People tend to assume that, since I spend much of my life immersed in one genre of pop culture, I must be, at least to some degree, hip to the world of pop culture as a whole.

Which, sadly, is not the case. While I do, obviously, follow the film world closely, I tend to follow it from the making movies side, rather than from the star obsession / People Magazine side, leaving me embarrassingly behind on whether Brad and Jennifer are together or not at any given moment.

Beyond my own industry, things go downhill quickly, leaving me clueless as to new television shows, recently released novels, or hot new indie bands. In the case of TV, I’m somewhat happy not to know the latest reality hit. With books, as most of my friends tend to be serious bibliophiles, simply watching what they’re toting along for subway reading is enough to make sure I catch any fast-spreading paperback meme before I’m too distressingly behind the curve.

But music. That’s a tough one. I do, I believe, know a number of people with really good musical taste. But unlike reading choices, the contents of their iPods aren’t nearly as easily gleaned from casual observation. So, instead, I tend to follow the offhand comments of my most music-savvy friends, snapping up the names of bands and albums they mention like a dog hungrily collecting table scraps. Which works. But in a slow and haphazard way that leaves me to miss entirely bands and musicians I’d really like, and to search through the large number of mentioned groups that aren’t even vaguely up my alley.

Here, as in so many other areas, it seems I may be rescued by technology. Rescued, in fact, by technology I discovered and installed several months back, but then promptly forgot about.

Like with most things in the world of music, I may be one of the very last to discover AudioScrobbler. But, on the off chance that some small number of you readers lag even further behind, I highly, highly recommend that you download the plugin for whichever audio player you use.

In short, AudioScrobbler watches what you listen to, compares it to what other people listen to, and make recommendations based on other artists people with similar tastes are playing frequently. Last night, on AudioScrobbler’s advice, I downloaded a slew of Denison Witmer, Sufjan Stevens and Rufus Wainwright. And, frankly, I was shocked by how much I liked them all.

With those successes, I’ll be checking in on AudioScrobbler’s recommendations every month or two, and acquiring some new CDs. I may not be any hipper or better tied in to the indie music world, but, with a bit of help, it looks like at least I’ll be able to fake it.