sweet!

Wow! I hope this is as good as it sounds --- I listen to Pandora all day at work and it seems like she's stuck on the same 10 artists...

off i go.

WOW. I just checked it out and got full listens on most of the artists I searched for. Seriously, Apple needs to stop acting like iTunes is invincible and step things up.

Personally, I think they should offer a subscription option. What could be better than instantly calling up an artist your friend recommended to you at Starbucks on your iPhone and listening to the full album right then and there?

Very nice

that artist royalty program sounds like it can put greedy-ass record execs back in their place, and let the artist take the full (or more than they would if they were signed to an agressive, money-hungry big label) cut of the revenue.

and @Zetabyte: that would be cool, but first, they'd need to make last.fm work properly with the iPod touch and the iPhone. which i'm also all in favor of, since my god damn PSP can get internet radio but my iTouch can't really, and apple needs to fix that soon.

@Zetabyte: They'd probably be presented with the proposal to have iPod profits be divvied up between Apple and the labels. The fact that Apple outright refuses to subsidize their iPod may be the reason why this may never happen.

huh? Last I looked iTunes wasnt a internet radio station, but a way to purchase music. From everything Im reading on the site, all you can do is save a list to your computer. you can not

1) buy the music
2) put the music on a device

which is pretty much the whole point of iTunes.

I missing something here?

There is an app for the jailbroken iphone/itouch that will play last.fm. I believe it is called MobileScrobbler

This is basically a giant marketing tool.

my iPhone used to get Internet radio just fine prior to 1.1.3, and I doubt thats the last we'll see of it. Then again if I have my iPod classic with me listening to any radio is fucking pointless. I hate sitting through 8 crap songs on XM, Sirius, FM, or Internet radio just to hear one I like. I'm a selfish person and I should be able to listen to what ever song I want more then 3 times.

You forgot to mention that it only works in the US, UK and Germany. Just as with Pandora, the rest of the world gets fucked over.

@koddos:
Good bit of kit, that. Works brilliantly either scrobbling in the background or streaming music.

@Falconfire: iTunes does have an internet radio app built into it, but it's just inaccessible from the devices themselves, and doesn't have a means to search for anything other than genre. All in all it still works well, with no static interference of real radio.

damnit, i just love last.fm, even though it's owned by a megacorporation.

Free too cool! Does anyone else hate itunes as much as I do? But itunes doesn't offer much in the way of jukeboxin'. Thanks for the info giz.

I'm not a big user of Last.FM, but with a model where they give the profits earned by unsigned artists, to the artist, then I'm happy. That's their work, compensate them properly. Which is why I buy a lot of music from Magnatune.com, they have good bands which are treated more like business partners rather than employees.

@conglomerate: I like the irony of your name versus your stance.

I listen to Slacker internet radio myself. Last.FM is/was neat though.

Wait, did microsoft take over last.fm? Three plays...come onnnn.

The site is alright if all you want to do is stream music or listen to 30 seconds of songs you would actually want to buy, but I think iTunes still has it trumped in the purchase department as I can simply click on a song I want and have it on multiple devices for only $.99. I give Last.fm credit for having a buttload of tracks (I'm still waiting for iTunes to get off their asses and add Rei Harakami to their library) but when I find something that I've been searching for I want to be able to purchase it via direct download and not via some "Purchase Album through Amazon" link.

As to the site being owned by some megacorporation... isn't everything these days?

Well, isn't deezer.com a bit of the same thing, without limitations?

What's to stop you from going into your sound card properties and making sure Wave Out Mix is selected so that you can set Wave Out as your default for recordings and record the stream in one of the many recording apps available free? Is it encoded in such a way that this is prevented?

@Kaiser-Machead: No I know, and I use it, but what Im saying is iTunes was always little to do with internet radio. This headline says it "trumps iTunes" but the reality is it just trumps iTunes radio, and the only reason it does that is because the majors did some massive wheeling and dealing to buy government officials willing enough to erase rights we had prior to the last 2-3 years.

In the end, this service hardly trumps Napster or Amazon, forget about iTunes.

My wife has used last.fm since 2004 when it was named audioscrobbler and was a UK venture. Last.fm only recently was bought and has been community oriented from the beginning. The nice part about last.fm isn't even the streaming...it's FINDING NEW MUSIC! You 'scrobble' your tracks into your own profile and are then connected to other people with similar listening habits (neighbors) and you are able to receive recommendations from groups you belong to and from your neighbors as well as automatically from last.fm based on your listening tracks scrobbled. Check my profile here to see what I'm talking about: [www.last.fm]

My wife and I have found more new music by connecting to our friends and neighbors on last.fm than anything we've ever used before including music centric news sites. Another welcome addition is that the artists bio's are wiki's so they're done by fans that truly KNOW the artist. There is also something called events that allows people to submit concert data on artists. A healthy API connects all of these things to anything external you would want to write for it.

Last.fm is to me the true music giant of the internet.

Not really sure why people are defending iTunes here. they sell you crappy quality tracks at an expensive price. my friend runs a site where you get a track at 320 kbps for a price set by the artist. that to me is ideal. 128 is only passable as a preview of the track, not as something that you would buy (or it should be like 50 cents per song.) last.fm giving royalties to the small guy is genius. not that it's a new thing, but this could really get some exposure for the unsigned musician

I can find new music with amazon, iTunes and emusic as well.

here have some drugs free of charge. Don't worry I'll never ever charge you, even after you're addicted. That's right, take it all in.

another thing is, the whole IP address thing makes me NOT wanna tell my office mates about this service. Major negative.

*cough* Free Music Zilla *cough*

...rip any song streamed on Last.FM :)

this sounds good, but I'm waiting to see.