Thursday 10 February 2011

Salmon spooked by Duchovny, bossed by Burgess

For a long time Mister Salmon's Last.fm 'Similar Artists' were dominated by earnest-looking hip-hoppers. A very disappointing association, probably, for all concerned. This was because Mister Salmon's music was tagged with the term 'producer' and on Last.fm this means 'hip-hop producer'. Getting everything re-tagged more appropriately took a few weeks. In February 2011 the effort bore fruit.

Funny fruit.

After a recent update, there are one or two almost relevant Similar Artists. And a whole new set of wild cards.

At no. 8 in terms of similarity is actor David Duchovny, who is tagged as 'thinker' and 'slept with winona ryder'. Of course, Mister Salmon is a 'thinker', too... but poor Mr Duchovny has only 47 listeners to Mister Salmon's 200. He may have spent too much time sleeping with actresses and not enough making sure his two tracks on Last.fm were meaningfully tagged. At no. 23 is Lynne Truss. I like her book about being a sports writer, she's funny. I'm almost sorry that, with 167 listeners, she too is trailing Mister Salmon. However, literary titan Anthony Burgess, with 685 listeners – at no. 40 in terms of similarity – has Mister Salmon whupped. Respect.

You'll have guessed that one of Mister Salmon's new tags is 'writer'. None refer to liaisons with actresses, but he did watch a lot of the X-Files and quite likes Gillian Anderson.

Spooky (see what I did there?).

http://www.last.fm/music/mister+salmon
Snack food advisory (tweaked Kit Kat 2010)