Monday, January 05, 2009

Lovin' Last.fm

An old friend from my radio days hipped me to Last.fm today and I've been glued to it all evening. Regular Jazz Chroniclers will remember (oh! the tears) my mourning over Pandora's decision to pull its service from Canada. Well, one evening into my new love affair with Last.fm and I have the feeling that it's beating Pandora hands down in terms of the quality of the music it presents to you. I created a Charles Lloyd "station" late in the afternoon and it has been feeding me primo stuff from Ornette to Lovano all evening. I haven't had a chance – or the desire – to try some other genres, but I sense I'll be spending a lot of time with Last.fm this week. Mind you, if I discover that it's an endless source for great Cecil Taylor (after I just dropped a big wad of dough at iTunes and Amazon to fill in some gaps in my CT collection), I might not be so pleased.

What's embarrassing, of course, is that I didn't find out about Last.fm before this. It has been around since 2002, and is owned by a branch of Sony now, but maybe I was blinded by sweet Pandora – and those tears when she packed up and moved south.

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