Epic Nobody.

*Full disclosure: I started working on this blog in early August. Woops.

Ever since I was a little kid I’ve been obsessed with music. I remember when I’d be riding in the car with my dad I’d try to sing along with every song, even if I had never heard the song before in my life. There was of course the period where I only listened to “Christian” music as I thought this was what I had to do. I tried to find “cool” bands that fit the label, but looking back this doesn’t really exist. Don’t try to argue this point with me. For every “great Christian band” you present me, I will present you a much more talented band.  That’s not to say that those bands don’t have their place, but don’t act like there’s no good music outside of them. Sorry, I didn’t see that tangent coming.

In high school my eyes were opened to so many new and awesome bands that I think my brain temporarily shut down. I listened to as much music as I could and quickly found some favorites that have stayed with me today. Since then my music library has exploded to over 15,700 songs and become something that defines me.

Last summer I decided to give a service called Last.fm a shot. Last.fm essentially looks at your iTunes library and records how many times you’ve played artists, songs and albums. I love looking at analytics and infographics so I love having this information about my iTunes library. Once Last.fm grabs all your existing iTunes data it depends on you using a scrobbler while you use iTunes. I kind of forgot to do this for about three months. In about October of 2010 I started using the scrobbler constantly and I started to pay more attention to my listening habits on Last.fm. The scrobbler will record what you listen to on your iPod every time you plug in so it really covers everything.

I started to look at my top artists every week or so just to see who was in it and how it was changing. It didn’t shock me to see the artists/bands at the top that were there, but I started to track who would be the first to cross the 1000 play threshold. It was a close competition between John Mayer and Jason Mraz. Which made sense to me because they both had new albums out shortly after I got my laptop (“Where the Light Is” and “We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things.”) and for the first few months I didn’t do much besides listen to these albums as I was building up my iTunes library. Both artists were within 30 plays this summer when the Last.fm scrobbler began to act up. I did some searching and found a replacement scrobbler called iScrobbler (go figure). iScrobbler started the whole process over because it kept data internally as well as on the site. This was when I noticed something interesting, I had four artists that had already broken the 1000 play threshold. Apparently I did a lot of iTunes listening (mainly William Fitzsimmons) the summer of 2010 when I wasn’t using the scrobbler.

Here’s a look at my top 15 artists as of August 1, 2011:

Every artist on that list has had an impact on my life and I could write a super long post about what way each of those are. I’ll leave that for another time, if ever. 

So what’s the point of this post? Well, in a way I guess it gives a glimpse into who I am as a person and the huge effect music has on my life. I don’t walk to class without my headphones in, I don’t do any homework without music (regardless of how distracting it might be). 

I’m also trying to become more of a blogger. I guess you can say I’m semi-inspired by my good friend Robert Murphy, or RamHatter as I call him. I should be launching my site, jordanjohnson.tv, in a few weeks or so. I’m excited about the possibilities there and about working with some great friends to make the best website possible. 

So, stick around. Follow me through this journey of my last 9 months of college and the new challenges ahead of me. I’ll follow you on your journey.