I've become a "scrobbling" addict lately. I'm especially concerned with my last.fm profile accurately demonstrating my overall musical tastes, so I'll tailor my day-to-day listening to try and balance out any temporary flights of fancy I might have (Like the Monkees binge I'm on right now, thanks to Merlin.). Nothing feeds into this obsession more than this Mainstream-o-meter, which compares your top 30 artists with everyone else. My results are skewed due to a couple audiobooks and a few artists that really shouldn't be ranked as high on my list as they actually are currently.
Interesting observations that illustrate an obvious "last.fm users vs. the rest of the real world" bias:
- Elliot Smith and Sufjan Stevens are more "mainstream" than The Beach Boys.
- The Beatles and Radiohead are both above 100%, they are so mainstream.
- Tom Waits, Van Morrison, Elvis Costello and Tori Amos all seem surprisingly low.
(via Brandon's del.icio.us)