Even with the powerful influence of television, radio is far from becoming obsolete. The medium in the present times transforms itself into a cyber station where people can log in and listen to their favorite music anywhere, anytime. We now recognize them as podcasts and we are familiar with popular online radio stations such as Yahoo! Music and Last.fm. It has become quite popular, constantly updating itself on the latest songs and artists that have made it big or are climbing to the top in the music industry. Online listeners would simply log in to their account, search and click on their favorite artists, and listen the radios that feature their songs and others of the same genre.
I became a member of Last.fm and frankly I find this to be an interesting way to listen to music while I’m surfing the internet. I found their website navigation to be pretty easy for a beginner, using interesting Java scripts to make it professional and interactive as some people would like it. The homepage wasn’t messy at all; in fact, the entire page was inviting since it didn’t have too many thumbnails or ads all over the place. I checked out the member’s profile page and tinkered with their Create a Playlist feature, which was quite easy since all I had to do was search for artists and their song titles and add them instantly to my own playlist. Overall, I liked what Last.fm did for its members and the way they make finding music as easy as a snap of a finger.
When looking for music, I thought at first, since the radio stations played the soundtracks in full, that clicking on the artist’s page would bring me to their specific radio channels and their music would be played in full too. Sadly I was disappointed when all I got were thirty-second sound clips of their songs; guess they did this to keep people from not buying their record albums. But despite that, I found this part of Last.fm to be impressive since they include updated and brief descriptions of the artists and the list of popular songs according to how many hits they got from their members. There is also a comment submission box below that where users can leave comments, praises, criticisms, and what have you about anything from the artists, their songs in particular, to whatever the media and paparazzi has to say about them. It’s interesting that Last.fm isn’t merely just an online radio station where you can listen to music but constructed the entire website to be a hub where people from all over the world can interact and share their interests with one another.
To conclude, I give Last.fm as an online radio station website a rating of 9 out of 10 for its organization, the quality of the music, and the features in store for members. Though I would have preferred that they put in full tracks in the artists’ pages, the fact that we can be updated about new releases is already a treat for music lovers all around.
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