The New York Times has a great piece called To Know Me, Know My IPod (and yes Scobie, this applies to any MP3 player):
Kenneth Chang is a colleague who recently sold me his iPod. After just a few months, he needed one with more storage.
The beauty of the thing is that it lets you carry all of your music with you, thousands of songs. It’s like having a radio station that plays the music of my life: WJHN.
After buying the slightly scuffed block of plastic and metal, I was ready to load my songs. But then I stopped. Ken had left more than 3,000 songs on the iPod, and a quick scroll through them showed that there were a lot I didn’t own, and many artists I’d never listened to, like a band called “The The,” with a wonderfully brutal song, “Armageddon Days Are Here (Again).”
And so I listened.
I like to think I present an innocuous, well-socialized face to the world – nothing for anyone to worry about. But if you know that I like the Canadian band Moxy Fruvous (raucous, four-part, leftist harmonies) then you know a little something else about me. You’ve gotten a new data point. If you have all of my songs, the points coalesce to form a picture, an intimate one that doesn’t quite match the public persona.
I like Moxy Fruvous, and I like my iPod, but mostly I think my iPod would tell you that I am a big fan of They Might Be Giants.