Friday, 17 January 2014

Let your musical nerdiness roam free (Last.fm)


In 2005, a friend who told me all about this little website called Last.fm. I can't even remember which friend it was, actually, but I can think of several suitably musically nerdy folks who might've been responsible. I cannot thank whoever it was enough.

What is Last.fm?

The people who run the site think of it as ... this (key words: "Last.fm is a music recommendation service").To me, it's a place where:

  • almost all the music I ever listen to (in iTunes, on my iPod, on YouTube) gets recorded for public consumption, and collated into weekly, monthly, 3-monthly, 6-monthly, yearly, and overall charts
  • I find a lot of free music, uploaded to the site courtesy of the artists, and therefore discover a lot of new favourites
  • I find new favourites by clicking on a tag (i.e. chicks with guitars) and checking out all the associated artists
  • I upload my own music so that I might further spread the word about it
  • I regularly meet new music freaks who I can relate to and share my love of music with

music listening habits
Generated on January 17 2014 - My Music Habits
(other stats here)

Trisha's Last.fm stats

I spend a fair amount of my leisure time checking out my own charts (yep, I did say "nerd" didn't I?), and so I can tell you that:

  • My Last.fm library currenly has 2,837 artists in it
  • In the last 7 days I've listened to the Smashing Pumpkins 48 times
  • The last track I "loved" was Green Carnation's "As Life Flows By"
  • I belong to a group called "I Still Buy CDs", which currently has 76,192 members
  • The song I've listened to most since 2005 is Veruca Salt's "Sundown"
  • The last show I went to was Black Sabbath in May 2013
  • Back in June 2005, I listened to Silverchair 55 times
  • In June 2006, Nirvana was at #1 position with 35 listens

Oh, I could go on, but I won't. In short, this is an awesome site for a nerdy, music-obsessed librarian like me. ;)

18 comments:

  1. This is so cool. I'll check out your music. :)

    I had only heard about this website, but I don't think I've visited it.

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  2. I totally forgot about Last FM! Thanks for the reminder! :D

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  3. I'll have to check out LastFM. Usually I use Spotify or Pandora.

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  4. I'm with Alex, Spotify or Pandora, although I did try another service 4 or 5 years ago and I just couldn't figure it out and stopped using it. I can't recall what it was.

    I tend to not focus on music much these days though, except to serve as background music while I write, and even then, that's only sometimes.

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  5. I'm definitely going to have to check that site out. And I still buy CDs too! Actually I still have a huge vinyl collection that I listen to.

    The last show I went to was B.B. King in 2012.

    And the song I've listened to the most in recent days was Shemekia Copeland's Never Goin' Back To Memphis.

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  6. I love Last.fm, cuz I can listen to genres other sites say don't exist. Like steampunk ^_^

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  7. I've never heard of it! Must look it up now.

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  8. Sounds awesome! Would look it up.

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  9. I use Last.fm too, but only when I'm searching for new music, I honestly didn't know you could do all that other stuff with it. I just keep track of all my stuff with iTunes. I'm going to have to check it in further detail, thanks! :)

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  10. Oh dear, this is very dangerous information. I could waste hours on such a website!

    Pandora suits my needs most of the time. I've discovered quite a lot of new musical interests through the site - Quebecois folk songs, for instance. What I like best about it is the possibility that on any given day, I might hear a song I've never heard before.

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  11. Another place to play. :) Seriously, I'm checking out this website NOW!

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  12. I've been on there, but I really prefer Pandora. There's another one out there that just hit my radar, and I haven't really checked it out...but I did sign up. Why is there so little time in the day?

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  13. I have listened to Last.Fm on occasion, but it's been awhile. It's a pretty cool site, but time keeps me away from it and much of the time when I do listen to music I'm still listening to my older CD's and of late LP"s.

    Lee
    Tossing It Out

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  14. Sounds like an interesting site. Thanks.

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  15. Hmm, I've heard of it but hadn't looked into it before. Will definitely need to explore!

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  16. But wait - very important - can you skip songs you don't like? They only let you skip a couple on places like icebergradio and it's very very annoying.

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    Replies
    1. Honestly I don't really use the streaming part, but I haven't ever heard of there being a limit on number of skips!

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