Music-Listening 2.0

Our parents probably owned a dozen albums that carried them through their whole youth – nowadays, I’m already getting bored of the 4392 songs on my harddrive. I’m listening to the same music over and over again… Time for a fresh approach: Web-based collaborative listening! The free service “Last.fm” analyzes your musical taste by tracking iTunes (and for all you interface-masochists: It does WinAmp, too ;). Based on this data, Last.fm gives you a personalized radio-station. Unlike Pandora this personalization is much more than an algorithm: You can join music-groups, build a network of friends with the same musical taste, you can even tag music-collections and choose them as your new radiostation! Charts are generated globally, on a specific country (I always wondered what people are listening in Azerbaijan g), on a specific band, tag, usergroup. If I like a new song from my personal stream, I click on the bandname to get their tags, usergroups, best songs – well, you get the idea: everything’s interconnected :) The idea of personalized music is not new, but Last.fm is probably the first service which really kicks ass doing it – check it out!