Utoo said:
While I understand the sentiment, I don't think it's quite fair to assume that the majority of people out there using Last.FM are casual fans that only have a few singles. Looking at your signature, GG, I see that you currently have a Roger Waters song on there. Surely, you have most or all of Roger's & Pink Floyd's catalogs? I don't doubt it. In fact, nearly 100% of the people here who have shots of Last.FM on their signatures are audiophiles. I don't see the basis for assuming that the vast majority of Last.FM users are casual fan imbeciles and greatly unlike the Last.FM users who grace Interference.
I base what I say on what I see, not on assumptions.
My sister hates most U2 songs, but she enjoys Beautiful Day. That's the only U2 song she has on her computer. At university, I usually hop onto iTunes to see what everyone else is listening to on my university's wireless network. That library sharing feature for wireless networks is pretty cool by the way, I encourage anyone who uses the Internet at school or in cafes to check it out, as you can find a lot of stuff you've never heard before. Anyway. I've seen quite a few people with U2 in their iTunes libraries, and they're all nothing but the hits. And only a few of them at that. One guy had Beautiful Day, Vertigo, SYCMIOYO, Stuck, and One in his library. Another had all of HTDAAB and Best of 1980-1990. I haven't come across a single person yet with the full catalogue or even close to the full catalogue. I bet you if I went up to these same people and asked them to name a song from Zooropa, they wouldn't be able to. Hence, these people are NOT representative of what U2 fans think about the band's music. I don't want to argue over what constitutes a fan. But in my view, a person who doesn't own at least 50% of a band's catalogue can't call him or herself a fan. You can't be a U2 fan if you've only heard Beautiful Day and Vertigo. And for a significant number of Last.fm users, this is likely the case. So are the listening habits of these people able to determine whether or not U2's last two albums are of comparable quality to everything they've done prior to 2000? Of course not.
Case in point, the top listener for Beautiful Day last week:
click to view her overall album charts. The only album this person has ever listened to on Last.fm is ATYCLB.
As I've said before, Last.fm charts of popular artists
are dominated by extremely casual fans/downloaders. Only obscure bands and obscure artists have a better representation of the general and hardcore fanbase. You brought up Roger Waters - his top twenty chart, excluding the live Pink Floyd tracks, is representative of what his fans believe to be his best solo work. You can't say the same thing about U2 and other similarly successful bands/artists, because there are outside factors affecting the charts - namely huge singles and the downloading that goes with them.
So really, I think using Last.fm charts to question the 'vocal' members of Interference isn't the right way to go about it.
GG 
??
All I stated was that I was quite surprised by the abundance of people who seem to dislike these last two albums. At times, the negativity towards these last two releases seems so dominant, that it almost seemed a backlash from fans was coming. But this Last.FM site suggests that this negativity is really coming from a few people on this site and doesn't reflect the opinions of most people. 
