We’ve been tracking Last.fm for the last couple of years.  You can tell that they’re growing – moving to new offices, hiring more staff, getting a new ‘endline’. But for such a brilliant idea, why isn’t it bigger, more talked about and better known than it seems to be? (I know it’s pretty big, but why isn’t it a MASSIVE phenomenon?)  Some ideas define the power and brilliance of the internet and this is one of them. By the way, if you don’t know about last.fm (a) point made (b) wikipedia it and (c) try it out at www.lastfm.com.  But in summary, it’s an internet radio station and online new music recommendation system that learns your musical tastes and introduces you to similar stuff that you might not have yet discovered.  It does this by matching your playlist to the playlists of people with similar tastes, so there’s a social networking benefit as well. (Having read that back, maybe their new endline ‘the social music revolution’ is too obscure or maybe I’m making it sound too complicated?).
Anyway, we’re not posting this because we’re on some kind of commission.  LOVE’s interest is far more lucrative.  If the technology and thinking behind Last.fm can be proven to ‘revolutionise’ the music industry, then maybe it’ll work for loads of other things – travel, for example (i.e) share your taste in holiday experiences, tell us your favourite places and we’ll match you to ‘like-minded’ travellers who may have discovered somewhere you haven’t.  Wine is another one.  The wine industry is such a closed shop, protected by the impenetrable language used to describe different varieties.  You could debunk all of the wine language bollocks by match-making people who like similar wine and enabling them to recommend their current quaffable favourites to each other using more useful terms like "this Pinot Noir tastes brill and it didn’t give me a headache" or "I took this £2.39 bottle to a dinner party and got away with it"
Music, travel and booze – now that would be a good company to work for.