This site is old news to most by now, but I don’t know enough people using it so I thought I would post about it for all of those who are unfamiliar with the service.
You can build a Last.fm music profile using two methods: listening to your personal music collection on [insert music player of choice here...iPod and/or iTunes for me] with an Audioscrobbler plug-in, or by listening to the Last.fm internet radio service, using the Last.fm player. If you allow a song to play until the end using either method, those songs are added to a log that generates your weekly/overall top artist/track charts and calculates the artists for your "Last.fm suggests" recommendations. Your personal user page also displays your recently played tracks, and your neighbors- users with musical tastes similar to you.
The new Last.fm offers the ability to tag music, something that I haven’t really tried out yet. Tagging music takes effort and the beauty behind Audioscrobbler for me was that I didn’t have to do anything but install a plug-in and listen to iTunes as usual. If I was interested in checking out something new I could go to the Audioscrobbler website and it would list recommendations. The Decemberists are one of the first bands I can remember discovering through Audioscrobbler.
I could go on forever about the many other fascinating features on this site, but I don’t have the time or knowledge to do so, so I’ll just have to let you see for yourself. The point is, this is a site you should check out. Download the plug-in and forget about it. Come back in 6 months, look at what you’ve been listening to, and maybe discover something new. If you have the time, listen to Last.fm internet radio - it’s better than any internet radio I’ve ever listened to. It’s amazing how much you can learn about yourself from a collaborative filtering algorithm.
Check it out. Add me as a friend. Join the Clemson Tigers group (if you're a Tiger), or some other group. Do what you want. Let me know what you think.
