Audioscrobbling (last.fm)

Member Name: wxcat

Product:	last.fm
Date:	17/09/09 (39 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Keep a history of every song you listen to

Disadvantages: None

I've been a long time addicted fan of Last.fm and when it used to be Audioscrobbler before that. It is a superb concept and is kind of a music addicts answer to a social networking site. If you log in your last.fm profile it shows you every track you've listened to on your pc. You do need to download the Last.fm program so it can get plug-in's for your music player of choice; it supports Windows Media Player, iTunes, and Winamp among others. Once you've done this it sits quietly in your Taskbar keeping tabs on all the music you listen to and posting it on your last.fm profile.

You're own personal music taste builds up on there, and you can look at other members and see what "music compatibility" they have with you. This can be an excellent way of meeting new people that have the same tastes as you. I find I have I have very few people who have a "Super" compatibility, a fair few with Good or Very Good compatibility.

All this is free. Recently you can listen to previews of songs on other people's profiles, you usually get the first 30 seconds of the song, but there are full songs on there. I have scrobbled over 100,000 tracks now on Last.fm, but I have been a avid fan for several years! I've found new friends and found the profiles of my own friends and can see what they like listening to.

When you're listening to music, if you bring up the Last.fm program it will show you the song, the album it's from and the artist you are listening to. It brings up information about the artist, and links to more information and where you can buy the album and more songs by the artist.

You can now link your Last.fm profile into your Facebook profile, and have a application visible on your profile showing the last few tracks that you've listened to, not the best made application for Facebook unfortunately and several other music programs like ilike and spotify have capitalised on the market a bit. It doesn't show the full functionality of the program and it has remained as a little known gem on the internet.

For music fans this is an absolute must, even for the casual listener it's worth a look.

Summary: Last.fm the home for music lovers!!