Last.fm: Upon hearing an incredibly irritating track on the radio, I Googled it (Mystery Jets - Greatest Hits) to see if anybody else hated it and its egregious name-dropping. Apparently not, but I discovered this Last.fm account, whose usefulness makes up for having to listen to that song.

Triple J: Oz music month or something happening. I'm ready to tut tut at the J Award. Here's a somewhat worrying article that pretty much confirms my theory that they promote Australian crap that just sounds like better overseas bands. Edit: Yay, they're playing a Royal Headache song.

Spotify: A guy in my feed seems to be listening to some kind of "A-Z of Pitchfork". In alphabetical order, even. Sometime last week he started listening to Arcade Fire, then Bon Iver, Cults, Death Cab, and Grimes. After that, it seems that he gave up and listened to Marina and the Diamonds. More entertaining than my Facebook feed!

Philip Glass: I listened to Music In 5ths. I don't think I will ever need or want to listen to it again.

Ben Salter: His album won Album of the Year at the QLD Music Awards. I finally got around to listening the whole thing, and yes, it deserves it. (I feel like I don't say that often.)

Homebrand 1: Hey, remember them? They released a new song. No oohs + no Mumford = a step in the right direction. But the glock reminded me of another song by a guy who went to our odd network of schools. He's doing pretty well now, with this song winning a QLD Music Award.

When I was in high school, I heard some boys in a band say about the music teacher, "His music taste must kick all of our asses!" I laughed to myself, because at that moment, he unfortunately decided to play Angus & Julia Stone over the speakers.

Last week, I was waylaid at Central Station by some girls selling stuff for Pink Ribbon Day. One complimented me on my Regina Spektor shirt, and the other (who was in my stats class) told her that I had great taste in music. Then a guy in my chem lab congratulated me for listening to Amanda Palmer. Cool?

What do people really mean when they say "good taste"? I've come to see it as just another way of saying that their taste is similar to yours. It's not often that you say another person has better taste, because we all like to think that we're the best, right?

My ideal, I suppose, is someone who listens to as many different things as they can. A person like that could have a conversation with almost anybody, and that's useful.

A very, very old draft.

Messandnoise & Crikey on Melba Records, and Crikey on performing arts audience stagnating.

Lots of people wondering why classical music gets government funding while pop/rock doesn't.

I don't think popular music should be funded. It just doesn't need to be. There are middle-class kiddies all over the place who are able to save up enough money to record their own material and release it. When pop music does get money (like through various awards), it goes to artists who don't really need it because they're already popular. I assume the same would/does happen with government funding.

A huge issue would be who is going to decide who gets a grant. One could argue that Triple J already serves as a government funded leg-up for pop acts, through their Unearthed program. The hit rate for that is dismal, with most winners not even making it far enough to have a Wikipedia article.

Funding classical is a bit like spending money on preserving artefacts in museums or saving endangered animals. That crap is going to disintegrate from exposure to oxygen/die out because it refuses to have sex. But we still make an effort, right? Right?

ABC Classic 100: 5 out of eight predictions correct, 7/10 if you count the "other things by those composers". Cool. Suite Bergamasque (ie. Clair de Lune) juuuust missed it at no. 11, Massenet and Delibes at 14 and 15 respectively.

Spotify: Spotify is horrible and seems to pick the worst things you've listened to to put in your top artists/tracks. The Pitchfork disciples therefore have theirs hidden, but I can still see using Swarm.fm. You can't win. Amusingly, the flamboyant Nicki Minaj fan is now listening to Bon Iver. That's what uni does to you, I guess.

CDs: Counted my CDs and marked them as owned on RYM. There's a few I haven't marked, but I don't know what they are! I also felt a bit sad looking at Pixies and Talking Heads albums, because I doubt that I'll want to touch them again for a while.

Festivals: My white, upper-middle class, Triple J listener friends always complain of drunk bogans at festivals. Looking at photos though, they could easily be mistaken for drunken bogans. I bet the people they complain about are just other middle-class kids.

Identity: I have learnt from conversations in my chemistry lab that people actually do use the term "Triple J" to describe their music taste. A lot of information conveyed in one word and one letter. I am not ignorant enough to say "everything", so I guess I'll go with "elitist", like one guy in this article.

Kyle Quarles - Indictment of the designation of classical music as “relaxing”
"It’s because when we use the word relaxing, we’re describing the effect of listening to non-sensical syntax." THISTHISTHIS. It applies to other kinds of music as well, of course. I used to fall asleep to Kid A because it sounded like nonsense to me. I know people who can't sleep with any music at all because they absolutely must analyze it.

James Rhodes - At last: the Classic Brit Awards exposed as a sickening crime against classical music 
Interesting to see that awards shows are crap for all kinds of music. I tried listening to some of that popera stuff, and it made me realize that I've been too harsh on everything else. I'm sorry, ARIAs. You're all right. (And apparently my dislike of Einaudi is not unreasonable.)

ABC Classic 100 - Music of France
This is happening this week. I think I've missed all the good stuff that normally hangs around the lower end of these countdowns.

Everywhere else I've seen on the internet about this has the same typos and missing track and album names, because they just copy/pasted from the ARIA Twitter. They've also left out the Fine Arts winners. Get it together, Australians. (Though I am not bothering with artisans because eh.) So here you go, all on one page. I will listen to all of it. ALL OF IT. Then I will return and add appropriate notes to this entry.

FINE ARTS WINNERS
Best Classical Album: Sydney Symphony & Vladimir Ashkenazy – Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius
Best Jazz Album: Sarah McKenzie - Close Your Eyes
Best Original Soundtrack/Cast/Show Album: Triple J – Tribute To Nick Cave (4/10)
Best World Music Album: Joseph Tawadros – Concerto Of The Greater Sea (7/10)

I was recommended this song. Some people say it's a crappy pop song, probably because it got big enough for this and this to happen. One possible interpretation of the song is that it's about drugs. There is definitely a sinister undertone to it, like the lyrics, "you only reap just what you sow", but then a decent amount of people seem to think it's a simple love song, so I don't know. The ambiguity is my favourite thing about it. The bizarre chord progression of the verse is something too.

I haven't focused my energies into liking anything since that song, actually. It's as if I don't like anything unless I'm ordered to, and nobody with the authority has rec'd me recently. I tried making a schedule of critically acclaimed shit to listen to. You'd think the internet hivemind would be a good enough authority, but then I realized that I didn't have anybody to impress.

Nobody to impress? All right, I'm going to listen to Lana Del Rey demos on Tumblr while RainyMood.mp3 plays on VLC.

But even that, I like because of someone else.