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.

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

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

    ReplyDelete
  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.

    ReplyDelete
  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.

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

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

    ReplyDelete
  8. Sounds awesome! Would look it up.

    ReplyDelete
  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! :)

    ReplyDelete
  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.

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

    ReplyDelete
  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?

    ReplyDelete
  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

    ReplyDelete
  14. Sounds like an interesting site. Thanks.

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

    ReplyDelete
  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.

    ReplyDelete
    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!

      Delete

Thanks for your words, me hearties! and don't forget to leave a link to your blog somewhere I can find it!