Mrs. Jackson was, and is, better known by her birth name of Lisa Marie Presley. While she has recorded three full-length albums to date, her former husband (since deceased) had slightly more success in the music industry. While I don't think I've ever listened to a Lisa Marie Presley song, I have listened to Michael Jackson songs 158 times since 2007.
How do I know this?
Because I have gotten myself into ruts at times.
For several years after I graduated from college, I would repeatedly go to the Jack in the Box on Archibald and Arrow and order a side salad with ranch dressing.
For a nearly ten year period, I would record my whereabouts in a series of books. I can't remember how many, but I know it was less than 26; I had an "A" book, but never created a "Z" book.
For almost as long, I played in various Starfleet Commander universes.
And, since Thursday, July 26, 2007, I have repeatedly "scrobbled" many of the songs that I hear. Over 170,000 times.
Why?
Initially, scrobbling songs on last.fm allowed me to hear the songs. In those days, last.fm actually hosted the songs, and I was able to listen to the songs for free. A couple of years later, I even hosted six of my own songs on last.fm itself.
Then, over the years, last.fm reduced its functionality while other services such as Spotify increased theirs. I can't directly listen to songs on last.fm any more, but I can record ("scrobble") the songs that I listen to on Spotify, Bandcamp, YouTube, and other services...sometimes. My Bandcamp and YouTube scrobbles are dependent upon a Chrome extension, which works fine in Windows, but doesn't work on iOS. And many services don't support scrobbling at all.
So one morning while I was driving to work, Spotify scrobbling away on my iPhone, I asked myself, "What benefit am I receiving from giving last.fm all of my scrobbling data?" I could identify the benefits from giving certain data (such as this post) to Google, Facebook, and other services, but the value proposition for last.fm has disappeared over the years. What's more, my devotion to last.fm has led me to shun other non-scrobbling services for no good reason.
Often when I get into these ruts, I suddenly snap out of them. One day I didn't get a side salad at Jack in the Box. One day I put my book down and stopped recording where I was. One day I let my planets in the Starfleet Commander universes all die. These actions gave me a sense of freedom.
Well, after listening to one last song (the top one on thie list), I disabled my Chrome extension and turned off scrobbling in my Spotify app.
I may not keep scrobbling turned off forever. After all, I quit Foursquare at one point just to join it again a while later.
But now I have the freedom to listen to songs and not worry about the documentation of them.
