As for me, I use Last.fm to profile my music, but use The Filter ( http://www.thefilter.com ) to build my radio stations from my own music collection.

They already have a site-wide top list, but I doubt few care the Beatles and Red Hot Chili Whatevers are in the list.

There are various ways to “use” the site. In theory you cultivate your stream carefully, by banning as many songs as you can, trimming down the dead stuff, until eventually you find yourself matched up with a few people that listen to music you might like, some of the time, and theoretically they help you to trim the vine, the stream of newness that brings new creative life into your world, but you’re always, always banning songs–it’s actually work, and the idea is that you become your own portal in a sense, eventually, your own stream. I imagine the more active listener-neighbors around me have direct contacts with artists, feeding new songs to the machine, shortening that delay to ecstasy. But my neighbors also annoy me with bad songs, and I never find the need to talk to them, they’re all guys about my age. For some reason there’s no hot women in my music neighborhood! Maybe CBS can solve that! LOL

It’s an interesting angle: funding an organization that may eventually displace you.

Well, we’ve succeeded. However, now that Last.fm has indeed milked the corporate cow, I’m wondering if where we start to get paid royalties.

Everyone can’t get paid besides the people who create the content.

I remember when Tower Records/Best Buy introduced listening stations in their stores. Why? Try before you buy works. Isn’t Internet radio the ideal vehicle for this try before you buy concept? Unlike terrestrial radio, you get more than the 80 songs in rotation.

Also, you find a nugget of a song that you know that your buddy in New Jersey will dig, you could buy and email it to friend. As well, you could even choose to have the physical CD sent to your friend.

Last months last.fm has reshaped its structure quite some to still be considered a recommendation station and many features, such as combined tags radio stations have disappeared under pressure of the labels.
Now with the name of CBS in the statutes, last.fm will be in another position when dealing with the labels (and also gets some major American legal backup/knowledge, yes lawyers). An already announced updated subscriber model is expected to bring all those missed features back. And then some.

Actually IMHO the acquisition is the best thing that could happen. Not saying CBS, I don’t know what they plan, but a major media platform. The new video, hyped by many music fans such as me, who never have turned on radio anymore lately, or hardly watch TV, certainly not MTV, can majorly benefit from the acquisition. If CBS as a label uploads all their clips, it won’t take long before other labels follow and the step to a last.fm player with vids is not far away anymore. Based on the algo of course.

I don’t see anything happen happen in radio in a near future, more in TV. TV somehow already is interactive (satellite and TiVo boxes can interact because often they are linked to a phone line).
Now imagine that CBS takes its hole repertoire and tags it. Everything you watch, with a click you can love it, or skip/ban it. And soon you have a lsat.fm alike profile. And your TV, your CBS starts to play similar to what you have scrobbled.

CBS ads at last.fm? CBS music pushed at last.fm? I don’t really bother as subscriber and my profile is not mainstream enough to hear CBS music. :D

I just hope that “grafting last.fm’s DNA” onto CBS will not suck out the former’s most precious resources: brilliant and passionate minds that built last.fm from scratch.