Last.fm -- they're calling themselves the "Social Music Revolution." Has anyone gotten in on this? If not, it's nifty little site that is pretty much the one of the coolest sites out there for finding new music. It allows you to share your musical tastes and suggestions with your friends, or you can register for free and download a plug-in that logs what you listen to in whatever programs you use for listening to music (iTunes, Winamp, Window Media). I guess that in itself is not all that exciting, but once you have started logging your music, that's when you can really get the most out of last.fm.
At the very least, your last.fm page functions as a chart of your musical history. So, 4 years from now (if the site is still around, which judging by how popular it has become, it definitely will), if you wanted to see what you were listening to your senior year of high school, all you'd have to do is click on your charts and go back to this week in Jan '07...and bam! You'll see that you've listened to Muse's "Starlight" 500 times or whatever. You can also listen to different radio stations that are crafted just for you. For example, "Recommendation Radio" is a station that plays new music that you might like based on what you've played, or you can just listen to your own radio station made from music and artists that you've already played. Now that, if you're an information archiving nut like myself, is pretty great right there. Again, there's that social aspect to it. You can add friends like on MySpace and leave them comments on their "Shoutboxes" or send them messages. You can also tag music however you want and listen to radio stations based on these tags (like, "Indie" or "Death Metal" whatever you're into...).
Gah! There's just a lot of music to be heard... check it out yourself @
http://www.last.fm
