Every time I blink, I find something else to completely consume me online - it boggles my mind. I have seen last.fm around for a while actually, but never really checked into it until recently, and I finally have it all set up. It actually confused the ever-loving crap out of me at first, but I think I have it down now. Basically, you download the audio-scrobbler and as you listen to your music on your computer through iTunes, or whatever you use, it “scrobbles” it and builds up a listening profile for you and then makes you custom radio stations and charts, etc based on your tastes in music. You can also listen to stuff through the last.fm site and build up your listening profile that way too.

It takes a little time to build up your listening profile so that it knows what kind of music you like. Once it is built up, last.fm assigns neighbors to you that have the same interests in music as you, and when you add friends from online, it tells you how musically compatible you are with them. I cheated and set up a playlist in my iTunes, then muted my computer and let it run a couple times through the playlist, while I was out and about. But what is cool, is that now, I have my profile built up and can listen to the music I like from my iTunes at work through last.fm, without having all my iTunes music downloaded on my computer at work, plus other stuff that last.fm thinks I will like. I know - I am a geek! Oh well!  Oh, I almost forgot to mention the tons of free weekly downloads - yeah - FREE.

Anywho - if you are on there and want to add me as a friend, you can find me here: www.last.fm/user/mrscanlon - See you on there!