Anyone ever used this site? I'm torn, because I hate having my private information given out to other people, but at the same time it is pretty cool.
So I was looking through the Tivo apps available at apps.tv and I saw a client for last.fm. I loaded it up on the Tivo but it didn't do anything.
It turns out that you have to also install a plug-in on your home computer's media application (I used WinAmp, but there is an iTunes one as well) and it watches the songs you play and starts to make a music profile for you. This profile is used to make up a radio stream for you at the site, along with giving you recommendations for groups and other people who have similar tastes.
It's pretty cool. I like it on the Tivo because I can skip to the next song unlike with a shoutcast stream. I can also apparently tag songs that I like and it will add it to the information about what I like and dislike for future recommendations.
Before I had a profile going, I did a quick try for groups like New Order. It gave me Electronic and Joy Division right away, so that's pretty cool.
I use it and I love it. The song selections are a little more "obvious" than the ones Pandora gives me (in my opinion), but sometimes that can be a good thing.
Well, the goal for me was to get a nice streaming station set up for my Tivo. It honestly has enough information about my listening habits to seed at this point after one day. I don't use WinAmp all that often at home since I've been using iTunes mostly, but it wasn't that hard to set up a representative 24 hour playlist and let that go to feed their music tastes database.
From here on out I can just add to it by ranking their recommendations.