Last.fm and Xobni…music AND lyrics for personal knowledge management

I’ve been reading and considering some of the distinctions between information management and knowledge management lately.  It’s a common theme – how to turn information into real knowledge.  Let’s look at two major areas of personal knowledge management – music and email.

Several years ago, a good friend of mine introduced me to Audioscrobbler (now Last.fm).  The software sits behind the scenes on my PC or Windows Mobile device, tabulating what songs I play, and synchronizing back to last.fm (it also works on fruit-based (Apple) MP3 players.)  I originally started using it to help discover new music -- since I’m well past college, I need all the help I can to find new music (e.g. U2, The Beatles, the Rolling Stones or Muse, the Fratellis, Gaslight Anthem).  

There are now Facebook and desktop widgets so every visitor to my Facebook profile can see what I'm listening to.  (I don’t think anyone else really needs this information, but it’s there.)

Xobni, in concept, is similar.  Xobni (that's “Inbox” backwards) integrates with your corporate email inbox, and tabulates who, where and when you send or receive messages.  The information is stored locally – there no central repository for Xobni.

Both services, then, compile a time series of events about me, tracking attributes like artist-album-song or recipient-domain.   However, I’ve found that Xobni’s analytics give me much greater insight than Last.fm.  I can use Xobni to find out where and when I need to be more responsive in my communications, and where I do a good job.  Xobni makes it pretty easy to figure out not just which domains receive the most email traffic form me, but the top people in each domain.

For strictly personal reasons [my top 100 songs of the decade] I’m trying to explore my music cabinet in greater detail.  Let think about a similar question: here are my top 10 artists of all time on Last.fm.  Which are my top songs for Spoon – is it all two or three songs, or are the songs well dispersed with their discography?  Unfortunately, this isn’t a question Last.fm can answer.

· 1    Spoon    294

· 2    U2    285

· 3    The Beatles    271

· 4    The Police    225

· 5    Fountains of Wayne    211

· 6    Wilco    204

· 7    Radiohead    174

· 7    Coldplay    174

· 9    Steely Dan    169

· 10    Chris McNulty    154

· 11    Foo Fighters    153

· 12    Pixies    146

http://www.last.fm/user/cmcnulty2000/charts?subtype=artists

However, Xobni can show me the aggregate hourly traffic to and from each of my contacts:

I would love to be able to distinguish my music trends are in the car vs. at home, morning vs.,. evening, or even over a custom data range.  Unfortunately, I’m locked in to day ranges of 7, 90, 180, 365, or all time.  Year over year (who don’t I listen to), under-listened genres.  Why are my top 12 artists and songs of all time so widely divergent?  All good questions.  But that’s fundamental to (self) knowledge management, and why Xobni does a much better job at knowledge management than Last.fm.

Don’t get me wrong – I use Last.fm meticulously, and study my charts closely.  Its reliable, easy, and fun.  I just want more.