Overview
Music, social networking and free... Last.fm brings you three of the absolute best aspects the internet has to offer. Long a popular online radio system that provides endless listening based on the sounds of your favorite artists, Last.fm is a total online experience for the music obsessed.
Like a band? Want to hear more from them? Want to share that with your friends? See them in concert? Read their bios? Enter here.
Functionality
Open Last.fm, and you're asked to sign in to your internet account, or start a new one. You can do this on your iPhone, though you may find it easier on a computer. Either way, it's very simple, and within a few moments you're telling the super magic Last.fm computer which artists you like.
Sign in on your iPhone, and you'll find all the things you had customized on the internet already there. You can start a new station, get recommended stations based on your favorite artists, go right to your recent stations, view your music by categories, and even check events and view friends' music (perhaps the coolest part of the whole thing). Overwhelmed? Here's a step by step guide.
Once you've entered a favorite artist, Last.fm will come up with a playlist based on that artist. Pick a few favorites, and you're going to be listening for hour upon hour upon hour.
When a new artist comes up, a wealth of information is opened up to you. You can view the artists' bio, similar artists, and even upcoming concerts and events, a key utility for concert goers everywhere. However, don't get too enthusiastic; I was excited to see Echo and the Bunnymen back together and touring, but that was before I clicked on the event button and found that they were playing in Scandanavia.
Sharing artists with friends is function where you can, as you guessed it, send artist suggestions to your friends, as well as check out their favorite artists as well. It's a function that Pandora, the other most excellent music app, does not boast.
Review
Like Pandora, Last.fm provides endless listening pleasure based on your own tastes. It's an awesome concept, and they do it fairly well. The additional stuff, like getting music from friends, artist bios and concert dates are all awesome features that are exclusive to Last.fm, and give it in many ways, an edge.
For all the greatness, though, there is one major problem that at least some of you iPhone users will have.
While Last.fm has no problem creating playlists based on your likes, actually listening to them on 1st generation iPhones using EDGE might be a problem -- the buffering time in between songs being simply unbearable. It's not so much radio, as having to replace a CD every time you want to hear a song. On a WiFi Network or sporting a new 3G? Congratulations, you should be in fine shape.
Also notably lacking is the ability to scrobble music from your iPod (one of the best features of the desktop version). If you're not familiar with 'scrobbling', it's the automatic adding of songs to your Last.fm profile as you listen to them. Undoubtedly, this feature isn't permissible under Apple's no-running-in-the-background limitations, but still affects Last.fm's overall utility nonetheless.
Summary
All told, if you have the technological capabilities to hasten the buffering process, Last.fm is a powerful, complete iPhone radio station that is an essential tool for any music fan looking to enjoy and expand their musical horizons.
