In years gone by, you could learn about a person simply by perusing their record or CD collection. Now, in the digital world, people's music collections are stored digitally on their computers and locked away on their MP3 players. What the digital era has done, however, is open the floodgates to more music than any record shop could ever stock. The question is, where do you start? How do you find all the music you love? The answer? Scrobbling on Last.fm.

Last.fm (the .fm domain comes courtesy of the company being registered in the Federation of Micronesia, which is handy for marketing purposes if nothing else). Founded in 2002 and based in the UK, Last.fm is basically an internet radio and music website. Upon subscribing to the service, which is free, the site will learn what music you enjoy listening to, it will then recommend similar artists you would enjoy, streaming them live through your PC. What makes Last.fm such an innovative and expansive way to discover music is the technology behind it, the 'Audioscrobbler'.

The Audioscrobbler is a downloadable software application that sends information about every song you listen to back onto the site and into your own personal Last.fm profile. Millions of songs are scrobbled by the 21 million plus people that use Last.fm every day. This incredible amount of data helps the site to organise and recommend music to its users, pointing you in the direction of artists you may want to check out, simply by analysing what you enjoy listening to ? it then creates your own personal streaming 'radio station'. It doesn't end there either, Last.fm is also a social networking site, similar to Facebook et al. When scrobbling your songs, Last.fm will point you in the direction of people who share your tastes, by befriending them you can check out their music ? all of which expands your own collection. When you recommend music to a friend, tag it, write about it, even just listen to it – you shift the song's importance on the site. It'll be recommended to different people and will move up the site's music charts, meaning more people will hear it, simply because you thought it was good.

Basically, by joining Last.fm your eyes will be opened to an incredible amount of music you never knew existed. You can compile a personal profile of songs that can even be taken out and about via the live internet streaming capabilities of the iPhone or iPod Touch. It's one of the largest sites on the web and is constantly evolving and growing. Joining for free allows you to do everything we've discussed above, there are also subscription services you can pay for which increases the options available to you. You can even permanently download over 100,000 tracks for free, as the copyright has been waived by the artists themselves. The possibilities for every music lover are basically endless. The world's largest jukebox is available for all, at last.

Lily Allen image © PENNIE SMITH