Tuesday, September 21, 2004

I Think I'm Posessed

First, a plug: if you ever have opportunity to sit at your computer and listen to music you really should check out Launch at Yahoo. If you aren't familiar, it's an online radio service. The thing that makes it cooler than the others is that you get to customize it, tell it what bands, songs, albums you like, tell it what you never ever want to hear again. Your playlist is based off of these songs, but then it will also mix in new music it thinks you will like based off your preferences, so you get exposed to new stuff you might not have otherwise heard. If you go for the free service you have to listen to an ad every few songs, which isn't that obtrusive, and you can only skip a certain number of songs a month, but I've never hit that limit. I listen to my Launch station at work all the time.

Now we get to the part where I'm posessed.

It started with my CD changer. When I listen to CDs on shuffle play my changer has the habit of picking one song off one CD it REALLY likes and continually comes back to that one song. It ALWAYS favors one CD over the other four. I used to say my CD player was posessed. Shortly after getting it I decided to move it with the CDs still inside it one day and lost my Pearl Jam CD inside the player for 5 years. I didn't dare crack the case on a brand new CD player in 1993, so I had to wait until the CD player decided it was time for me to get the CD back. Between this and the clear favoritism it shows it obviously has a mind of its own.

But now, with Launch, I'm beginning to think I'M the posessed one. About 90% of the time I start it up the first song played is by the Violent Femmes. I think they're always played within the first three songs. 99% of the time the song selected is off Viva Wisconsin. Had I written this post yesterday it would have been 100% of the time, but today it graced me with a song off Add it Up. Don't get me wrong, I love the Femmes. They are my favorite band. If I were only allowed to listen to one Femmes CD the rest of my life I would likely choose Viva Wisconsin. But gosh darn it, show a little diversity! I have Music for the Masses by Depeche Mode ranked as highly, and maybe get one song a day off of that.

Now I'm beginning to think I have some weird aura that forces the CD players and radio stations around me to always revert to the same song. Maybe they can do a study about me. In the meantime, I think I'll go listen to some music I've heard before.

1 Comments:

Blogger lemming said...

There are about five Liza Minnelli songs that i thnk are good - OK, fantastic. When I use the "random shuffle" function, I can count on having at least one of them turn up every hour. I conclude that computers have favorites, too. :-)

8:23 PM  

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