it is pretty awesome.
when you create an account, you download a little thinger that runs in the background while you listen to music, and it tracks or 'scrobbles' everything you listen to. you can also, if you choose, set it so it scrobbles what you've been listening to on your ipod when you sync your ipod to your computer. (it may do this for other mp3 players too, but i'm not sure about that.) on your profile, it will show your recently listened to tracks, top artists/albums/tracks of the week (you can choose how to filter the results, and you can go back and look at what you were listening to in the past). it's designed to be somewhat like a social networking site, in a way, but based solely on music. it will show you profiles of people (which are thankfully extremely brief in regard to interests and pictures) called 'neighbours' that listen to the same sorts of things you do, and you can see everything they've been listening to as well. i generally just check out what my friends have been listening to, but that feature is a pretty rad way to find out about new artists. you can also recommend tracks or artists to others.
anyway, i think it's pretty cool. if you want to check mine out, or friend me, here it is:
http://www.last.fm/user/sarahfax/oh, you also have the option to turn off scrobbling if you want to keep some of your listenings a secret, so no one has to know about your secret love for avril lavigne or baroque recorder quartets or what have you.
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