I started using Last.fm a few months ago and I’m wondering why I never came across it earlier. In the past, I’ve used pandora.com to discover new music and foosic.org (now defunct) to track my music tastes.
Here’s my current music set-up: On any computer, I use foobar2000 as my music player. It’s a simple yet powerful music player with features like easy mass-filename editing and replaygain support. In my car, I have a bunch of USB flash drives with various MP3s, and then I listen to XM (mostly Alt Nation) whenever I get bored of what I have and want to discover new stuff. Before XM charged extra for internet listening, I also used that on my computer at work as well, but mostly for POTUS political talk rather than music. As far as portable players go, I have my cell phone, but I don’t really have any music on there. I have a little Sansa MP3 player that takes AAA batteries (easy to replace/recharge) and is perfect for my occasional cross-country or international flights. I’m also big into live music, and last year I’ve seen bands like Keane, Weezer, Franz Ferdinand, No Doubt, The Bravery, Jet, Paramore, and Oasis (got to see them before Noel left). Next week, I’m going to catch Phoenix in DC.
In all this, Last.fm finds a perfect niche in my set-up that adds another dimension to my music world, without becoming an extra burden. Last.fm is integrated with basically all my music-listening on my computer and on my phone, with little input on my end. Here’s how it works:
Through foobar2000, I’ve installed a scrobbler plugin that sends information on every song I play to my last.fm account online. All the songs that I play on my computer then gets populated into my Last.fm library. If I don’t have my MP3s with me and I go online and listen to my last.fm library, it will only play songs that I’ve played on my computer before. No more skipping through obscure songs that pandora.com thinks I will like. Basically, every song is a pandora-style thumbs-up.
On my phone, I use a program called mobbler. With mobbler, I can access my online last.fm library and play all my favorite songs. Mobbler seems to replicate a lot of the last.fm features that are available on its web site. The other day, I was playing around with the features and I was able to add the Phoenix concert next week to my list of “events” and even look up information about it, such as automatically opening up Google Maps to show the venue location.
Meanwhile, from my activity on the computer and on my phone, Last.fm is tracking my music tastes and compiling my own personal “Billboard Top 100” of my favorite artists and songs. Naturally, recently I’ve been all into Phoenix, since they are the best band in the world. Whenever I check the last.fm web site, I’m also able to check out any recommendations that last.fm came up for me, and it seems that they are more accurate to my tastes than pandora.
About the only thing missing from my music set-up now is last.fm scrobbling from my car’s XM and MP3 music….