Music - the symphonic phenomenon that binds all us Humans and maybe even separates us from the lower lifeforms - is something I've been forgetting over the past two years. The last two years I've been very focussed on my career and I haven't spend much time downloading or listening to music. Since my rock teenager days my passion for music has been decreasing. The only moments of music for me was around the time I purchased an iPod or went to [the Royal Dutch Concert Building].

But now, all has changed.

I found a way to be lazy, not having to purchase or download any songs. This new way, this revolution, is called Last.fm. Some of my friends already had an account for a long time. Typically the real audiophiles were the early users of this system. Ok so what's that last.fm and why is it so great?

Last.fm User Experience

Last.fm is a little web startup from London. A few months ago they probably had a double dozen of employees (now 40). Last.fm is an online audio player that gives you these experiences:

• generate your own 'radio' by entering artists/categories
• unlike normal radio you can skip tracks, love tracks or ban tracks
• while playing, real-time user generated information is displayed in a wiki fashion
• the company's obsession with statistics allows you to see your musical compatibility with other users
• when listening to iTunes, last.fm will try to spy on what you listen to mostly
• The Long Tail, one of last.fm's goals is making all the music in the world available

Basically last.fm and the whole world knows what kind of music you like. For most people this is not a problem, since they really really like showing off what music they like (especially teenagers).

The effects of the Long Tail allows you to explore niches you didn't think existed:

Look I'm the top listener of that dude from Okinawa!

Last.fm Freemium

Last.fm get's the essence of music, they just 'get it'. To quote the first sentence from this research paper on 'Why do Humans Value Music?':

Whenever and wherever humans have existed music has existed also. Since music occurs only when people choose to create and share it, and since they always have done so and no doubt always will, music clearly must have important value for people.

You hear that? Sharing the music!

Like Google, last.fm connects supply with demand. Thanks to their thorough statistical systems, they really know what people like. Last.fm has a Freemium business model that allows you to upgrade your account for 30$/year to get these benefits:

• listening to the tracks you specified with the 'love' button
• listening to the tracks of your musical compatible friends
• listen to your own composed playlists
• social status (like Flickr-pro)

For now, last.fm doesn't offer real 'select and play'. All tracks played are randomly contained in a radio stream of at least 10 tracks. They do have a little link that allows you to 'buy the cd' (linking you to amazon.com). I assume that in the future we can expected a button that says 'buy and put in my songs'. Of course they depend on the slowly evolving record industry for that.

Maybe these advertisements on their website will speed things up:

Yesterday Last.fm was sold to US' CBS for 280 mln $