Category — #04 FØØ Music

Anyone still looking for a Christmas gift?  A free Christmas gift?  Well, here’s an easy one: go onto that person’s computer, into Windows Media Player or iTunes or whatever program they use to listen to music, and then sort by Play Count.  That will sort all the music by how many times they’ve listened to each song.  From there you can hit “burn” and it will burn the top 80 minutes on that list onto a CD; and voila!, in 10 minutes you have created their new favorite CD.

In the summer of 2000 I discovered the Play Count column.  I was in college, heading home for the Christmas break and was excited to show my sisters and parents all the neat music I had discovered since I had seen them last.  I needed music for myself and music to show them, and that turned out to be 20 CDs I was bringing home.  I didn’t want to take up suitcase space for that, so I went into Windows Media Player, sorted by playcount, and burned a CD of my most heard music that year.  Because it was the Fall of 2000, I scribbled “FØØ” with a black sharpie on the disc.  This quickly became my favorite mix-CD.  My friends wanted copies, and their friends wanted copies.  Eventually there became a ring of people who referred to the CD, and eventually the process, as “foo.”  And so we are here, on the weekend I am burning “foo seven,” spelled FØØ7.  In honor of this is my business of the week, which currently resides at http://www.foomusic.com/.  I will list my 6 F00 Cds, and each will have links to buy the corresponding song.  The F00 website will add value to the market foremost by being a fascinating concept people will no doubt imitate, and by facilitating their purchase of some good music on the net.