Most “free” music delivered via the internet is either illegal or disappointing. Last.fm is neither. The concept is streaming audio based on community and user feedback.

To sum up the service:

- You sign up, and download their free streaming audio player.

- At this point you can search for bands you listen to and tag them based on genre.

- At any time on any bands page you can choose to preview music by the artist (a 30 second sample). Better yet listen to similiar artist radio, which plays music by the artist or(obviously) music by similiar artists. You can even listen to artist fan radio which plays music that people who have tagged the artist like.

- As an added bonus, you can also listen to radio stations based on tags. If you feel like listening to nothing but japanese pop, or 80s this feature can be pretty handy.

- My favourite feature – In the radio tab you can create a custom radio station by entering examples of the bands you feel like listening to.

All of this comes at you in 128KBps quality. And all for free. The site also has lots of community tools that may be worth checking out. I’ve found about 12 cds I want to buy, and 3 new bands I love since I started using this service yesterday. Too bad I can’t afford any of them.