Thousandapologies

In the last couple of weeks Last.fm seems to become a bit more popular in the office. I think Blondie was the first one to introduce it into the office but now more people are starting to enjoy it. Last.fm is, in scientific terms, a personal recommender system for music; thus, it basically looks at what you listen and recommends new (similar) music to you. Great for discovering new music and new bands. As a total music addict I’ve been using it already for quite some time, ever since Pandora, a similar system, was closed down for European listeners. Even still I like Pandora more, because it basically had better recommendations, but Last.fm is also nice, although the streaming breaks down from time to time. I included a screenshot for your enjoyment

One of the things that really speaks for Last.fm is that it also collects information (called scrobbling) about what you play in other players, like winamp, iTunes and for example your iPod, and uses this to improve your personal profile describing your music taste. Another advantage over Pandora is that the users themselves tag the music (in a way similar to del.icio.us) which really makes it easy to find music, also using non-standard search terms. I also like the descriptions for each artist being displayed when a track is played in the Last.fm player, with handy links to similar music or similar artists. Also, Last.fm displays information about listeners that have similar musical taste (your neighbourhood) and you can add friends to your profile, to see how similar your musical taste is.

So go and try it out and drop me a mail if you like it, so we can compare our musical taste and advice each other about new music. I already bought a couple of cds based on recommendations Pandora gave me, some artists I even never heard of, this is the perfect way of discovering new music. Of course, this way still comes after borrowing cds from your friends or listening to some music together, enjoying some nice beers…