[Air-l] last.fm group

[Nancy Baym]

>  > Thanks for the reference. I did once check into the "top players" of
>>  particular groups and they seem to be playing those tracks an infeasible
>>  number of times. As you say, there's definitely an element of gaming the
>>  system going on. Relatedly, I wonder if we'll get a story of "so and so"
>>  sacked/disciplined for playing unsuitable music during working hours
>>  with their scrobbler record being used as evidence.
>
>out of curiosity, what order of magnitude is "an unfeasible number of
>times" in this case?  10^4+? or somewhere around 10^3?

Last.fm has moved away from designating "top fans" based on # of 
listens and don't report that info anymore (or use the word "fan" 
which seemed to encourage this kind of gaming). Now they report the 
week's "top listeners". I assume this is in response to ongoing 
squabbling over 'cheaters' (last.fm forum terminology, not mine). The 
discussions of this on the forums is interesting, because some people 
are really offended by the fact that others do it, while still others 
find it very hard to understand why it matters. It also leads to all 
kinds of value judgements about the 'right' way to listen to music 
and the right to judge how others' listen.

To answer the question about what constitutes unfeasible, here's an 
example: I found it hard to believe that someone's listened to 
108,328 REM songs since registering in March 2004. That's about 45 
hours/week of REM every week for 3 years. On his profile he writes:

"I listen to a lot of music, I don't sleep very much. I've (knock on 
wood) never lost my stats due to server problems. Therefore, I have a 
massive playcount. Now quit bothering me about it. Jeez. And yes, I 
do listen to that much R.E.M., so consider yourself informed."

which speaks to the notion that some Last.fm users are policing the 
system looking for suspected cheaters and calling them to account for 
what they perceive as unfeasible numbers of listens.



Nancy