Neither of these are groundbreaking or new by any means, but they are both still really cool and I’m not sure why everyone doesn’t jump on them rather than the silliness and uselessness of stuff like Twitter (alright, maybe Twitter isn’t, I haven’t used it, but the whole concept does seem rather silly to me).
First, there is last.fm, a music logging website. You download a completely safe and ad-free program. Every time you play music on your computer, the last.fm program (which hardly takes up any memory) icons comes on the lower right hand tray and logs the music, posting it to your online profile. You can then look through and see the top tracks and top artists you’ve listened to, which is useless information, but very interesting nonetheless.
But that is just the tip of the iceberg. You can also add your friends, a la any social networking site, where you can see your music compatibility rating and also what they have been listening to. It also provides you with bands and artists that it think you may like based on what you listen to and also each band and artist’s profile contains links to the pages of similar sounding bands. Of course, the majority of band and artist pages also contain samples and sometimes complete songs to their music. I would say that nearly half of the music I “discovered” this past year was due to last.fm. It has been an invaluable music resource.
Check last.fm out right here and feel free to add me or post your profile link in the comments.
The other site is called Good Reads. There are many sites out there that log what you read, but this seems to be the cream of the crop (and many great authors have profiles on the site and keep it updated with what they are reading). There is plenty there from user book reviews, to ratings, to author profiles, to user-submitted quotes from every book you can imagine, to trivia games, to event information, writing tips, videos, discussion groups, etc. It is well worth checking out if you are a reader and enjoy keeping track of what you read.
Check out Good Reads right here and feel free to add me here too!
This discussion currently has 10 responses.
January 8, 2009
Great finds. Thanks so much. I’m listening to “Bon Iver Radio” right now!
January 14, 2009
This sounds similar to Pandora?
January 14, 2009
I think last.fm is a little different than Pandora because not all of the tracks are full tracks – most of the time you just get snippets. I have found it’s great for music discovery though because you can see how high or low your compatibility is with others based on bands you’ve listened to. I’ve found some great music via last.fm. Pandora is more of a radio station based on a similar idea right?
And Good Books sounds pretty awesome. I tried librarything a while back but didn’t get into it. What I am into is Bookcrossing. Doesn’t track the books but I keep a tally on my “bookshelf”!
January 14, 2009
I’ve used Pandora… but Pandora is internet radio, no? It doesn’t statistically track the music you listen to on your computer, right?
February 12, 2009
Hello Everybody!
All of the recent news stories of the breaking of the economy and loss of jobs has been driving most americans nuts!
THANKS!
February 17, 2009
thank you! i had heard of last.fm, but didn’t really know what it was all about. very neat! signing up now.
June 30, 2009
Andrew, you really need a last.fm so I can steal more good music from you.
July 5, 2009
Main differences between last.fm and Pandora:
1) Last.fm is built around tracking the music you listen to on your computer or iPod and building your musical profile around that. Pandora has no equivalent.
2) Pandora is a radio station site first, a social/info site second. Last.fm is the opposite.
3) Pandora builds its stations by using a musical similarity algorithm – if you add a song to a station, it will add other songs based on how similar they are in musical tone, structure, instrumentation, vocals, etc. Last.fm builds its stations based on aggregated listener data. If you start a station with a song or artist, it will figure out what you're likely to enjoy based on what other people who like that song or artist like.
I generally tend to find that Pandora is better at finding music I don't know about but like, and last.fm is better at everything else. So I tend to only use Pandora when I'm in music-discovery mode.
July 5, 2009
I would argue that the scrobbling, the adding to the database of music you've listened to on last.fm, is anything but useless. It was the original intent of the service. For most long time users, and many newer ones, it is that data tracking and mining ability that is most useful. I rarely use the last.fm radio, but I use the data of mine and other's accounts all the time.
August 12, 2009
Some may know that last.fm launched last.fm radio which is actually a pay service. For $3 a month, you basically get to listen to a any “radio station” you want. I paid for a month and *loved* it. Easily one of the coolest subscription services out there. And with the iTouch/iPhone app, you can take that subscription anywhere so essentially, it’s like having millions of songs at your fingertips all the time.