Last.FM

Yeah, I know, "Where the hell is that Yahoo! Music Unlimited review you've been promising, Grant?" In good time, I promise. It should be enough to point out that I'm actually going to complete another music tool review prior to that one - infer away, dear reader. In the meantime, I'd like you to do the following to prepare for my review of Last.FM, my new favorite poker buddy:

1. Go here and Sign up for a Last.FM account.
2. Go here and download the last.fm plugin for your audio player of choice.
3. Listen to music (streaming radio doesn't count) for about six months, allowing last.fm to build up a database of what you're listening to and how often. Go ahead, I'll wait. If you're self-conscious about your love for Britney Spears' remake of Bobby Brown's 'My Prerogative', now would be the time either get over it or grow a thick skin.
4. Once you've built up a profile with the site, Go to this page and download the Last.FM radio player for your platform.
5. Go to last.fm's Radio page and click on any tag that looks interesting. Voila - tag-based audio streams that take your interests into account. You can vote on, skip or ban tracks within the player UI, but you can also tag tracks you've listened to so they show up in other tag-based stations.

The scary thing is, the site does a pretty good job of all this. You can actually skip the plugin/six months bit, but you're likely to get much less interesting selections on your radio stations. Plus the site will periodically recommend music to you - I found Vienna Teng through 'em, so I already owe them big time. Oh, did I mention there are a whole slew of "Web Services": for displaying interesting music stats on your web site? Way too cool to be free, but there it is - you can thank me later.