Kristian Kalsing

Last.fm is one of the best music streaming services out there offering a very comprehensive library and great ways to discover new artists. Because Last.fm operates under a radio licence, it works like a radio in the sense that you cannot decide exactly what song will be played next. However, there are ways to gain a lot more control over the music you listen to.

The following tips do require that you sign up as a subscriber. For a minimal monthly fee you will get access to some key functionality including the ability to play your own library and your own loved tracks. But you can control more than what’s immediately obvious. I am surprised how few people are actually taking advantage of playlists and tags.

• Playlists. In the beginning Last.fm would only let you create one playlist but now you can have as many as you want. Once a playlist contains at least 45 songs from at least 15 different artists you can listen to it. It will still stream the tracks in random order, but you have narrowed it down to 45 songs which effectively means you have 2-3 hours of music you have chosen. There are many ways you can use these playlists. You can create a playlist with the top three songs of all your favourite bands in a certain genre or you can create a playlist for a specific occasion, trip or party. Another cool way of using playlists is to copy compilations such as Triple J Hottest 100.
• Tag stations. Everything you listen to automatically gets scrobbled into your library. The key to organise the large amount of tracks in your library is to use tags. It is very easy to tag your songs as you listen to them or as you browse the site. Tags can be any words that you use to describe a song (e.g. “rock”, “indie”, “60s”, “fun”, “favourite”, “chillout”, “seen live”, “british”, etc.). Once you’ve tagged lots of songs you can start playing tag stations (e.g. play your “rock” collection or your “seen live” collection). A tag station is really much like a playlist but you only require 15 songs to play it, you can have songs with multiple tags and with a newly introduced feature you can combine tags when listening (e.g. play your music tagged “british” and “indie”).

Once you start using playlists and tag stations, you may realise that you don’t really need your own copies of music. It’s much easier to have your entire music collection hanging up there in the cloud. Although you don’t have 100% control of the exact playing order of the tracks, you can control the content quite well over all. It’s a great intermediate service until the music industry wakes up and gives us live streaming on demand with a choice spanning across every piece of music ever released.

Related posts:

1. When does the music industry wake up?
2. Triple J Hottest 100 2008 on Last.fm
3. Triple J Hottest 100 Of All Time on Last.fm

Kristian Kalsing Life 2.0