The Last Music Resource You Will Ever Need

Database technology can work to help us find new music, events, and people. Last.fm is among the most popular new-edge programs that merge Internet radio with music recommendation services. Most of the site is free, but as usual a couple perks come with spending less than $10 a month, mostly intel for the heavy researcher.

A user signs-up by installing an application on their computer that records what music that user is playing. Then, through the process of collaborative filtering, it finds similar users and genres for the user. They call it scrobbling.

Last.fm's 'about us' section couldn't say it better:

Last.fm taps the wisdom of the crowds, leveraging each user's musical profile to make personalised recommendations, connect users who share similar tastes, provide custom radio streams, and much more.

You will meet people based on how their taste relates to your own or to whatever you search for. I tried tripping up the system with the most obscure artists I could think of, but I got several recommendations hitting the bullseye every time.

Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music

For those of you out there that feel overwhelmed, or have no idea, about how diverse electronic music is, I present to you Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music. It is easily found on Google because of the useful, detailed, and sometimes humorous information about almost any electronic sub-genre imaginable.

It is, however, a set of opinions. Some of these you may take with a grain of salt since we should all know by now that objectivity, especially in music, is impossible.

The site has a map divided in slabs of genres with chunks of sub-genres that resemble the solar system in relation to the decades when the music was made. I also enjoy the "asteroid belts" of eras that some of us out there will laugh out loud in disbelief that we actually liked it, or remember vividly.

Each button has a description and a couple samples. Some of the genres I specialize in I have problems with the choices he made, but as I said before: opinions are opinions.

So sit back, relax, and take the tour.