Seven Reason I'm Addicted To Last.fm

I believe that Last.FM is the music site we've all been waiting for. It's the site that all of the previous music related sites have been building up to. There are sites like garageband.com and there was the old mp3.com that were/are decent places for new artists to be heard but let's be honest, the average music listener doesn't want to hear a barrage of new stuff they've never heard before by unsigned artists. That's why I think Last.FM is a much better avenue for new artists. It plays their music alongside better known established artists so you get to really hear it in context. It's also much better for music listeners in helping them to discover great new music. Now that I've set things up a bit let me get along to the 7 reasons why I'm addicted to Last.FM
#1 My Personal Listening Stats
I've always been a bit of a stat geek and I've also been a long time music geek and last.fm combines these passions! I can keep track of all the music I listen to, what music I've listened to the most and what music I've listened to the least. Sometimes I'll look at my charts and it'll give me a cool idea of something to listen to I haven't listened to in awhile. It's also cool that you can easily put your "top 10 list" on other sites like MySpace.
#2 The Overall Last.FM Charts
Although I feel bad for caring about stuff like this. I can't help it. I'm curious to see what the most popular music (atleast among internet music geeks) is. I'm also pleased that the music charts here are usually substantially less disgusting than the Billboard charts. For example this is this weeks top 10:
1. The Beatles - Yes. Now this is a beautiful thing, to think of all the people still getting enjoyment from the Beatles music. Their music is truly art and it truly lasts the test of time. It makes me feel all warm inside to see this.
2. The Red Hot Chili Peppers - I'm personally not much of a fan, but things could be much worse (check the Billboard charts.)
3. Radiohead - Yes, I definitly approve.
4. Coldplay
5. Muse
6. The Killers
7. Death Cab For Cutie
8. Metallica
9. Nirvana
10. Pink Floyd - Again like the Beatles it's nice to see this sort of timeless music still being listened to today by new listeners.
#3 The Top Tracks By Artist Charts
It's always interesting (and usually a bit dissapointing) to see what the top tracks for any particular artist are. Looking at a "one hit wonder" is always quite telling as you'll see 95% of their listeners all for one song.
#4 Using the Last.FM Radio Player to listen to "Similar Artists Radio"
Using the Last.FM Radio Player you can listen to "similar artists" of any band or artist you like. This can be an absolutely awesome way to find new music you haven't heard before. In fact I'm doing it right now and I'm listening to a band I have heard a bit about before but hadn't heard previously called Architecture In Helsinki. The song is called "Fumble" and I am really enjoying it. Last.FM has a feature where you can press a heart icon which means you love that track. This is a great way of keeping track of new music that you like and you heard for the first time.
#5 Using the Last.FM Radio Player to listen to "Artist Fan Radio"
This is similar to the above reason except with this setting you get a bit more varied results. This is really great for really expanding your horizons but still upping the chances that you're actually going to like what you hear. I can't even imagine why anyone would listen to the real radio when Last.FM is around. The real radio is predicable and boring and almost always plays the same old songs over and over again. Last.FM is a way to hear great music that you may not have heard before but that also fits in well with your tastes (and if you don't like the song you can always just skip to the next one!)
#6 Using the Last.FM Radio Player to listen to "Tagged Radio"/Tag Charts
Using this you get to hear all the tracks/albums/artists that were "tagged" a certain term by other Last.FM listeners. This is truly awesome! It's really cool to go through and tag different artists and songs with different terms. I'm a huge lover of psychedelic music so I spend some time tagging psychedelic music as such. It's great because I can listen the Last.FM Radio Player for music tagged as "psychedelic" and I get to hear a bunch of cool psychedelic music I haven't heard before (usually mixed in with some that I have heard before which makes it less overwhelming!) Also really cool are the tagged charts. For example the top 5 artists tagged for "Psychedelic" are #1 Pink Floyd, #2 The Doors, #3 The Beatles, #4 Jimi Hendrix, and #5 The Velvet Underground.
#7 Discovering new bands/artists!
There's a great number of bands/solo artists I've discovered via Last.FM that I don't think I would have ever heard otherwise. The best example of this is the indie psychedelic rock band Scumbo.
These are just 7 of the many reasons why I'm addicted to Last.FM and why I highly recommend it to any music lovers out there who haven't discovered it yet. It's the best music site on the internet and a great place to find new music that you'll really be interested in.