This is a particularly busy finals period for me (is it even finals period yet? ugh), as evidenced by the fact that I’m typing this while literally surrounded by a little fortress of books. Therefore, for this week’s article I’ve turned the blog over to a far less frazzled Amherst alum, and incidentally one of the few people I know who might be more neurotic about music than I am, Jacob Thomas ‘07. Here goes:  

Firstly, I’d like to thank emoin09 for letting me have a crack at her weekly gig as music blogatorialist for Amherst’s new web publication. I don’t often write for fun anymore, and writing about music is a very happy opportunity for me indeed.

After leaving Amherst and (briefly) moving back to Iowa, I’ve landed in New York City – an arena of music broad enough to merit numerous web publications focused specifically on upcoming acts and NYC locals. Considering how brilliant this city’s live scene shines, you might be expecting a column on the desirability of different venues or a masturbatory run-down of shows I’ve seen to date. Instead, I’m coming clean with you to laud the virtues of a couple of electronic resources I’ve used both to track what I’ve been listening to and also to discover new music.

First an important philosophical question – why bother tracking what you’re listening to? My answer is one of sentimentality. As days of music listening turn into weeks and months and years and as my favorite band has shifted from Oasis to Air to LCD Soundsystem, a comprehensive way of aggregating listening patterns over time has provided an evocative snapshot in much the same way as a diary or photo journal does for feelings or images. For instance, two summers ago I listened to the song “Staring at the Sun” by TV on the Radio some 800 times in a month. Literally, I left that one song on repeat for days on end, coming into and out of my room, sometimes switching away but always returning and letting that one track permeate a summer spent doing neuroscience research and living in Tyler and playing Smash Brothers until my fingers bled. It just so happens that about that time, I’d started using Last.fm to record everything I played in iTunes.

Though I haven’t heard that track in months, anytime I browse through my listening history and stumble across it, it brings me back to a moment in time when I was thinking very specific thoughts, in a very different place emotionally. The fact that I lost my entire music collection when a hard drive died – and yet was able to retrace most of my steps from just that written record – is an exceptionally useful feature, as is the fact that I can share what I’m listening to with my friends on Facebook via a tightly written and altogether not-unsightly widget.

Most usefully though, it provides something in the way of statistics. It quantifies just what exactly I’m listening to, and when, and how often. The music to which a person listens means something to me, whether it means anything to them, and the insight provided on a Last.fm profile strikes a delicate balance between people who I would consider to have good taste and those I see as outright frauds, parading hipster bands without the good sense to enjoy Justin Timberlake’s sophomore effort (picture this for horrifying, cool kids: John Mayer rocking the bridge of Love/Stoned on YouTube. It’s my favorite video, eat that shit.)

Next up is something decidedly more hip than just rehashing how many times I’ve listened to “The Bleeding Heart Show,” and it comes in an infectiously cute package. Some of you by this point are undoubtedly savvy with the Hype Machine but if you’re not selling it to your friends by the shovel-full and making a personal compilation of loved tracks, you’re not using it properly.

Hype Machine, an MP3 aggregator in the grand tradition of Scour Media Agent (from way back, y’all) sniffs out .mp3 music files hosted on a number of well-known and well-regarded music blogs (two of my favorites are Brooklyn Vegan and The Music Slut). By compiling these files centrally, however, Hypem.com allows its users to compose massive streaming playlists of everything music blogs are writing about, which turns out to be most everything, from dirty Southern hip hop to electronica (and they do love their electronica) to stolen tracks from Axl Rose’s unreleased “Chinese Democracy.” Anyway, the point is that most of the music being written about is new which means that in a very short amount of time you can find lots of interesting things to delve into, whether by supporting the artist and buying the damn files already or by searching more specifically to listen at your leisure. It seems a little borderline sometimes, but since the files are hosted off-site and are removed at the drop of a subpoena, Hypem.com has managed to attain a position of quasi-legitimacy both with artists and with record companies. Every blog entry has links to buy the music from a number of different sources, and none of the files can be downloaded (without a goddamn headache). Additionally, within the last two months, the Hype Machine has also upgraded such that it will track my listening and report usage to Last.fm. Thus, even if I navigate away I can look back hours later to find out just who exactly remixed “Beautiful Girls” just the way I like.*

For starters, here are links to my Hype Machine and Last.fm profile. Your regular columnist, Emily, has profiles listed below, as well.

http://www.hypem.com/becauseiloveyou/

http://www.last.fm/user/jathomas

http://www.hypem.com/eemoin

http://www.last.fm/user/emoin 

* The answer is ABX as is usually the case when someone remixes something just the way I like.