Software politics: Itunes
I don’t mind listening to Steve Reich after Stereolab. Ornette Coleman is not bad after Odd Nosdam. Beans and Beastie Boys are a good couple too… but I can’t stand Daft punk after Daedelus, nor Dizzee Rascal after Dinosaur Jr; and I just hate listening to Cat Power everytime I finish listening to Caribou.
Definitely, I don’t like listening to music alphabetically ordered as Itunes wants me to.
I definitely agree with you. I started noticing that I have a better grip on the albums that are closer to the beginning of the alphabet and not such a good grip on the albums elsewhere. I tried to start listening to albums from different parts of the alphabet, but I am thinking that the only real way to deal with this is a good party shuffle setup.
Allan Odgaard (the developer of the textmate text editor) describes his iTunes setup here: http://macromates.com/blog/archives/2006/05/01/cocoa-radio-interview/
When I had a 1.5Gb mp3 player I had a problem – albums I wanted at a particular moment were not available then. I though a 60Gb ipod would be a solution… However now it’s an even bigger problem – every time i want to listen to something I have to choose from thousands of entries… Eventually I end up listening it in shuffle mode 90% of the time.