I Link You

the evolution of music sharing

So I wanted to say how much I love last.fm. This is by far the best site I've ever used to share my music with friends and get recommendations on music that I would never have known to exist. When I first downloaded the software onto my computer some time ago, I didn't know what to expect. I knew it was a social tagging software for music, but that was about it.

Last.fm records all the songs that I have listened to then presents recommendations based on your tastes. These recommendations includes users who share similar music tastes, artists you may like, personalized radio streams, and top 10 charts to name a few. There is no cost to sign up and use the software, but you do need to contribute a small amount if you want to use the extra goodies.

With all these funny names such as scrobbling and shoutbox, there are tons of social things to do on this site. You can attempt to be a top fan for your favorite artist or band. You can customize your own radio station with your most played tracks or your favorite all-time tracks. You can read and write on the wiki pages of your favorite artists and bands. You can tag as many tracks as you want. You can also create and manage groups to support your favorite artists and bands.

By the way, iLike is a similar program but it's a plug-in for iTunes. I'm just waiting for Mac to make a similar plug-in and make iLike obsolete.

posted by Koh @ 1:04 PM