Taking Last.fm for a spin...

By now, all of you know about my devotion to Yahoo! LaunchCAST - especially since I get the premium version for free, due to my DSL provider. I like the interface, it's easy to use, the catalogue of music is huge and, since one doesn't have to download any additional software to use it, I can listen at work (much to the chagrin of those in love with local mouldy-oldies station 3W-ass).

I've had an artist page on Last.fm for Illusion of Joy for quite a while now, however, until today I'd never delved into the realm of listenership. This afternoon, I finally created a personal profile and downloaded the software needed to run the streaming site.

Last.fm's set-up consists of two components: the actual last.fm player itself, which will play music from the site's servers and the Audioscrobbler plug-in, which records what music you play on your computer that doesn't originate from last.fm. This data is compiled by the site and used to try and match you up with music you'll like better. Since my main methods of listening to music on the computer are via Windows Media Player and LaunchCAST, I had to download one plug-in for each application. Both installed with no hassle and seemed to shake hands and play quite nice with their parent applications.

I should mention that the nifty thing about the plug-in(s) is that one can activate and disable them at their choosing. One may also choose which directories are read by the Windows Media plug-in. For example, I have all of my music on E:\My Documents\My Music and random clips of porn at E:\My Documents\fapfapfap. I set-up the plug-in so that it would only record media from My Music, and ignore all other folders containing media files. So, if I should load a file from fapfapfap into Windows Media Player, it won't be tabulated as part of my music playlist. Of course, for piece of mind, one could deactivate the plug-in altogether should one wish to fapfapfap.

As of yet, I haven't played songs directly from last.fm. I launched the player to make sure it worked, heard thiry seconds of a Pavement song and turned it off. Right now, I'm busy feeding data to the program, via my Windows Media and LaunchCAST playlists. I'll let you know how it turns out.