29 January 2008

Online Radio - Last.fm

I fell in love last weekend - a strange thing to happen at my stage in life. And I'm still in the first flush of its impact on me. Last.fm offers an amazing cornucopia of music - almost all free. It's a site which proves the new web economics notion that the best way to sell things is to give stuff away. I put the system to a fairly severe test by typing in one of my favourite pianists - Michel Petrucciani - who is hardly a household name. But it came up immediately with a biography, pictures, details of all his CDs, video clips, and enough freely playable tracks to keep me distracted the whole of a late January afternoon. The interface offers you the chance to assemble tagged playlists, create your own radio station, and join groups. You can also remove advertising and get all sorts of extra priviledges for the ridiculously small fee of two and a half Euros a month. And whilst we're on the subject of music, I just spotted the new search facility at Musgle. This one I gave an even harder test. Find me (one of my favourite jazz tunes) Nothing Personal (which I used to think was a Joey Alexander composition, but which might be by Don Grolnick). Bam! It came up with two downloadable MP3 files instantly. Good work guys. Keep it up.

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