LastFM takes it to the next level

If you’re here, you love music. And if you love music, you should be on LastFM – a free social music networking site. Especially with this morning’s news…

LastFM, which CBS bought last year, just announced a major deal with all four major labels, and thousands of indie labels, that will allow you – the music fan – to go to LastFM, and listen to any song you want, in its entirety. Pretty sweet, if you ask me.

Okay, so what is LastFM? What all does it do? I turned a few friends on to it over the last few months who had never heard of it, so there are probably bunches of you fine people out there who don’t know about LastFM. So here goes…

The first thing you want to do is sign up for LastFM. It’s free.

The next thing you’ll want to do is download their software (PC or Mac, it doesn’t matter). What the software does is it ties in to your music player, whether it’s iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player, whatever – and keeps track of the music you listen to.

When you go to your profile page, you’ll find “charts” of the music you’ve been listening to, your top artists, your top songs, etc. Pretty sweet in itself. But that’s just the beginning. This is where the networking part comes in to the picture. Based on what you’re listening to, it shows you other LastFM members with similar interests, and displays them as your “Neighbors”. You can check out their profile pages to see what they’re listening to. You can send them invitations to be your “Friend” too. Friends can send recommendations to other friends, send private messages, etc.

Then there’s the Recommendations feature. By just typing in an artist, LastFM will start playing full tunes of similar artists – a great way to discover new music. It’s pretty sweet. I know this sounds like an advertisement, but it’s not. I’m a music GEEK, and this is music geek heaven, in my opinion. And now that they’ve made a deal with virtually the entire music industry (refreshing to see), this takes LastFM to another level.

Just think, any song you want to hear – in its entirety – for free. I am GEEEKED!

So check out my LastFM presence. If you sign up, send me a friend invitation. The more, the merrier!

Pete’s LastFM Page

That was my LastFM pitch.

Next Up: I have a ton of friends who still visit web sites one by one to check them out. This cannot stand! So coming soon… “Bloglines, Google Reader, and RSS Feeds: Get Fed!” or “You Still Check out Web Sites One by One? WTF?”