Last.FM review

The Last.FM app brings the functionality of the great music website to your iPhone. With it, you can build your own custom radio station that will search for music it thinks you’ll like, as well as like-minded listeners, based on what you have listened to and enjoyed.

You can select artists by searching for them on the home page. You can then listen to that artist’s recordings, and access their biography. You can also see how other users rate them, and listen to music from similar artists.

The Last.FM app’s stand-out feature is its ability to check when an artist is next performing live. It gives you the date and shows the location – courtesy of Google maps. You can even tell the app which gigs you’re going to, and set a reminder in your calendar.

Last.FM also acts a form of social networking. You can view the top listeners for your favourite tracks, take a look at their playlists, and even see what they are listening to at that moment. Furthermore, you can listen to that same song, like a peculiar musical stalker. Similar to Genius on iTunes, Last.FM recommends new songs to you, based on the music in your library, if you’re after a less creepy way to discover new music.

The profile screen is very easy to navigate, and offers everything that a music library should. There are sections for your top artists, top albums, recently played songs, events you’ve added, and a list of your friends. From this screen you can share music and messages with them.

We particularly liked the process of starting up, whereby you can login to your existing Last.FM account, or start up a new one and get your preferences kicked off by assigning a specific tag (i.e. ‘rock’ or ‘sixties’), or a specific artist to your account. Your tastes will start off tailored to those of the person/genre you selected.

A novel feature, which helps determine your tastes, Last.FM lets you pass judgement on a song as it is playing. The app will then either store it in your profile’s preferences memory or skip it. Each track also has the option to ‘share’, ‘tag’, ‘add to playlist’, or ‘buy on itunes’.

The only slight disappointment is the lack of the ‘charts’ feature that appears on the website, which aggregates your listening patterns and charts the results. It is likely that this will appear on any further update.

Last.FM obviously requires an Internet connection in order to stream the music. This limits it slightly as an alternative personal music player.

This App is free to download, and an absolute must. It really is a triumph for music-loving iPhone owners.

Last.FM info

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Platform: Apple iPhone

Price: Free

Developer: Last.FM

Website/Demo: Last.FM website

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