It's Like Friday Random Ten, Without All That Messy Randomness

Despite pretty much giving up on the whole Friday Random Ten thing (as well as no longer trusting the randomness of the iTunes shuffler), Friday still seems like a good day for blogging about music. So this is a perfect time to mention the recent rediscovery of my last.fm account.

Last.fm is one of a growing number of services that streams music on your computer and promises to use what you're currently listening to to introduce you to music you might not currently be listening to. [Way too many to's in that last sentence.]

I originally signed up for last.fm back in February '06 and was pretty happy with the music they were serving up. But I download so much music right now that I don't have much use for a music player (not to mention that we're really not supposed to be streaming music at work), so I pretty much stopped using the last.fm player a while back.

Now here's the cool thing about last.fm - even if you're not using their player, you can still have it track what you're playing on your iTunes, then log into your last.fm account and see what new music they suggest from analyzing your playlist. And then they show you other members that have similar tastes, and you can see what they are listening to. And then you can join groups that are based on certain artists or styles and see what they are listening to. Then you can link up with friends of yours and see what they are listening to. I believe it's what the people who run the Internet call "social networking."

Recently [as in just this week] I've made an effort to get back into last.fm and really try using it to hear different music, or just to see what what my friends think is worth listening to right now. So if you have a last.fm account and you want to be my friend [and God, just how 2nd grade did that sound?], my user name is ManilowLover23, er, you know what, just go here and add me.

For those of you who still insist on seeing a list of ten on a Friday music post, last.fm's playlist tracking also lets you serve up your listening habits right onto your blog. Like, say, your ten most listened to artists for the past week: