I discovered some things yesterday. First up is Music Brainz, a website dedicated to establishing a universal database for identifying music files - CD, MP3, etc. It's a wonderful premise, and they even offer a program you can download that will automatically identify your music files and make corrections to the ID3 tags (data encoded in the music file that includes the artist name, song title, and so on). So, being the curious individual I am, I decided to try it out.

What I didn't know was the program also RENAMES music files according to a default setting. So now all of my files have album names and crap appended on to the filenames, and none of my playlists work anymore. Now comes the tedious task of renaming them all back the way they were. Bummer.

Next up is Audioscrobbler, which makes up for the stupidity of Music Brainz by being really really frickin' cool. Create an account, download a small plugin for your media player, and watch in amazement as your listening habits are catalogued on a website for all the world to see. (The service does not log what kind of file you are listening to, so all you pirates are safe. It only tracks artists and song titles.)

My user name on Audioscrobbler is "stateside", in case you're interested.

The best part is the website will generate all sorts of statistics for you, and even pair you up with other people whose musical tastes match your own. I think it's what the fathers of computing must have imagined as the ultimate purpose for their collective brainchild.