Back in the early days of broadband internet radio, i.e. 2001, I made a one-off donation to Digitally Imported. At that time it was a not-for-profit organisation using donated bandwidth to stream music to a couple of thousand people worldwide. I listened and donated to it since it was the only place to hear decent dance music. Digitally Imported used the donations to build their services and pay for their equipment. Forget Radio 1 and all that. This was the real deal.

di.fm is still going today. It is now a ‘for profit’ organisation, and they now have a number of premium rate listening packages starting with their Silver package at under $4 a month, commercial-free. The number of channels playing has increased to 17, and typically they have 19,000 listeners at any one time. It is in my opinion one of the best reasons for having broadband.

Now we have AudioScrobbler and it’s sister organisation Last.fm, run by a couple of guys in London. Last.fm is another great idea. Used with AudioScrobbler it keeps track of all the music you listen to, and makes musical connections to other members. It creates virtual playlists of music gathered from these other connections and for a small donation plays them to you: Last.fm Radio.

So, I’m donating to them, ‘cos one day all new artists will be heard this way.