Why didn’t anyone tell me about Last.fm radio?

So, I was messing about on the Internet this week trying to do a bazillion things at once, and I somehow stumbled upon the Radio link at the top of the Last.fm home page.

Ok, let me backup. Last.fm is an audio scrobbler, which is a funny phrase that means it tracks all the music you play on your computer. (Well, all the music you play in programs supported by the plugin, like iTunes, WinAmp, etc. I think it can also download your iPod stats.) I’ve used Last.fm to track my songs for years now, and you can see my stats here. (Please ignore the Bieber. I was just experimenting. I didn’t inhale.)

Ok, back to where I was. If you click on the “Your Library Radio” link in the sidebar of the Radio page a widget loads that starts playing songs that you’ve scrobbled. It’s like having your MP3 collection with you anywhere, which is handy for me because I keep all my music on an external hard drive that I don’t like to lug to coffeeshops. It doesn’t play your whole library because they are limited to songs they have the rights to play, and I assume the artists all get royalties, but it’s still pretty damn cool. I was listening to it at a coffee shop this week and forgot I was listening to a stream and not my hard drive until an ad came on.

This is so awesome that I cannot believe someone hadn’t told me about it before. If you’re not a Last.fm user, it’s probably significantly less awesome since you don’t have any tracks scrobbled to your library. There is also room for hilarity because the widget shows pictures of the artists while it plays their songs. When I listened to a Kylie Minogue track I felt like I was watching soft porn.

If you do use Last.fm, I hope I’ve enlightened you a bit today!

Speaking of radio, I will be on it (the old school version) a couple times in the upcoming weeks, assuming that my cell phone signal doesn’t drop out mid-sentence. Here is a post with the details. I had a great interview on KERA in Dallas yesterday, but OMG it is quite a mental marathon to talk about yourself for a whole hour, particularly when a side effect of the headache medication you’re on is dry mouth. I drank a whole glass of water and wanted another one. Sometimes I wish I could send in a stunt double to do this stuff for me, hopefully with cuter hair.