The newest link on the sidebar will bring you to "my Last.FM station.":http://www.last.fm/user/chrisada I am rather a later comer on this train, but very glad I hopped on.

How does Last.FM work?

# First you build up your musical profile. There are "many ways":http://www.last.fm/tutorial.php of doing this. what I did was installing "Audioscrobbler":http://www.audioscrobbler.com/ plugin for my iTunes player, and play the collection on my harddrive over night. In the morning Last.FM begins to have some idea of what I like to listen to.
# I added a few songs to my profile manually. These are basically songs I like, but don't have locally. I also did this to nudge the number of songs to 100, by which point Last.FM have enough idea to suggest peoples who are my _musical neighbour._
# Then it's time to start listening, to my very own station. Songs you listen to will continually be add to your profile.

While a song is being played, you have 3 options

* click "LOVE", no explaination here
* skip it. songs you skip won't be add to your profile
* ban it. WTF? never play this shit to me again

These 3 actions (well, 4, if you include just listen and enjoy the music) continue to fine tune your profile. And the _station_ becomes more and more _your_ station.

Of course, you don't have to listen to just your own station. Go to any user's page and you will see their top artists/songs/albums. If it looks interesting, you can start listening to his/her station the same way you listen to your own. (The tracks played are of course added to your profile)

There are many things I really about the site.

* The music's great! And I've listened to many tracks I've missed in my 2 days relationship with it.
* I can play my music anywhere with a decent internet connection. And my friends can listen to them too.
* The social network aspect. I stopped using Friendster / Orkut / hi5 because there is nothing to do on the site. "Peoples":http://bulknews.typepad.com/blog/2004/12/lastfm_as_socia.html have "said":http://joi.ito.com/archives/2004/10/22/lastfm_and_social_networking.html social networking should be a feature of a service, not the service itself. I totally agreed. Two best examples are Last.FM for radio and Flickr for photo sharing.
* It's free. Not only you need not pay, you don't have to give the site _any_ info, not even your e-mail address, if you don't wish to. Now, that is refreshing.

If you decide to try it out, do lemme know. It'll be interesting to get to know your music, in addition to your writing. :)