Last.fm: Let others know what you’re listening to

Do you want to be able to stream  music straight to your desktop, at let others know what you’re listening in iTunes… all for free? Well, with Last.fm you can! Last.fm is a social networking site dedicated to everything music, and is a great resource to stream free music, to learn more about artists and to find out about some unknown Indie artists too. It’s an easy to use and free application thats worth the download!

The first time you launch Last.fm, you’ll have to run a short installer wizard which will set up the application with your profile and all of your data associated with it – so  yes, unfortunately you do need a Last.fm account to use this application, but it only takes a few minutes to set-up.

The Last.fm application sports a clean and easy to use interface,  and it only takes a few moments to understand.

Along the right hand sidebar, you can see your Recommendations, your Radio Station (Takes songs in your library and those similar, and creates a streaming playlist), your Loved Tracks and your Neighborhood (Last.fm users in your area). I really like Neighborhood feature, and its pretty cool to see what other people in your area are listening to. The main feature though however has to be the ability to stream music from Last.fm directly to your Mac. By just inserting a tag or artist in the text box in the main window, Last.fm will search their online database and start streaming the artist you selected and those similar.

This is a really good way to find out about lesser known and indie artists that you may have never heard, the application then allows you to download the current playing song on iTunes or to buy the full album on Amazon. If you like the song, you can use the buttons in the toolbar (for example) to Share, Tag & Ban that particular song. The other main feature of Last.fm is called “Scrobbling” – this happens when you stream music via the application or listen or watch any of your media in iTunes. Last.fm submits the media you listen to, adds it to your profile and adds it to the total played amount on the artists information page. Last.fm also “scrobbles” all the recently played tracks from your iPod or iPhone when it is connected to your Mac.

When listening to media with the Last.fm application or in iTunes, the Last.fm app also displays a wiki style description of the artist your listening to, which is a handy feature. Altogether, the Last.fm application for Mac OSX is a fantastic way to stream free music to your computer, and to let others know what you’re listing to on your profile and by using HTML widgets. Last.fm also has a Pro account and is available  for Windows and Linux too.