Thing #6 Mozart and Elvis?

Although I skimmed through the other music sites I took at in-depth look at Last.fm, the first choice on the music list of winners. At first all I saw were current musicians (using that term loosely!) and nothing that I wanted to hear. I put in two names, Mozart and Elvis (I know, they’re diametrically opposed) but I wanted to check what they had about any classical composers (for 6th grade composer reports) as well as 60’s musicians (our school’s Rock ‘n Roll theme next fall). Features I liked best were the tabs: Overview – a short paragraph with general information about each, which, incidentally, could be edited; Videos - I didn’t think there’d be videos for Mozart, but there are! ☺ Going on: Pics – lots of pictures posted by readers; Bio – a more detailed biography, with view, edit and discuss options; Events – both recent and upcoming events, or for old dead guys, performances of their music; Albums – could be bought at Amazon.com or downloaded by iTunes; Listeners – this was interesting – it had pictures/avatars of listeners, both recent and weekly top listeners. When I looked at “RedDeath69” it gave the user’s sex, age, and country, when registered, last seen, how many tracks played, and # of posts, also “my open mind index, from closed to open – she was in the middle with a 141, which made her “open.” This was cool – a pie chart showing her musical taste, with the major music styles shown in % and also color-coded. Also included was a Visitors box, with flagcounter.com which had numbers by the flags of the various countries. That was on the left side; in the middle was a list of “Recently Listened Tracks,” including when she listened. On the right was a “Shoutbox” where readers/listeners could leave a comment for her. There was also a list w/pictures of “Friends” and one for “Neighbors” but you had to sign in to get on those. Oops, I got off track. After Listeners came Similar – a list of composers (for Mozart) and contemporaries (for Elvis), with a note at the bottom, “based on overall listening habits.” Mozart’s “Similar Artists” started out well, with Beethoven, Bach, Haydn, but after the first 10 or so, I’d say they were doing a little reaching! Next was Charts, giving the Top 100 Tracks, then Tags, also must have been editable – ex. “fag with either a judges [sic] gay wig or gay stupid hair.” Must have been someone who didn’t care for hairstyles in the 1600-1700’s! Last one – Journals, where people could blog. Some of the journals were OK, some were really out of it. I definitely wouldn’t allow students to check this out at school!

The only thing I disliked about the site was the annoying little pop-ups. Use for school? Yes, with limitations. Same in the library – students couldn’t have carte blanche to look wherever they wanted. This site might be blocked at school anyway. I do like that the site has audio and visuals of some many of both guys’ works. No wonder this won 1st place in the Web 2.0 Music awards!