With over 215,000 plays starting since 2008, I've always been a firm believer in Last.fm. If you're into getting social on the Internet, it's so much easier to link a friend to your Last.fm profile versus going on and on about your musical preferences. Last.fm allows your tastes to be an open book to anyone who might be curious, and I like that.

Over the past few years, Last.fm has solidified itself as the best music scrobbling platform online. It's also developed certain community elements of the website that have it feeling much like a social network. It's a very good experience all-around and if you haven't looked into then you're missing out!

In this post, let's jump into a few awesome third-party services that can take your Last.fm data and offer a unique view into the information it provides.

Last.fm Collage Generator

Last.fm Collage Generator is a really cool way to visualize and share your favorite albums.

To use the generator, simple provide your Last.fm username (or any Last.fm user that you're interested in), a time period (a week, a month, three months, six months, a year, or overall), a collage size (3×3, 4×4, or 5×5), and then generate. From there, the user's Last.fm statistics are pulled, album art is ripped, and it's all put into a single image.

Above is an example collage. It's a really cool service that allows you to effortlessly visualize and share your favorite albums.

Last.fm "Super-Eclectic" Test

As an adjective, eclectic is defined as "deriving ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources." Having eclectic music tastes would mean that you're very open and interested in hearing new types of music. That's a good thing!

To rank the eclectic score of your Last.fm profile, or anyone else's, all that's required is that you enter a username and submit the form. The website does the rest for you.

After, you're given your score, a list of your most occurring artists, and a chart. The list allows you to visualize who your overall library is most centered around. You could argue that the top of this list is the artist that really defines your library (rather than your most plays).

Further down the page are two sets of BBCode for you to embed your results on your Last.fm profile, forums, blogs, or elsewhere.

Copy, paste, and go. Share your musical variety with the world!

The Obscurometer

We humans are constantly pressured to like things that not many other people are into or have heard of! It couldn't be any truer than in music.

The Obscurometer allows you to enter any Last.fm username and pick a range from a week, a month, three months, six months, a year, or overall. Submit the form and then, with this data, the website compares you to thousands of other users to generate a score that reflects how obscure your tastes are.

As you can see, I'm not exactly the most unique snowflake. Further down the page, a list of artists is shown with their individual obscurity rating and your playcounts for each. On the right-hand side, code is offered so that you can show the world just how much of a hipster you are in your Last.fm profile! Now don't you feel special?

The site also includes other features, like checking out statistics on the most/least obscure users.

Which of these services is your favorite? I'd also be interested in seeing some of your results and ratings. Drop us a comment below!