[Air-l] last.fm group

[Martin Garthwaite]

Nancy,

I can sort of explain the 108,323 tracks thing, I worked at the BBC last
year in Radio and Music Interactive (all radio interactive sites) and one of
the things we did was to pump all of the tracks played into a
last.fmaccount from the stations that used digital playout systems. As
you can
imagine this showed some interesting trends.

1xtra for example was very good at predicting future hits.

Martin.


On 5/29/07, Nancy Baym <nbaym at ku.edu> wrote:
>
> >  > 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
> _______________________________________________
> The air-l at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/
>



-- 
Martin Garthwaite

PhD candidate, London Knowledge Lab www.lkl.ac.uk

+447957 764819
Skype id mgarthwaite1330
MS IM marting at gmail.com