Last.fm

Last.fm

More plays than Beethoven but fewer listeners. I always knew Mozart fans were obsessive dorks,' says Waqcku, aka 16-year-old Derek from Seattle. He's referring to listening trends on Last.fm, a website where boundaries are broken down and new music is discovered.

The London-based 'social music' site, which was bought by US media corporation CBS in May for £140m, is being touted as the next MySpace or Facebook. It has gained 15m active users since launching five years ago, with its success down to the simple premise that people who like music want to share their tastes and learn more.

Users - whose membership is free - allow Last.fm to register or 'scrobble' what they play on software such as Windows Media Player and iTunes, and even on their iPods. Over time a user's listening habits build up into a musical profile, showing their favourite artists and most-listened-to tracks. The website makes artist recommendations based on these profiles and even provides audio samples thanks to agreements with artists, labels and distributors.

The name Last.fm refers to the site's popular radio streams, which it promises will be the last you'll ever need. And, like MySpace and Facebook, Last.fm enables you to communicate with friends and neighbours based on your musical 'compatibility'.

'It makes sense that a composer like Beethoven would have a massive presence here. He is one of the titans of classical as much as the Beatles are the titans of popular music'

The website isn't restricted to any particular types of music either, with hip hop sitting happily alongside pop and folk rubbing shoulders with punk. Classical music, too, has a place on Last.fm: Beethoven is the most popular composer, with over 220,000 weekly listeners, while Mozart's works have been played the most - 2.9m times and counting.

And while such composers have the obvious advantage of a whole career's worth of back catalogue behind them, their statistics compare favourably to the pop artistes du jour: Gwen Stefani has 265,000 weekly listeners and Amy Winehouse has received 2.4m plays to date, for example.

Jonas Woost, head of music at Last.fm, believes that statistics like these prove the diversity of the site's user base: 'It makes sense that a composer like Beethoven would have a massive presence here. He is one of the titans of classical as much as the Beatles are the titans of popular music. Amy Winehouse hasn't quite hit that level of global recognition yet.'

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