Last.fm: A site for music lovers everywhere.

saeed1985 talks a bit about last.fm and touches briefly on how unsigned acts use this powerful site. Could this be a series in the works?

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For decades the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been able to calculate the amount of copies a record has sold and Billboard magazine allows readers to see, in chart form, how well some records do over others in sales. Of course, knowing how much your record has sold is vital to the artist and their respect record company but what about who listens? How can an artist tell how many people actually listen to their music and how often? Also, how can unsigned acts get their music heard easily? One company out of the UK just might be able to offer answers to these questions.

Formed in 2002, Last.fm began as an online radio station and music community site. In 2005 Last.fm teamed up with Audioscrobbler, a service made to monitor the music you listened to and generate charts based on your selections.

My Recently Played Tracks that I
usually display in my forum signatures

Today Last.fm is a powerful networking site and resource for music lovers everywhere. Upon joining you can download a program that sits quietly in the background and monitors what you listen to from the player of your choice. Charts are generated from your listening habits and displayed on your profile page which is open to the public as well other members. For those of us on blogs or message boards you can easily create custom chrats to display proudly on your site or forum signature.

Last.fm is not just about showing off what your music tastes are and how many times you listen to, for example, The Smashing Pumpkins – 6,862 plays since April 2006 if you must know. The charts generated from your listens serve another purpose. They give other users the opportunity to easily explore new music.

While viewing your profile users can see how similar you are to them through the “Taste-o-meter” with levels such as low, high and very high. On your profile users can view your charts such as “Overall Top Artists” or “Overall Top Songs” making it easy to spark users’ curiosity to explore these artists or songs. Another easy way for someone to get an idea of your music tastes is through a playlist radio station that streams music based on what you have listened to.

When viewing an “Overall Top Artists” chart users can click on each artist and be directed to that artist’s page. Artist pages are automatically generated based on the number of listens they have received. On this page users can see what an artist's most popular songs are and how many people listen to their music.

These pages and charts offer users and artists valuable information. They can be especially valuable tools for lesser known and beginning artists, who can put up their songs for download or stream on their respective pages in order to get feedback and generate more listens.

Marilyn Roxie one of many unsigned acts
promoting her music on Last.fm

Marilyn Roxie is one of many unsigned acts who uses the site to promote her music. She sees Last.fm as a great networking aid, a feature many people disregard in her opinion.

“Despite the masses of people who use it, it is still no MySpace or Facebook, and that's a good thing. Being a musician in a music-based community filled with other musicians, music bloggers, and independent labels who can open up opportunities for you, especially promotion-wise, if you make those connections- that's a huge advantage.”

While speaking about the advantages of Last.fm over Myspace music, Marilyn notes how difficult it is find new music on the latter; saying “On MySpace Music, not only is there no streaming radio with interest-relevant artists to the user, you have to really hunt for interesting music, amidst countless abandoned music profiles as well as artists who will spam their music to just about anyone regardless of their tastes, all for getting their number of 'fans' up.”

Tools like audioscrobbler and websites like Last.fm are slowly leveling the playing field between mainstream acts with major label backing and emerging artists armed with nothing but some good music and the desire to reach out to the world. While Last.fm may not have all the answers they are definitely helping to usher in the new wave of music listening and marketing.

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Special Thanks to Marilyn Roxie. You can learn more about her by following any of these links:

http://www.myspace.com/marilynroxie
Last.fm Artist Page: Marilyn Roxie