really good idea i had too late

today i was thinking about the music i listen to and how happy it makes me when i find really good new music to listen to. and as i clicked through a few songs on i-tunes i though about how it keeps track of how many times you've listened to each song, and i realized that there is a massive pool of information out there about people's musical taste that could be aggregated to give recommendations for new songs based on what you listen to the most and what other people who listen to similar things also like.

so i looked around on the internet and found out that this service has already existed for about two years and is pretty successful. it's called last.fm, and it is really cool. you download their free software and it tracks everything you listen to and then provides you with a personal online radio station of music it thinks you would like. there's also a social networking element to the site where you can link to friends and recommend music for each other but i haven't really tried it yet. I've been listening to it while i wrote this post and i've already heard a couple of really good new songs.

there's another cool music site, called the hype machine. this one tracks blog entries that mention music or link to mp3's, and plays them on a free online radio station so you can keep up on what's new in music.

these are both pretty cool sites that i wish i had thought of. oh well, back to the drawing board (aka school).