Current location:	Home
Current mood:	happy
Current music:	The Eagles similar artists (Last.FM)

The Human Factor and the Internet, or Why My Roommate Isn't Known on Last.FM
Computers are wonderful, but they're still susceptible to the Human Factor. We humans aren't so good at coming up with common categories that are spelled exactly the same. I've heard horror stories of database records with free form 'name' fields and the myriad of different spellings and wordings that end up in there for the same or similar things. Combine this with the tendency of "the internet" (as if it were a single entity with a mind of its own) to archive things in a rather permanent fashion, and you get interesting results.

Today I started poking around my Last.FM profile, and I noticed in my Library that I had over 450 plays attributed to John Thomas, but the picture was not what I expected to see. My roommate is a musician who goes by John Mark Thomas (click! listen!). I've been listening to his older stuff for years, however when I ripped the CDs (I had permission, honest!) I entered "John Thomas" as the Artist name in the meta tags. Sadly, all this time I've been attributing plays to another artist whom I know nothing about. Consequently the last time I typed "John Mark Thomas" into Last.FM, it claimed not to have enough information to play similar artist. I have corrected the meta tags, however years of data have been lost forever. *sniffle* Oh well, further research indicates that his latest album is available.

I find it amazing the massive amounts of data that are floating around out there on the internet. The results are fascinating and lead to all sorts of interesting electronic wizardry. I remember listening to whatever I could record on cassette tapes, now I can type an artist into the magic box and good music I often don't know of comes out. Go internets.