7) Camera? In case you didn't see. Everyone in the iPhone line had their camera phone and were walking the line making a movie of all these crazy people waiting for their iPhone. Not a picture. A movie. Why can't you make video with the iPhone. It has multiple gigs don't it? fo shwazy! Why's it so hard to take a picture of yourself with your iPhone. I can never get my finger to hit the button at the right time. SE software lets you send photos to people. Why wouldn't this be an obvious option on the iPhone?

8) Yesterday i had 2 pages of apps. Today there's 4 pages of apps? I haven't added any more software. The thing updated a couple wares, band now they're all spaced out all over the damn place wtf's up with that Jobsy!?

9) No Stylus? How can you have a notes app that doesn't draw or use a pen on it? Come on that's Toshiba Protege 3500 like 6 or 7 years ago stuff, come on now. I still have my 3505.

10) Lastly the keyboard sux asshole. Seriously! No disable T9 come on now. I do not ever use spell check. I hate it. It always tries to spell perfectly spelled words wrong. It tries to capitalize things that i say should be lowercase.  iPhone Spellcheck is no different. You have got to find a way for me to turn this stupid feature off. You have no idea how many angry text messages asking people what the duck they're talking about? and them returning the question duck? and i try to respond fuck, but it keeps making it duck. It wants me to tell it not to misspell everything everytime it tries to misspell it? SE software back again. "spell word" option lets you add words to the dictionary. This is Freakanomics 101: Learn to adjust your software to the needs of your customer base. Why can't i make the keyboard larger or smaller? I have fat fingers, they're not toothpicks which is what you need to type on these little things.

11) Why does the iphone freeze. And why won't the power button shut it down?  You have to hold down the Home and Power Button for three secs until the apple logo appears and it resets.  or shuts down and then you  have to wait and turn it on again yourself. What a pain? Really trying to aggravate me now aren't you?

12) Send Contact feature. Where is the send contact feature. Doesn't some kind named Joe Schmo call you and ask for someones phone number. Now you have to search for it, you used to just be able to send the contact as a text message to them, very simple all the info intact.

Phones I've Had Over the Years

Let's take a little journey back in time

The year is 1997 my dad buys me some POS Nokia. (Obviously at the time it was a sick phone. By 2000 standards it was a POS). I could call home from anywhere. It had some gangster black and white face plate on it. I moved to japan in Jan of '98, so half way through sophmore year. Great, it could make phone calls and we could play snake on it. Grand. We went to NYC and played snake while waiting for our buddy to come back with our fake ids. I still have it. I charge it up every few years and play snake on it. That game is classic, 2, 4, 6, 8 what buttons do we appreciate! those were the controls very simple up down left right. Just don't close in on yourself. you'll die. We waited and waited for those fake ids but lost 160 bills a piece and our friend drove this guy 20 minutes uptown to go get them. he got out of the taxi and never came back. We were like uh...this sux. I think this phone introduced us to text messagine on phones. We were already used to AIM and ICQ, but txting on a phono. el amazingo!

Upgrade Numero Uno: Dad got me in on a Metro PCS phone some POS phone (at the time it really was a POS phone) that could make calls in the metro and it was super cheap. We had that for about three months and then learned that metro and subway were different so it only worked some of the time and it sucked at making calls in Tokyo because theres big fucking buildings everywhere. The phone kinda sucked because it was el-cheapo, it was all in japanese. i could only make phone calls by dialing memorized numbers cause i couldn't figure out how to use it otherwise.

Upgrade Numero Dos: J-Phone. My pops and I both got two J-Phones from some swanky J-Phone company, long before iPhones and i's became more popular than J's. I got a metallic orange one and he got a army green one. They had nifty little velcro things that clipped to your belt so you never had to worry about it. It clicked on and swung around till kingdom come. It was grand. It was strictly a phone for making calls and sending text messages. Other than that it hung at my side like a loyal companion.

Upgrade Numero Tres: Sony Ericsson T637. If i could find a brand new one of these today, i'd totally get all over it. I never had reception probs with this phone. The numbers mashed great. Took great photos. It really introduced me to the greatness of the SE operating system. something i'm daily trying to imitate on the iPhone 3G.

Downgrade Numero Uno: I upgraded to the W600i after my T637 keys had been replaced twice and just kept getting dirt stuck in them making it virtually unuseable. The battery kept dying and at&t kept calling to tell me i was due for an upgrade. So i was like shit its practically free so why not. So dumbly i agreed to the new W600i. The latest walkman phone from SE. Well this thing kinda sucked. It was fatter than my T637. It weighed more. The keys wer uglier. It was one of those pointless flip phones. But it introduced one great feature. Walkman! This thing is a glorified boombox i swear. It's smoking it jams out tunes. nonstop. I used to love taking it down to Carmel Beach and smoking a cigar blasting Beatles - A Day in the Life. or The Growlers - Track 4 my ringtone of choice. Aesthetically speaking it was a downgrade. It was bigger, fatter, heavier, bulkier, obtusier, unrefined, unsexy, uncool. I took it to Euope though and it cranked out 500 dollars worth of phone calls while i bumped about Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, London, etc. I know it was 500 dollars cause i got the bill when i got back. But hey i was travelling alone, calling people to say what up. It was awesome, worth every penny.

Upgrade Numero 4: iPhone 3G

Film & Music

For as long as i can remember, and mind you my memory sux, the film soundtrack has been an important part of a film. The spectrum is huge. Personally i can recall a huge number of movies that are perfectly embedded in my memory. All that needs bring them back to me is a song.

Stuck in the Middle With You - Pulp Fiction
Performed by Stealers Wheel

John Williams Soundtracks

American Graffiti Soundtrack - George Lucas. The story actually goes that Lucas invented the American Soundtrack. Apparently he made it possible for Filmmakers to use contemporary music in films. Prior to this Films used classical music or music composed to fit the films tones. In this film Lucas uses popular contemporary music. That still survives in the American Consciousness as Oldies, the original Rock & Roll movement. It all sounds poppy by today standards of hard drums, loud electric guitars, big bass sounds and attention on the singers voice. It would have been incredible to be a teenager back in the 60s. Compared to what had come before. The sound of the music was all about having fun and cutting loose. Now, I'm not so sure what we're all trying to cut loose from. Maybe we're all unsure about how far the industry can go. But alas Laissez-Faire for me! Songs that remind me how original things still can be include songs from Playlist 3: Time to Pretend, Aly Walk With Me, Crimeweave. I feel there's something for everyone in this playlist. Right down to the Gently cover. Shimabukuro makes it sound fresh and original. I was listening to it today on the way to Gorda. I actually had to listen to some Silence on the way home. The music was depressing me. I surprised myself. I went to work today and just felt so estranged. It's really time for me to leave. I'm glad I've resolved myself to do it. Funny I have no idea what i'll do in NYC. No fucking clue haha. We'll see where life takes me. I watched a good movie Green Street Hooligans tonight with Elijah Wood he says something after the initial fight of the film: Once you've taken a few punches and realise you're not made of glass, you don't feel alive unless you're pushing yourself as far as you can go.

Into the Wild Soundtrack - Eddie Vedder
Classics include: Hard Sun & Society & No Ceiling

Trouble by Cat Stevens
I heard that Elliot Smith did a cover of this just before he died/khs. If anyone has that i'd love to hear it. This story brings me back to the incredible film A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints. A genuine film. I really enjoyed this one. The song is so powerful, magicful, etc. I really think this song would just have been another Cat Stevens song if this film hadn't memorialized as THE Cat Stevens song. I imagine it would be tough to grasp the power of this songs story without the story of Saints in your head.

Into the Wild & A Guide... are incredible films everyone should see them. I'm seriously considering trading in my 401k which is only about 006k right now and taking a year off of "life" & "society" to read, write, live, find myself, etc. I drove from Monterey down to Gorda today. It's about 80 Miles sout of Monterey. Took me about 2 hours to get down there. I drove down in my alpine white beemer from the 80s. It's a classic. It's quick and cute. You'd like it too if you saw it. What is it's soundtrack? I can't decide. But when i set out on my great adventure I hope i find out. I was planning on quitting my job in January and moving to New York City. But I'm thinking of really taking a drive. I can't imagine leaving the beauty of Monterey and heading straight for a big city, where i have the sense that i'd feel very alone and claustrophobic in all at the same time. Even though I know people there. A helluva lot more folks than i know in Monterey, which is about 2. My roomie Jesse and Kurt PS3 who calls me TedBox 360. We met at the PS3 line at Target i was number 7 and he was number 8, they had 6 PS3s so we were kind of bummed we wouldn't be making a profit of 9,000 dollars instantly after buying this sucker. But now we know. Camping out for 3 days actually pays off.

I feel i could go on and on, but i guess that's what blogging is all about, We'll come back to this topic again sometime. Glad i got that out of my system though. What's that device Dumlydore uses in Harry Potter to save his memories? Pensieve!! that's it. Thanks Wikipedia.

Pandora

Well i just did LAST.fm and i couldn't do one without the other, so here we go!

Pandora is sweet. It's quick, fast, that's kind of the same i guess, but you get the point. You type in an artist and boom you'll hear stuff by that artist and by other artists just like that. Just be careful though again, cause If you add Staind and you just like the poppy Staind songs than you're kind of screwed cause its going to try to play you crap like Korn and Red Faced Angry Nazis and stuff. I don't know if RFAN exists but they'd play corny stuff like that if they did. Yarr we're angry! we scream and roar at the mic woohoo!

Ease of use: Login, create your profile its a breeze.

No itunes information uploading. No programs installed on your computer. It uses flash i assume cause it's crazy fast. and flash is like ... a flash so...you know. Um. bollocks. That's british for dogs bawls btw.

You basically create radio stations based on what kind of music you like. So I like Stronger by Kanye West, well it'll make me a playlist with Justin Timberlake songs in it. Well maybe not, but they should they're pretty much the same. No you'll get Common and Jay-Z if you type in Kanye West. And Peter Bjorn & John found me some older PB&J songs. LOL PB&J I LOVE PB&J. PB&J on Thomas English Muffins YUMMY!...make sure they're Toasted then the pb melts so good! Moni u need to do a write up on the yummiest snack that is fun to make and easy!

Great Lake Swimmers got me some other cool folky stuff. But they don't have Reed KD on there yet. Reed KD is awesome try to see a show. He's mostly out in Cali, but book him up he's based out of Santa Cruz. The chickie who sings with them is cute and has a great voice. I'm mad when she doesn't sing with them, luckily it's not often. "Empty Bottles" is a great tune!

Pandora vs Last? Well when i'm at home I like last.fm because i like that it reads off of my whole music library which is pretty extensive. Three years ago i had 27 days worth of music. I imagine i have added quite a bit to that. I need to upgrade to a new ipod soon. My iPhone is cool, but i hate having to uncheck songs from my ipod cause its only 30gigs and i have like 80 gigs of music.

My music tastes. It's pretty funny a friend turned me onto listening to CDs like albums where you can't just skip through songs you have to listen to the songs in that order. I do that now, he stopped doing it which is classic, but I rarely skip through songs when i'm listening to an album and people who constantly change the song pisS mE oFF! so annoying just let it play! So yeah i have a lot of songs, that i don't necessarily listen to all the time, but I get tired of hearing A+ songs all the time. Some of those other songs may not be amazing, but they're unique and calm me down, clear my thoughts, expand my mind, make me think, remind me that these people are out there being creative and I'm able to sit here and write about it. Songs like this that i like "I do believe" by the Duke Spirit. Each time i've heard it for the longest time I was like god this songs pretty cool. It's so simple, but its quite chill. Another simple song that's sick is of course "Aly Walk With me" buy you already know that.

LAST.fm

Okay so everyone knows about LAST.fm right?

Well maybe not. It's kind of this annoying little program that opens everytime i open itunes and asks me to login or something. Well that's what i thought for the past six months. I've had it installed that long and have just forced myself to click it and exit it everytime it starts. I don't know how i could have been so lazy to not just disable the auto-start thing, but i only just realized that the password i had in there was wrong and thats why it wasn't working or scrobbling or whatever it is it does.

What it does? It scrobbles your music.

What's it for? Oh wait you don't know what scrobbling is, huh? Well it's like it goes through your music and reads all that "useless" information that itunes stores. Like song ratings, times song has been played, etcetera etcetera etcetera (a la King & I: classic *hint* movie). After invading the privacy of your entire music collection it reads the data to it's own little program LAST.fm dock or something and compares it against user statistics it collects/scrobbles from it's own site. So the more users, the more accurate information they can obtain, etc. SO Definitely check it out. Even if you don't use it to listen to new music (kind of it's main purpose) it'll still help other people find good music based off what you're listening to. So it's a win win situation right?

What's it for? It scrobbles your music. You get that right. The idea is that by scrobbling your tunes, it can make accurate reccomendations. It's not totally on yet though, but neither is Pandora's box. I type in Fade to Black by Metallica on Pandora and it plays me other shiesty/shayesty/shisty? shytie metallica songs. Fade To Black has like an orchestra in the background its a sick song. Every rock song with an orchestra in the background is pretty cool in my book. (continue to part B, whilst i rant about the music industry)

ASIDE:The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony. (I'm sure it was bittersweet seeing how they didn't make a dime off that song). Oh well, that's what you get for inadvertently sampling 3 fucking chords from a song. I mean personally I love the Last Time song and i cannot for the life of me hear anything that sounds the same, but the one market that should be totally free. Isn't. Music. L'aissez Faire should apply to the music industry, in that we SHOULD let artists sample and reuse and expand on everything. Everytime i'm listeing to the radio, at least for my generation we hear the start of Ice Ice Baby and it's just a huge let down for it to be some 70s r&b rock song. It should be: "Girls were hot wearing less than bikinis...if you got a problem yo i'll solve it, check out the hook while my dj revolves it. Vanilla ice ice baby, nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh!" Okay that was a rant.

B) So yeah in Pandora I get music I don't like because I like a few metallica songs. It's the same way in LAST.fm. It's not perfect, but it's cool enough that i'll keep coming back.

Options: Love, Ban, & Skip. Pretty simple don't like a song ban it. Don't think it's too bad than skip it. Like it than, hit Love it. There's enough out there that you probably won't here it again for a long ass time. But you can hit Recently Played, Recently Banned, Recently Loved and find everything again. And if you don't want to ban love or skip, just listen to it like a normal radio and not a soul will think any different of you. You'll still be perfect, sweet, lil ol you!

Selection: Last has a huge selection. There's groups I've never even heard of on there. Obviously I've started this blog with a chronicle of Indie Alt Rock stuff, but LAST.fm has dance, electronic, rap, folk, classical. Whatever your interests it'll have new and unusual recommendations for you.

check it out

http://www.last.fm

Enjoy!

Any Questions leave a comment!

Left of Center Sirius 26 Playlist 3

Hey dude. Just wanted to tell you to open up itunes and get on www.Last.fm to find all the music you should be listening to.

It's cool cause i can recommend you stuff, and it recommends things that other folks like that you like from what you listen to, etc.

My Current Mix CD is:

1. Aly, Walk With Me 1 4:59 The Raveonettes Lust Lust Lust Indie 3 7/26/2008 12:34 PM
2. Time To Pretend 1 4:29 MGMT Time To Pretend Alternative 1 7/26/2008 12:38 PM
3. Trouble 3 2:48 Cat Stevens Box Set - CD2 - The Search Folk-Rock 100 19 7/26/2008 12:41 PM
4. Gamma Ray 2 of 10 2:57 Beck Modern Guilt Alternative 2 7/26/2008 12:44 PM
5. Skinny Love 3 3:59 Bon Iver For Emma, Forever Ago Folk 2 7/26/2008 12:48 PM
6. Paris 2004 7 3:53 Peter Bjorn And John Writer's Block Alternative 100 75 6/28/2008 9:15 PM
7. 2080 3 5:24 Yeasayer All Hours Cymbals Alternative 3 6/28/2008 8:09 PM
8. The Step And The Walk 3 3:23 The Duke Spirit Neptune [2008] Alternative 3 7/25/2008 12:08 AM
9. Mahgeetah 1 5:57 My Morning Jacket It Still Moves Alternative
10. Society 8 3:56 Eddie Vedder Into The Wild Rock Singer-Songwriter 2 7/25/2008 12:19 AM
11. Crimewave 3 4:18 Crystal Castles Crystal Castles Electronic 4 6/17/2008 9:23 PM
12. White Winter Hymnal 2 2:27 Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes Alternative
13. L.E.S Artistes 1 of 12 3:25 Santogold Santogold Alternative 1 7/24/2008 11:57 PM
14. While My Guitar Gently Weeps 10 of 12 4:20 Jake Shimabukuro Walking Down Rainhill Alternative
15. Electric Feel 4 3:50 MGMT Oracular Spectacular Alternative 9 6/20/2008 7:15 PM
16. Hard Sun 7 5:22 Eddie Vedder Into The Wild Rock Singer-Songwriter 1 6/30/2008 12:55 AM 1 of 1
    

I'd rate almost every one of these songs a 5 stars. L.E.S Artistes by Santogold i think you'll like a lot. Also the Step & the Walk by the Duke Spirit. All of MGMT's music is great The Eddie Vedder stuff is all from Sean Penn's Into the Wild movie. Writer's Block by Peter Bjorn & John is my album of the year. I can't listen to it enough. The new Beck Album is pretty good, Chemtrails and Gamma Ray are popular. I like Chemtrails better i think, but i couldn't remember it when i made this cd. The Song Trouble is used in the film "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints" with Shaya LaBoeuf. Ever since seeing that movie and the song playing during the film. I get goose bumps and feel as if i too grew up in the Bronx in the summer of 59 or whenever the film takes place. You feel like Cat Stevens doesn't know it but he was destined to write such a song for this movie. And if the song was good before, it's incredible now. It's an amazing movie if you haven't seen it. I feel that way with many songs as you'll begin to see. "At the Hop" in American Graffiti is one of those moments 'you can feel it you can move it you can really start to groove it at the hop hop hop hop hop' god i love that song haha!


I think i'm going to start a blog and stick this stuff in there haha i'll link it to you.
-your lil bro Tedgar!

enjoy.