Last.fm
.I started using Last.fm quite a while back because they support tracking what my music player plays, and I like to show that info on the front of my blog. But I didn’t use their other features until recently.
I was talking about finding recommendations for new music, and Seth reminded me that Last.fm also do recommendations, and that you can listen to these recommendations like a music stream.
So I investigated that, and have found myself listening to their “Neighborhood Radio” a lot—they identify your “neighbors” by finding other people whose played tracks overlap with yours. So the “Neighborhood Radio” is presumably a selection of tracks that a selection of neighbors like.
I really like the idea. It’s like half of Napster—the half where you see what other people who like what you like like, and then you go out and buy that music. And you do get to listen to new music for free, but you can’t keep it. But I can’t fault them for that too much, since they’d run into serious legal problems if they didn’t prevent that.
Also, they seem open-source friendly, and their client is under the GPL.
Overall, I like it, and will probably use it a lot. It’s worth checking out.