I first posted about Last.fm in August of last year. If you don’t know what Last.fm is or how it works go read that first. Or if you’re lazy you can just assume Last.fm is great and that you should be using it.

I no longer have to sort through a whole bunch of crappy music in order to find something I like. Last.fm does that for me. Try it. The picks it makes are unbelievable. In the last little while Last.fm has recommended these bands to me:

• The Arctic Monkeys
• Explosions in the Sky
• Sufjan Stevens
• Belle and Sebastian

I had never heard of these bands/artists before but I enjoyed listening to all of them.

Last.fm also has sweet Long Tail functionality. Last.fm can sort it’s music recommendations on a scale from popularity to obscurity using some sort of ajax wizardry:

This is the first useful Long Tail filtering system I’ve used. Amazon has recommendations but I don’t find that very useful. The stuff i’ve bought on amazon doesn’t tell you about my taste in anything it just tells you the stuff I couldn’t be bothered to buy at a real store. What i’ve listened to on my iPod and in iTunes tells you my taste in music.

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