Nomad Radio

Never Meta Man I Didn’t Like Posted by robsteranium

Why should music lovers care about tags? Because they act like thousands of tiny little signposts directing you on a journey to better music!

You can use tags to help you:

• find similar artists – pick an artist then listen to similar music on the mighty Last.fm radio for free. The last.fm player relates tunes to one other though tags. The tags are marked automatically by scrobbling your listening history (iTunes etc) and tracking whether you heart/thumb-down what you’re hearing. You can also manually tag tracks so those marked “UK” & “Hip-Hop” can both be distinguished from and related to tracks marked “US” &”Hip-Hop”.
• pick tunes to suit your mood – Musicovery asks you to define your mood: dark vs positive, energentic vs calm, dancier, faster? There’s 18 genres and a time line too.
• predict my future posts – my StumbleUpon music related favourites! Slightly off-topic but at least it demonstrates my point: tags can help you gather-up tunes that might not otherwise be filed together (e.g. in a record shop). The page linked above, for example, combines an advance warning of the new Burial DJ Kicks Album and rendition of the Imperial March (from Star Wars) done on a Floppy Disk.

Disclaimer for tech-heads/ cyber-pedants: yes, I realise that I’m using the word “tag” where the term “meta-data” might be more appropriate. Shut up and Dance!

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