Last.rs

About, oh say, a year ago, Mike sent out a link to his last.fm profile (check out his blog, it's bloody brilliant). It's one of those community sites that allows you to see what other folks are listening to and how often (basically myspace voyeurism for music freaks). I finally set up a profile today and was immediately hooked.

Somehow (scary or not, can't tell yet) Last.fm can track every song you've been playing from your computer, whether through iTunes or your iPod. My little profile is pretty wimpy right now, but you can check it out if you want. I'm sure it will reveal all the secret obsessions I hoped no one would every find out about. Or just confirm that I listen to a bunch of weird stuff.

Other features include radio stations based on what you've listened to, a "Shoutbox" where I guess you can give shout outs to people with similar tastes in music (yeah, doubt I'll be using that) and the particularly useful "Events" box that will clue you into cool shows happening X miles from your city. My personal "events" box included National indie acts appearing at The Mad Hatter and The Southgate House. It was nice to see them all organized in one place.

So, I love it. I'm really, really, really late on jumping on the bandwagon for this site (I think I'm the trillionth user), but as a music fan, I'm impressed. It's like six music sites rolled into one and I'll probably be addicted until the next web craze comes along (in about 4 days)...