All of these music listening tracking services are pretty cool. I'm a Last.FM user, personally, though I don't really utilize the social networking aspects of it. Much like Twitter, it's a thing that really only would be useful if all of your friends were already using it. Since I mostly work in front of my computer all day, I listen to a lot of stuff, and I listen toa lot of new music. Ben Killen and I have come up with the perfect music sales model for us. Let us listen to something 3 times, all the way through. Full quality. But then if we want to listen to it beyond that, you have to buy it... let's say 50 cents a track (or less). I listen to a bunch of stuff out of curiosity, but often only a couple of times. There just haven't been that many albums that have capture my attention in the last few years. The Arcade Fire's releases have done that. Spoon has done that. I really like the new Death Cab for Cutie a lot too.

So there's this cool service called LastGraph that will import your listening data from Last.FM and do this cool visualization of the data. You can see how your listening trends have shifted throughout the year. It's really cool if you're like me and you listen to a lot of stuff. The image above is my listening for May. The end of it reflects me going to camp.

Want to see my listening poster for the entire year? Click here.

Getting airplay so far this month:

Aimee Mann - @#%&*! Smilers
I've been a huge fan of Aimee Mann for a long time.. She'll be at the Alabama Theater in Tuscaloosa on Sept. 4. Anyone interested in going? Check out Thirty-One Today and Freeway.

Fleet Foxes - S/T
For fans of My Morning Jacket. This is a really solid debut.

My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges
Speaking of MMJ, their new album is really great too.. Doesn't sound anything like a My Morning Jacket album though. The reverb drenched vocals are gone. They're doing a lot of genre experimentation. But it's another great release. If you're a fan of their classic sound, see Fleet Foxes above.

Old 97's - Blame It On Gravity
I've been a fan of the Old 97's since college... they remind me a bit of the Connells. Great band, should've received more recognition than they have. Their last album was 2004's Drag It Up, which I think I listened to about 3 times (see my music sales model above :-) ). It just wasn't that good. This is a return to form.