I was just looking at my last.fm profile and I noticed how misleading the Top Artists list could be, when not correctly interpreted (and it's pretty easy to get the wrong idea).
Click here. Look at Yoko Kanno, way out in front there. I must really love the eclectic soundtracks of Ms. Kanno, you might think. Well, they're pretty great, but the factor that's pushed her to the top of my top artists list, beyond artists I like as much or better, is how well represented she is in my music collection. She's a prolific composer so I have much more of her music than any other artist's. So (although I do occasionally love me an afternoon of all-Kanno greatness) the major reason for the high ranking is simply that her tracks come up in rotation more often.
Another reason the list can be misleading is that in the case of my list (and, presumably, for most people whose tastes are broad and not deep) it's a perfect example of the long tail phenomenon in statistics. My top 5 artists only account for 17% of my music play. The majority of the music I play is down in the tail. Most of it is chill and downtempo from many different artists (a large amount of it from mixes and compilations, so no one artist is represented very widely) because that's the kind of music I like to listen to most. But just looking at my top 10 you might think I listened to mostly film, TV and anime soundtracks.
So, intuitive though it may seem, don't take the last.fm Top Artists list as a good indicator of somebody's musical tastes.
Postscript: Conversely, for some people it's a pretty good summary; jcm's chart shows that his top 5 artists account for 61% of his played tracks. This would be a good way to estimate and compare the specialisation/broadness of the musical tastes of a group of people.
I do take the Top Artists as a good indicator of a person's musical taste.
If you didn't like Yoko Kanno then you'd skip the tracks (before they got to the half way point and submitted to last.fm).
The fact you have more of that music is irrelevant. You like it. If you stop liking it then you'll stop playing it, and something else will creep to the top.
The longer you use last.fm the more accurate the picture will get!
Strangely enough, the first day I visit the Weyrmount in months and this is what they were talking about :P
Couldn’t agree with you more!! I also found out that San Antonio Spurs poster boy Tony Parker seems like he is planning on to stay in Texas when his contract expires at the end of this yr.
No, anyone dum enough to commit crimes or do drugs or something because he listens to rap music, will probably get into truble anyway.
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What in the world were you thinking when you wrote this?! Get a life, dude.