I’ve had it in my signature hear for a bit but thought I’d write a little bit about what audioscrobbler is and why it rocks for those of you who haven’t bothered to click through the link.
On the surface, audioscrobbler is just a way to keep track of what music you’ve listened to in a public area where others can see what you are listening to and what songs and albums you listen to the most. (You download a plugin for most computer mp3 players which keeps track of things and reports back to the site.) But you can also look at what others are listening to, and there’s so attempt to help identify others whose musical taste is close to yours and what songs and artists you might also like. It also generates popularity charts of what songs and artists are popular sitewide, or by country.
That might not seem terribly interesting, but there’s a new feature which is pretty cool. The same folks that run audioscrobbler also run last.fm which is a legal streaming audio site that is customizable to your own tastes. The cool part is that now there’s a “personal last.fm” link on each user’s web site that lets you listen to music based on that user’s playlist. What’s cool about this is that if you find someone with similiar musical taste you can listen to their personal last.fm station to see what other artists they listen to that you might like. Great way to hear new music without having to put up with the overplayed crud that you hear everywhere.
Most features require signing up for a free account and some features require a paid membership (though the membership fee amount is up to you, so it is more of a donation).
Check it out: audioscrobbler.com/