In years gone by I have relied upon recommendations from friends or buying compilation albums (like the Mercury Music prize album) to get an idea of artists I might like. Since March 2007 I have been scrobbling my music to last.fm which gives me some interesting statistical insights (like my 2nd most popular “artist” is BBC Radio 4 :-)) and tells me that I’ve listened to 10663 different tracks.
One of the features that I really like about Last.fm, is the fact that it gives me recommendations based on other artists I’ve listened to which changes over time as more tracks are listened to. In recent months I’ve used these recommendations in conjunction with spotify to give them a listen to, and in some cases this has resulted in me buying an album.
Last.fm have always been good at using the vast quantity of data that they get, and this year is no different. Over the past few weeks they’ve released the Best of 2009 list which is
the hottest and most popular artists of the year based on your scrobbles
I’ve taken this list, and created a spotify playlist made up of the Top 5 tracks for each artist mentioned in it. I’ve been listening to it over the past day or so and have found some promising artists I hadn’t stumbled upon before – The Fray and Metric to name just two.
If you need a spotify invite, then leave me a comment or drop me a line, I currently have 9 invites left.
