One got its way through the opaque jungle: Last FM is the online music community based on recommendation of all member profiles. The Audioscrobbler is a function which scans your audio data and creates a personal music profile based on your listening habits. This unique music recommendation system compares all user profiles and recommendations are generated: A user likes what you like, check out what he also likes… In addition to that, music categorisation takes place through tags also known as folksonomy.

It reminds me of the revolutionary recommendation service amazon.com once invented to recommend further products. And in both companies it works quite well. Primarily through this main feature combined with plenty other community functionalities Last FM could climb up the Olympus of web2.0 music sites.

The almost 20mio users in more than 200 countries turn this innovative music concept into one of the most successful European (English) web2.0 applications. The startup founded in 2002 has recently been acquired by the US Media Giant CBS for 280 Mio US$.

LastFM is one of the music sites which revolutionised the whole music industry. And I like it and think back when I last bought an ordinary CD… Can’t remember!