I’ve just noticed that on last.fm you have two main radio playlist options for each artist – you can listen to a radio show of tracks by similar artists, and a show of tracks by artists that fans of that particular artist are fans of! How cool is that?
So, using me as an example (and what finer example could there possibly be?) you could go to my artist page at last.fm, and the click on ‘start radio’, and choose one of the options – similar artist radio or artist fan radio (these last two links will only work if you’re signed up to last.fm and have downloaded the radio player – you so need to do that.)
If you want to see who the artists are that I’m ‘similar’ to, based on what people who listen to me are listening to, click here.
When compared to other music networking sites, like myspace which I recently signed up to, last.fm is so much more sophisticated, ad-free (makes a huge difference) better designed, and more intellegently configurable for both the artists and the listeners. There’s no way that some loser band can do a hard-sell on you, but if there are people who like what you do then you’ll automatically reach the people who listen to the other stuff that they like. It’s organic music networking at its very best. Go on, sign up.
soundtrack – James Taylor, ‘Hourglass’; Gary Peacock and Ralph Towner, ‘A Closer View’; Eric Roche, ‘With These Hands’.