04.25.03
Yahoo Launch Addict
With a rating for Lullaby (Extended Mix) by The Cure my ratings level on
Yahoo Launch just jumped over the 5,000 ratings mark from ‘Fanatic’ to Addict. The ratings break down as follows:
Artists – 830 rated
Albums – 1,247 rated
Songs – 2,932 rated
I calculate I have rated 1,609 items since I made my initial Launchcast entry on the blog: The Lion’s Den: Get to know new music on launchcast on December 20th of last year or 12.8 ratings a day.
It feels like Launchcast has become more intelligent about the music it selects for me. Some of this could be due to the large library of music it knows I like and plays for me as well as the very large amount of music I have told it never to play again. This could also be due to better tweaking of the genre categories ratings. Whatever the case I am very happy with the Launchcast service.
I still do not know if anyone has ever tried to listen to My Station on Launchast. At one point I tried to use the new Music Influencers feature to discover new music, but found that other people’s stations were full of music I did not want to listen to (mostly modern rock, which I believe is about as imaginative as making photocopies of advertisements and calling it art). Whether anyone else ever makes use of my Launcast station or not, I use it daily and would be devastated if I lost it.
This is the list of my top 60 artists according to Launch. I think it is pretty accurate, with the exception of some artists like Dahlia which are not listed in their directory:
Afro Celt Sound System
Aria
Dead Can Dance
Deep Forest
Delerium
Enigma
Orbital
Pink Martini
Kraftwerk
Rabbit In The Moon
Cowboy Junkies
Lisa Gerrard
Hooverphonic
Juno Reactor
Moloko
Poe
Ashley MacIsaac
Psykosonik
Art Of Noise
Capercaillie
EBN
Billy Idol
Keoki
Kruder & Dorfmeister
The Orb
Delirium
Sasha & Digweed
Banco De Gaia
DJ Shadow
Soul II Soul
Tears For Fears
Industrial Monk
Information Society
Alpha
Sisters Of Mercy
Esthero
Paul Van Dyk
Leftfield
Rammstein
Adiemus
Black Tape For A Blue Girl
The Creatures
The Crystal Method
Disposable Heroes Of Hiphopracy
Duran Duran
Front 242
Love Spirals Downwards
Massive Attack
Portishead
The Prodigy
Gabrielle Roth
This Mortal Coil
Alex Gopher
Loreena McKennitt
Land Of The Blind
The Avalanches
Martyn Bennett
Fiona Apple
The Tao Of Groove
Hive
Leopoldo said,
April 30, 2003 at 3:02 pm
Just got this email from the folks over at LAUNCHcast. It was very nice to get
>Subject: Congrats on your addiction…
> …to LAUNCHcast.
>
> I just read your weblog post that you have reached the “Addict” level on
> LAUNCHcast. I’m glad to hear that you’re enjoying the service. Keep me
> posted with any feedback you have, and keep spreading the good word.
>
> Thanks,
> Todd Beaupre
> Product Manager, LAUNCHcast
> http://launch.yahoo.com/launchcast
Mo said,
July 8, 2003 at 12:52 pm
I’m not sure I want to pay for LAUNCH. When I listened to the free service the music was much better than when I logged in. And as soon as I would rate an artist that I liked it started playing all of their crap music too. For example, I like Waylon Jennings. If I listen to the classic country station they play some of his best songs. Once I logged in and rated him with a 100 they started playing a bunch of shizznit he did like some stupid kids album he did in the 80’s. And it rarely plays Johnny Cash anymore (less than once every five hours) even though I gave him a 100 and a ton of his albums and songs 100’s.
postal code said,
July 24, 2003 at 6:22 am
Just wanna say hi to you after reading your blog.
Leopoldo said,
July 24, 2003 at 9:56 am
Well, Launchast just put a major damper on our relationship. When I went to listen to my music this morning I was greeted by a message that said that they were restricting me to listening to the audio stream in mono, with no ability to skip a song I don’t like and with more commercials unless I begin shelling out some money. It looks to me like I will be abandoning what I thought was a very cool system. Alas, another great Internet luxury goes the way of commercialism and out of my world.
whois said,
August 22, 2003 at 6:24 pm
Count me in please.
Matt said,
January 20, 2005 at 6:37 pm
Dude, it’s 3 bucks a month. Get over yourself. Not everything in this world is free. If it meant that much to you, you’d pay for it.