Last.fm just released an experimental little application called Boffin, which scans your entire music library and creates a tag cloud based on all of the genres in your collection. It doesn't just read the genre tags for every song, though, it instead looks up every song of yours in the Last.fm database and creates a tag cloud using their own tags. So you don't have to worry about retagging all your stuff! The result is something very similar to the regular Last.fm radio, except it plays from your own collection rather than theirs.

Do I want to listen to only folk and punk? Yes please. You can read about it here or download it here for PC or Mac.

It also lets you export your tag cloud to Wordle, which I wrote about before if you remember. This is mine:

PRETTY NIFTY.

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I haven't used iTunes in a while but I fired it up today to play with some Genius playlists, upon which I noticed a lot of my music was without album art. I selected my entire library and told it to grab album art for everything. Normally iTunes has been pretty accurate when deciding which album art to use, but today I ran into a few oddities. Behold:

Team America: World Police Soundtrack

Nine Inch Nails - CRC Sessions
(this is a bootleg and doesn't even have any official artwork)

Tenacious D - Self Titled

I've never run into anything remotely as weird as this using iTunes before, so my only idea is that iTunes was somehow "Google bombed" via a flood of incorrect artwork. I don't know. The only thing I know for sure is that Delicious D is awesome.

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I remember my brother and I downloading the Quake 3 Arena demo in 1999. It was a whopping 80 MB, and took a total of 3 days to finish on our family's dial-up connection. We had to pause the download when we went to bed at night, and continued it in the morning, but it was worth it. That was the largest single thing that I had ever downloaded on dial-up. It felt like such an achievement. Today, though, I was presented with an even greater challenge.

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails was unable to release an official DVD of their previous tour due to a disagreement with his former record label, so he decided to put the raw high-definition footage from three separate shows online for free. The only problem is that the entire package is just over 400 GB. I really have no actual need for 400 GB of uncut concert footage, but the obsessed, OCD driven fan inside of me demands that I am able to see it all. This may be the single largest thing that I've ever attempted to download, or ever will download in the near future. Given the 60 GB/month bandwidth cap that Shaw enforces on my current internet subscription, I'll have to split the download into monthly intervals. Best case scenario, it won't be until July that I am able to say I downloaded something that was 400 GB. I don't even have more than 150 GB of free hard drive space right now, but with the incredibly low prices on hard drives these days, I think I'll be able to afford to upgrade within the next 7 months.

Wish me luck.

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Everyone's making their "best of" lists for 2008, and I'm not going to be any different. The obvious choice for me would be a favorite albums list, because as some people might know from previous posts, my music collection is one of my primary obsessions.  So in a somewhat particular order, these are the albums that helped me get through many work days, hours of driving, and 52 lazy weekends.

1. Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV

I'll get the obvious out of the way first and start with this one. For sale on the Nine Inch Nails website as a digital-only version for $5 or as an ultra-deluxe limited edition version for $300, this was a 2-disc album containing 36 entirely instrumental songs. There are no official videos for this album, but there was a partnership with YouTube to allow fans to create their own custom videos, sort of like an online film festival.

2. Nine Inch Nails - The Slip

Another obvious one for me, this album was released for free online in digital form as a gift for the success of Ghosts I-IV. It saw a physical release on CD and Vinyl, but was limited to 250,000 copies worldwide. Many critics said it was Trent Reznor's strongest work since The Downward Spiral in 1994.
 

3. Atmosphere - When Life Gives You Lemons...

Everyone teases me for listening to rap music, but they don't know what they're missing. Atmosphere released several small EPs the past year, but their strongest was definitely this album. I was somewhat disappointed with their previous full length album so I didn't have the highest expecations for this one, but my doubts were erased when it was released.
 

4. Portishead - Third

This album made both Last.fm and Pitchfork's best album lists from 2008. It is their first studio album since 1997, although I was never a fan until this year.

 
 

5. MGMT - Oracular Spectacular

Another favorite on Last.fm, also one of the catchiest albums I've heard in a long time. This is MGMT's first full length album and is sure to be played in my car for a long time.

Embedding for any of their videos is disabled so just watch it directly here.
 

6. Hot Chip - Made In The Dark

This album fits into my "silly electronic music" phase that I've been in recently, along with several other albums released in the past couple years. This is the only one making the list, since it's the only one released in 2008.

 

7. Justice - †

Another electronic album, although not really that silly. Somewhat similar to Daft Punk in style, this one is best enjoyed when played very loud with a lot of bass.


 

8. Man Man - Rabbit Habits

I first heard of Man Man when I saw them opening for Modest Mouse. Their genre is hard to describe, so I'll just quote Wikipedia: "Their musical style has been described as Viking-vaudeville, Manic Gypsy Jazz. Man Man is known for their exuberant live performances. When performing, the members of the band dress in white outfits and wear war paint."

Their albums really don't do the band any justice. You have to see them live.

 9. Why? - Alopecia

Another favorite weird band of mine, Why? is from the primarily hip-hop record label Anticon, although their genre is described as psychadelic pop. Alopecia is the strongest and my favorite album of theirs to date.

 
 

10. Restiform Bodies - TV Loves You Back

Yet another weirdo band from Anticon, Restiform Bodies is an experimental hip-hop group. I don't really know what else to say about them other than they're probably an acquired taste.


 

Honorable Mentions

• Crystal Castles - Self Titled
• Ratatat - LP3
• Beck - Modern Guilt
• Ghostland Observatory - Robotique Majestique
• Ladytron - Velocifero

That's it for 2008. I am not very good at reviewing things, I just know what I like, so I'm sorry if some points weren't as thought out as you'd like. GET OFF MY BACK.

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The only thing I've ever bought on iTunes was a Smashing Pumpkins compilation called Rarities and B-sides. It was a 114 song compilation of hard-to-find songs spanning their entire career from 1989 to 2000. Some songs weren't that rare, but there were a few that I otherwise would have no chance of hearing unless I paid over $300 for a used vinyl copy of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness on eBay. Anyway, the compilation was only around $10-$20 at the time and was exclusively for sale on the iTunes store. So I bought it.

Skip ahead a couple years to present day, I find myself wanting to listen to those old songs again. The only problem is that in the past few years, I've reformatted my computer several times and I seem to have misplaced the files. No biggy, right? I'll just go back to the iTunes store and download them again. Wrong. Not only is the album now only available in the US, but the entire compilation now costs a whopping $119. Even if I lived in the States, I'd have to make a fairly serious financial decision if I wanted to listen to these songs again. Yeah, there are 114 songs, but even still, how do they honsetly justify this? It is just some digital files. I don't even get a fun booklet to flip through, here.

Curious if I could find the album anywhere else, I checked out Amazon. Turns out they do sell it, but the price isn't much better:

Price: $103.85
Album Savings: $8.91 compared to buying all songs

Thanks for the great deal, Amazon.

I am glad I only made this mistake once, and I seriously feel bad for people whose entire music collections are composed of digital downloads, especially if they contain DRM. I am reminded of an incredibly appropriate xkcd comic, and it's the same reason why I still buy CDs. Even without DRM, the whole system is incredibly flawed.

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