Rory Franklin

The title of this entry is somewhat misleading, but it does hold true in some respects. More and more services are appearing on the internet that allow you to publish information about yourself in some for or another. Whether it is information about what you are currently doing (Twitter) or photos you’ve taken (Flickr), user generated content is booming. Just look at how popular websites like YouTube are.

There are various other sites that allow you to publish information about yourself however, and they are slightly more interesting to me. It’s all well and good letting someone know that you are currently eating last nights leftover meal (Ok, so I may have told Nicola that I was eating reheated Dominos pizza earlier), but that doesn’t really tell me all that much. Seeing what people have been listening to recently and having music recommended to you based on your own personal music habits is something that is quite exciting.

Last.FM is such a service, and chances are you already know about it and/or use it. Listening to music on your computer "Scrobbles" what you are listening to and uploads this information to your profile on the website. The Last.FM service generates all sorts of interesting charts such as recently listened to tracks, top artists this week (showing their chart movement in relation to previous weeks), top artists overall, most played songs overall. It also recommends music to you that the service thinks you might like based on your tastes. While not perfect, I’ve been recommended some very good artists and songs using the system.

They also have lots of other things such as artist pages where you can find information about an artist or band, their most played songs and artists that are similar to them. There are user created events that you can browse (generally dates of concerts/festivals etc.) and the best thing about it is the fact that any artist can have their own page and information about them. As long as someone takes the time to write a bit of information about them and perhaps upload a picture, they are there.

I’ve kind of gone off on a tangent. The purpose of this entry was to highlight the access you and other people can have to this information. Through widgets and RSS feeds, users can embed this data on websites, blogs, social-network profiles etc. for the world to see. An example is my Last.FM "Recently Played" widget that I have embedded below:

[Embedded Widget removed as it was causing problems with my RSS Feed!]

You can find my Last.FM account here and be amused at my rubbish music taste!

Tags: Last.fm