Final Verdict: Winamp sucks. Or, it did for me.

Not only could I not burn CDs with it for some reason (it would freeze and close upon that request), it made the rest of my computer bog down and chug slowly. Which didn’t make much sense for me, because apparently Winamp is known for being ‘Lite’ and sweet. I did like the interface, and the many options it had. It just didn’t work out. And since I had to burn some CDs today and yesterday, I returned to the somewhat reliable iTunes for now, until I can find something else. I may end up trying Foobar. Dunno.

Besides that, Happy Boxing Day, hope everyone had a cool Christmas Day. And for the record, Damon got a digi camera for Xmas, so we’ll be getting digital concert shots up alot quicker, and probably some hammy self portraits, too.

Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

I know I'm a little late, but in honour of the recently-late Kurt Vonnegut, I'd like to present an MP3 of him reading a portion of the Slaughterhouse Five, which has been set to music.  I don't know who did it, if you do lemme know, but I find it quite tasteful.  Get literate, ya'll!  I found this in a newspost at Wondermark, which is a fabulous webcomic that I will go ahead and suggest each and every one of you read.

So It Goes (from the Slaughterhouse Five) 

[audio:http://wondermark.com/x/soitgoes.mp3] 

Related Links: 

Kurt Vonnegut Official Website

 Buy Slaughterhouse Five 

If you're anything like me, or Damon, for that matter, you need to find new music all the time. And it's a pain, because good music is hard to find, and even worse, free music is harder to find. But, alas! There are ways of doing it, easy ways.

1. Amazon.com. Oh, yes, I use the "People who bought this album also bought:". Why not? It's fantastic. I've found so many groovin' tunes that way, and it's dead easy. Just look up an album, like "Brushfire Fairytales" by Jack Johnson, and you'll see what other people bought as well as that album, which usually include music inside the same genre, style, and fanbase. Some common hits for that are Coldplay, Donavon Frankenreiter, Ben Harper, and John Mayer. This is especially good if you're looking for a little guidance, but want to dig the rest of the way yourself.
2. Pandora. Now, we've discussed Pandora and its awesomeness before on LovetheMusic, but we do need to go over it again. Pandora is a free internet music radio, that creates stations based on what music you like. Example: I want to create a station based on John Butler Trio (surprise!), so I put that in as my first choice. Later on, I can add more music to the station. It'll play music based on musical qualities found in JBT's music, but if I add more music, like Jack Johnson, Michael Franti and Spearhead, and Blue King Brown, it'll play music similar to all those artists, as well as using the unique qualities of each artist to find more. You can't skip tracks frequently; I believe your limited to 5 skips per hour, but it's a radio—get over it. One of my favorite features is the Bookmark Song feature. If I really like a song, and I want to follow up on it to find more, I'll bookmark it and its automatically saved to my profile. Later on, I can view all my songs that are bookmarked, hear a 30-second or so clip, and remember what song it was and look for more on the net. Yay!
3. iLike. I found this one through Lifehacker. It works through iTunes, so you have to have that to be able to use it. The program is still in Beta, and requires a download and installation. Basically, it generates recommended music based on what you're playing in your iTunes, through a snazzy sidebar that you can shrink at anytime. The other awesome part, is that when it generates that list, perhaps of 5 recommended songs, it provides a small play button to the left of each song, so you can stream a preview of that song in your sidebar. Fast, easy, and well-done with recommendations–I'm in love.
4. Last.FM - I use this service primarily to generate the feed you see in the sidebar, that way readers can see what I've been listening to. However, last.FM does offer charts of the music you've listened to, as well as recommended radio and neighbours, or people who listen to similar music. You can view these people's playlists and perhaps explore artists they like that you've never heard of. Also, for the more popular artists, last.FM generates a radio station based on their music, similar to Pandora, but less interactive.
5. MP3 Blogs! - Like LovetheMusic, there are tons of mp3 blogs out there. Tofu Hut has a HUGE list, one that I'm looking forward to digging through to find some goldies. Some other common, large ones are: 3Hive, Pitchfork Media, Aurgasm (my personal favorite), and I just discovered this aggregated source of MP3 blogs, called The Hype Machine.

Well, I hope this helps on your path to discovering new music. Don't feel overwhelmed; take it a step at a time, thats what I have to do. A lot of this requires a little legwork, but its worth it in the end. When I'm rocking out in my Jeep driving down the road, I think "Wow, thank God I found this stuff!"

love yourself, Jen

P.S. If you guys have any suggestions, please let me know in the comments. Thanks!

Dear everyone,

I have added another little widget to our sidebar. Alongside our RSS feeds for Pandora, we now have my iScrobble.

If you are unfamiliar with what that is, get back in the mix and go here.

Sign up for an account and download the iScrobble dealie. What it does is, basically, is that through iTunes or Windows Media (yuck), whenever you play a song, it shows up in your LastFM account. Right now I’m listening to Danger Mouse/The Grey Album—so if you check out my user profile page, which is here: http://last.fm/user/stradivaribe, you should see it. It also compiles a list of your top artists, albums, and tracks. It gives you ‘neighbours’, or people with similar musical interests to you. You can write journals there, join groups, or make friends. I’ve written one journal entry about John Butler Trio, and I’m a member of 3 groups, just because I’m dorky, and I have no friends because nobody loves me.
Something else is the LastFM Radio they have. Similar to Pandora, it offers a station for every artist, and uses recommendations and a tagging system to do it. Keep in mind, if you download iScrobble, its not only a plugin for your music player that tracks your tracks, but the radio comes with it, as well as an interface to tag and favorite a particular song you may be playing.
If you’re not with LastFM, you should be. I have refrained myself from declaring “My name is Jen and I approve this message,”, although unofficially I still said it. Yay politics.

Links: Last. FM
My profile: Stradivaribe

Get on with it already! Its dead easy, all you have to do is download, install, and listen to your tunes as usual!

If you're an internet radio listener, you may have heard of a different kind of radio, called Pandora. A common problem for 'music-lovers' is one in which involves finding new music. You love a band so much–can I have some more please? Where do you go to find out? How do I find out about new music, underground unnoticed music that is spilling over in golden quality? That sounded a little too dramatic–but you get the point. Personally I used to use Amazon's feature of "Customers who bought this item also bought: ", and skipped around from there. This is much more efficient. The use of it is quite simple–you type in the name of a song or an artist, and Pandora searches for it in the music genome. It finds it, perhaps asking you if it is a song name or artist name, and sometimes it shows as unavailable in the index. This usually happens when you ask for a classical artist or world musician. When it does find it, it connects to that particular, creating a radio station based on the musical qualities in which that song or artist possesses. They have these recorded as part of the Music Genome Project. Then, it'll start off with a song by that artist (not the song you requested for the station; musical licenses disallow it) and explain why they are playing it–ie, "This shares acousitic harmony, slide technique and blah blah…". From there, it continues with those qualities, with some shades of grey; it may play something not-so-similar to see if you enjoy it. During your playtime, you can tell them if: you like it, you don't like it, don't play this because it's not good on this station, and you can bookmark the song and/or artist, or purchase it on Amazon or iTunes. You can also "Go Backstage", where Pandora features the artist page in a pop-up window. You can add more kinds of music to the station as well, perhaps wishing to integrate Dashboard Confessional with Saves the Day. The best part, is that the whole setup is free. You sign up for an account, with your email address, and they use your account to keep track of your stations and bookmarks. The bookmarks are available as feeds, too. You can't skip more than X amount of songs per hour, though, due to music licensing, but these doesn't take away from the huge appeal of this tool. They offer a pause button, and if you don't like what you're listening to and want to skip it but can't, you can just start a new radio station. Pretty sweet. You should check it out, if you're at a loss for what to listen to next on your musical journey. It will serve as a source for Damon and I to keep track of music we'll be reviewing in the future.

Related Links:

Pandora

Pandora Wikipedia