Last.fm started out as a free online radio streaming service, but has transformed into a subscriber only radio service over the years. But if something has not changed in this music service, it is the audio scrobbler feature – an intelligent program that observes your likes and dislikes in the music and then recommends the music that you might be interested in. For example, if it finds that you really enjoy Black Eyes Peas albums then it could recommend you to listen to the singles by Will.i.am or Fergie.
Now for the Windows PC user’s they have released Last.fm desktop client which basically does two things – it allows you to listen to a Spotify powered radio and it scrobbles the tracks you listen to in order to update your Last.fm user profile.
During the installation, it offers to install plugins for various music players like Winamp, Windows Media Player, Apple iTunes etc. These plugins help it capture the track information of the music you listen to and then if you “love” the music, it is added to your Love.fm user profile.
When it captures the details of the music being played in your PC, Last.fm Scrobbler displays a notification about the song being played. You can double-click on the Scrobbler icon in the system tray to open the Last.fm Scrobbler window, see all the details of the captured track information, and also click on the small heart icon to “love” that track. You can also right-click on system tray icon and choose to “love” the track.
If you have a Spotify account, then you can also choose to play the radio from within the Last.fm desktop app. For this you have to right-click on the system tray icon and choose Play. When a message appears, you can enter your Spotify account details and proceed to play the radio.
Conclusion: If you are an old time Last.fm user, then you may benefit from using their Windows desktop client to build your Last.fm user profile from all the music that you listen to on your PC.
You can download Last.fm desktop client from http://www.last.fm/download/.