Oh, and Rhapsody... what do folks think of Rhapsody.com -- should I sign up for that?

don't bother. it's not very good for recommendations unless you're pretty ignorant to begin with & it'll just end up controlling your listening habits - don't pretend it won't .. you don't really want everyone knowing what you listen to - do you?

Last FM is kind of lame... I mean I guess it's good for some radio listening at work or something. But it plays the same crap over and over... not too fantastic, I'd say.

I'm confused by their "a listener cannot hear a song more than four times." When looking for NEW things, I've been played the same songs well over five times before.

But, now our Last.FM device has completely stopped working the past month...

I've found a lot of new music through Last.fm. The way it keeps track of what I listen to, like, and don't like, makes it very easy to get in touch with other people who have similar tastes, and then keep an eye on what they're listening to at the moment. The 'Events' function is a good way to keep track of what shows I have coming up, and it's great being able to see what gigs your non-local friends are attending. I've learned a lot about the music club scene in London, New York, Sydney, etc from last.fm friends.

The last.fm streaming function is decent. You can base your stream on a tag like 'indie rock', or on a specific band. It will then play similar music, although in last.fm terms, 'similar' is based on what others like, without any kind of musicological analysis, as far as I can tell. This often leads to last.fm labeling bands as 'similar' that aren't musically similar at all. (I hope that makes sense; you kinda have to try it to see what I mean.)

A couple of other last.fm limitations: Personalized streaming, based on your particular loves and bans, is available, but it's a paid subscription service which I haven't felt compelled to sign up for. Also, some of the artist and album info is incomplete or redundant, which isn't surprising since it's wiki-based.

I haven't tried Rhapsody, but I just recently started on Pandora, and I have to say that it is really excellent, but in a very different way than Last.fm. Unlike Last.fm, where artists and songs are labeled as similar to each by association (members listening habits), Pandora bases their streaming selections on actual musical similarity; a semi-scientific approach based on what they call the Music Genome Project. I'm no musicologist, but I can tell you that Pandora has really been pushing my musical buttons, much much more accurately than Last.fm. Far fewer tracks that I feel like skipping, and tons of artists that I'd never listened to before but now like.

Pandora doesn't feel nearly as social as Last.fm, though. It doesn't chart your listening habits the way Last.fm does, either. However, there's a very cool website called PandoraFM (pandorafm.real-ity.com) that uses scripts to transfer all your Pandora listening to your Last.fm charts, so you can mix the best features of both services.

BTW, if you set it up right, Last.fm can also collect and chart all the music you listen to through Windows Media Player, iTunes, or on your iPod.

"it's not very good for recommendations unless you're pretty ignorant to begin with"

People who say this aren't using it right. The single best feature of Last.fm is watching in semi real time what your friends, which in this case means people with similar musical taste, are listening to. This can be a great source of new music recommendations, if you pick your 'friends' correctly.

Now I'm sure this is all available through myspace or facebook or whatever, but I personally would just as soon keep most of my sharing with the world at large confined to the topic of music. Meaning I don't need/want the other features/intrusions those sites offer.

"you don't really want everyone knowing what you listen to - do you?"

Why not? People do so with widgets on their social networking pages all the time. Unless it's the tabulating and charting of that info that you object to, which I sort of can understand, on an invasion of privacy basis. However, consider that, if you have one of those widgets running on your myspace page, it would be very easy for anyone, say an advertising or marketing wonk, to write a script that would generate a detailed rundown and analysis of what you're listening to, whether you want them to or not. At least with Last.fm, I'm getting some use of that info myself, and also helping promote my favorite artists.

Another vote for Pandora here.

Rhapsody is worse than useless. You pay a monthly fee to access and end up with what amounts to renting your music. They even charge extra to allow you to put songs on your portable player. You can't play it on anything but an approved music player/computer. Once you stop paying the rental, poof, your music disappears. I haven't heard much about their recommendation system, but none of it has been positive. Heck, even their testimonial page is over a year old.

If you're going to get a pay-per-month music service just go back to e-music. I know their recommendation system is pretty useless, but you get to keep the music when you're done instead of being extorted for continued access.

Just do it, Liz! I was skeptical at first, and wary of sharing my listening habit with others, but it's actually kind of fun, and I've managed to find more than a few new bands to listen to. I even started my own group - you could totally start a TIG group!

We play pandora all the time at my newspaper class at school. I typed in Beck and it recommended BOAT. I've been a believer ever since.

Personally, I'm a last.fm addict. I never use the recommendation feature (I'm still annoyed it keeps trying to recommend the Pipettes), but I really like keeping track of everything I listen to, so I can document obsessive phases. I also really like the "dashboard" feature, so that you can see what your friends are listening to. The radios are also awesome for work listening. The "similar artists to Tullycraft" and ditto for the Lucksmiths offer a great selection of new and old indie pop.