I have not purchased a CD in about a week now, which, in my case, does not happen because I have, what you call, a CD Buying Addiction. Unfortunately, I did not have a clue on what I wanted to get. So I decided to search for some resources and am glad that I did because I stumbled across Last.fm. Last.fm is a Social Music Network and used to be known as Audioscrobbler. You signup and get your own personal page which you can submit music to, find recommendations, listen to radio stations, join groups, and even have a journal to write on.

Last.fm was exactly what I have been looking for. I was not really interested in the fact that you have the ability to meet people that have the same musical interest, but rather to see what people recommended on the music I already listen to. The way Last.fm works is a great method to find what people listen to and to combine that information to make an ultimate recommendation list, and it really works well.

What you do is signup and then download the Last.fm plugin that you can use with iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player, etc.. The plugin will then send a message to Last.fm of what song you have recently played and make a listing what them, like what you see in the above screenshot. It will tally up how many times you listen to each song, find what you listen to, and compare them to other members of Last.fm. The plugins are available for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux too!

You have the ability to find related bands of any type, and I was surprised to see many bands that many people are not aware of in their listing as well. Because of their recommendations, I proudly purchased 6 CD’s at the mall today. I feel refreshed now :)

View Last.fm, the social music revolution.