Joining the Social Media Revolution: Last.fm Pt.2

Recently, I jumped into the pool that is Last.fm and blogged about it here.
I was curious to see what the hype was about, and if they were indeed creating "community around content." I left with a neutral posture on the tool, and vented my frustrations to the "Shade Tree Last.fm Users Guild." Following are some of the responses I got:

"I'll bet you've had your account less than a week."

"Why should we help you? Like we work for the company or something?"

"Just keep listening."

And the "Down the Rabbit Hole" response:

"Don't log in and you can listen to your own station. "

So I've kept on 'scrobbling' (indicating if I love or hate the song I'm listening to, and tagging it.) then let it rest for a few days. To my surprise, I now have some recommendations on my account, and I'm able to listen to some of them. Not bad for 2-3 weeks work. So I'm not unsold but not sold yet either, so I began to search for some more enlightened input than that which I solicited above. Enter Wendy Boswell of the Technophilia series on the Lifehacker blog. Her post "Fifteen Last.fm Power Tweaks" gave me some ideas which I think are practical, and others that only bolster my theory that I'm doing an awful lot of work for free and not getting much free music in return. Here are the "tweaks" I plan on trying:

#1 Exploit Your Neighbors. According to LH, after you play five songs, they will start to show "neighbors" with similar musical tastes at the bottom of your Last.fm page. Exploring their tags and playlists can result in new music for you to try.

#2 The "Not Enough Content" solution. As I lamented in Pt. 1 of this post series, I repeatedly got the "not enough content" message. One way around this potentially, is to click on your neighbors' tags and listen to the associated songs. If the tag has at least 15 songs behind it, it will add to your listened-to song count.

#5 Download Free Music. Evidently there's a ton of DRM-free, hassle free, free-free music to be had on Last.fm. Lifehacker says you can download it directly here
or link to users who have taken the time to create a free music "mega playlist" here.

So I will soldier on and let you know if my opinion of Last.fm improves.
For the complete list of Last.fm Power Tweaks, visit the LifeHacker post here.

Technorati Tags:lastfm, social, music, community, socialmedia, tagging, scrobbling