June 14, 2004
Curious George: Playlists.
Why are MP3 playlists all over the Web? Google finds countless thousands of hits. What ends does posting a list with 1000+ songs serve, besides the fact that one simply can? Just curious... I seem to run up against tons of such superfluous content when I'm searching for music details.
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I've been wondering that myself.
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I'd guess that people want to share their personal taste in music, somehow. Or in the case of filesharing hits, they're just really stupid, and the playlist file is in the directory they've told the shareprogram to use as source. /shrug
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Along with the "because they can" answer goes the "many MP3 players make it incredibly easy to publish such lists to websites" point..
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Winamp can generate an HTML playlist of all your MP3s for you. It's easy to do... even by accident. Yep, pretty useless. *on preview: what scartol said. :p
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Maybe for a somewhat archaic version of a "What I'm currently listening to" section in someones website or blog. But mostly pointless I think.
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Only pirates searching for material to pirate accidentally find such lists. I can see rolypolyman's patch eye from all the way over here! Sadly, I think most of the people here are quite right in saying that it's a strange combination of accident and vanity. Accidental vanity? Sounds like a research paper waiting to be written!
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You're so vain, I bet you think this playlist's about you... CarlySimonFilter
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I love Audioscrobbler not because it publicizes my stats to the world, but because it compares them to other audioscrobbler users who, based upon their similarity to me, I can then use to find new music.
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Only pirates who have searched for material to pirate in days of yore can so easily recognize other such pirates... that accidently find MP3 playlists while searching for "music details". I can see The Sacred and Profane's peg leg from all the way over here! /Yarrrr!
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also probably a holdover from filesharing via anonymous ftp - you can't upload anything i already have, and unless you upload you can't download. that was always my take on the lists. not that i know anything about downloading music, though. arrrrr.... (ahoy all ye pirates)
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Actually, I posted my WinAmp playlist once. I doubt that very many had the reason I did, but there was one outside of vanity or accident. My reason was being a bad influence. "Hey Mom, you sure you don't want to put on that eye patch and wave that cutlass around? Just look at the musical booty you could have, if you just turned pirate!" It backfired a little. She has a dialup connection, and wanted me to start sending her music she recognized. Guess that'll teach me not to post lists, won't it?