I've been doing a lot of writing lately (not music). The advantage to writing things other than music is that you can have music on!
I thought I'd try creating some mixes using itunes Genius feature. If you are like me, sometimes I forget what I have in my music library and end up listening to the same tunes over and over. So I based a mix on The Weepies song, Gotta Have You. Here is the Genius mix iTunes generated. A little heavy on Death Cab for Cutie, but for the most part, I have been in heaven all day listening. I'll post another mix later in the week for you. Happy listening!

Gotta Have You - The Weepies
Naked As We Came - Iron & Wine
A Lack Of Color - Death Cab For Cutie
Marching Bands of Manhattan - Death Cab for Cutie
One Sweet Love - Sara Bareilles
Closer To Fine - Indigo Girls
Across The Universe - Rufus Wainwright
Tied Down - Colbie Caillat
River - Joni Mitchell-
Keep It There - The Weepies
Heal Over - KT Tunstall
What Sarah Said - Death Cab For Cutie
Boy With a Coin - Iron & Wine
You Could Be Happy - Snow Patrol
Brothers On a Hotel Bed - Death Cab for Cutie
World Spins Madly - The Weepies
Galileo - Indigo Girls
Do You Remember - Jack Johnson
Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard - Paul Simon
Other Side of the World - KT Tunstall
Ice Cream - Sarah McLachlan
Make This Go On Forever - Snow Patrol
Love And Some Verses - Iron & Wine
Your Heart Is an Empty Room - Death Cab for Cutie
Breakdown - Jack Johnson
Miniature Disasters - KT Tunstall
Lovesong of the Buzzard - Iron & Wine
Wake Up - Arcade Fire
Bookends - Simon & Garfunkel
Hope - Jack Johnson
Where Are You Going - Dave Matthews
Big Yellow Taxi (Remastered) - Joni Mitchell
Melody - Kate Earl
Open Your Eyes - Snow Patrol
Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car - Iron & Wine
Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes - Paul Simon
Sunny Came Home - Shawn Colvin
America - Simon & Garfunkel
Someday You Will Be Loved - Death Cab for Cutie
Tiny Vessels - Death Cab For Cutie
Universe & U - KT Tunstall
I Don't Want to Wait - Paula Cole
The Beauty Of The Rain - Dar Williams
Each Coming Night - Iron & Wine
Ghost - Indigo Girls
No Other Way - Jack Johnson

So in my quest for finding the best way to get new listeners of my music, I revisited a much looked-over internet music service, last.fm. Last.fm is basically internet radio. However, it has a wonderful feature if you download their scrobbling plug-in. A what? You ask? Scrobbling a song means that when you listen to it on your media player, the name of the song is sent to Last.fm and also added to your music profile. The scrobbling plug-in sends the name of songs you play in the media player of choice (e.g. iTunes, Winamp, etc) to Last.fm.

One advantage to scrobbling is that you can see what artists are really listened to the most. Songs you listen to will also appear on your Last.fm profile page for others to see in a type of limited, musical social networking.

The “Scrobbled” songs also create the data set that assists Last.fm in organizing and recommending music to other users and to create personalized radio stations, among other uses. These recommendations are picked using a collaborative filtering algorithm. What a neat way to find NEW music and share the music you love with others! And, for an Indie musician like myself, this is a goldmine of potential listeners.

I am loving last.fm. I listen to a lot of music using itunes and up until now I have occasionally Tweeted what I was listening to for others to check out. Now, I launch my scrobbler which runs in the background while I'm listening to itunes and my listening stats are automatically updated on last.fm. If you want to know what I'm listening to regularly, just check it out on last.fm. I hope to check out what you're listening to also because I love to get turned on to new music.

If I really get turned on to something new, I'll be sure to blog about it!

Happy listening,
Beth