By Princess Tightwad, the parsimonious eco-warrior

Princess Tightwad likes bargain basement music. 100% Colombian by the Fun Lovin’ Criminals for 99p? Oh yes. I’ve written about the joys of charity shop CDs before. But legal music for free? Bring it on.

So when I stumbled upon www.last.fm while looking for an obscure track on the internet, I thought I’d discovered a pay-as-you-download unter-iTunes. But no, here is a site where you can create your own radio station of favourite music, play full tracks and not pay a penny. I don’t always want a full album. Lily Allen is a case in point: generally the Bedales-educated mockney socialite irritates me with her faux glottal (glo’al?) stops and perceptions, but I like a couple of her tracks. I don’t have an iPod. What to do? Log onto last.fm, listen to LND or Smile until they grate on you, then simply ban them from the playlist. What’s the catch? I haven’t found one (yet).

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So I set about creating the Princess Tightwad library. I have a bizarre and eclectic taste in music. I swing from Senegal to Israel via Argentina, from techno to the medieval, from film scores to German industrial metal, from classical to chillout and from male to female via the Pet Shop Boys. It’s all there on last.fm. Mr Tightwad subjected his colleagues to my radio station at work and one of them begged him to switch it off as it “didn’t so much jump from genre to genre as backflip”.

Perhaps this has something to do with the random play feature: Aretha Franklin one minute, Brainbug the next. When I’ve tried to tag and play the genres, last.fm tells me I ‘need to be a subscriber to listen to this station’. Subscribing is only £1.50 a month, and there must be many neat and tidy people willing to pay for organisation (cf Mr T’s colleague). Apparently you can download the last.fm player for free and organise your stuff, but my anti-virus software protested. Anyway I rather like the unexpectedness of the random, and as I’ve chosen the artists I know I’ll enjoy them.

Downsides? You have to be near your computer to listen to last.fm which is great if you’re working, less good if you’re painting the shed. Some of you will have a wireless sound system round the house. You can’t download the tracks en bloc (you have to go back to iTunes to buy them individually), although I had the mad idea of setting up a digital recorder microphone in front of my PC speaker rather like I used to do with a tape recorder and Top of the Pops in 1979. But I don’t think I could stand the resultant background rattling keyboard and coughing and rustling noises. And you can’t listen to it in the car, so charity shop CDs still hit the spot there.

Feeling incredibly techno-proud of myself, I emailed the Ranger asking if he had discovered last.fm yet. His response: ‘you have to get up early to out-meme me on Web 2.0’ exposed me as a complete dinosaur (inside or outside the Ark), especially as naturenet has over a thousand artists to my 92 and has been a member since 2007. I can access naturenet’s radio station, but somehow The Ranger’s tracks get added to my library as I listen. Luckily, I like their music. I would instantly ban a station listing Rod Stewart, Sean ‘Puff Daddy’ Combs or Dexy’s Midnight Runners.

So while I have been writing this piece I have had the pleasure of: Hot Chocolate: It Started With A Kiss, Shakira: Te Dejo Madrid, The Fratellis: Flathead, Dalida: J’attendrai, Avril Lavigne: Sk8er Boi, The Klezmatics: Freyt Aykh, Yidlech, Jean-Michel Jarre: Oxygene 4, Little Green Bag, Rammstein: Du hast, Tony Christie: I Did What I Did for Maria, Afroman: Because I Got High and Darude: Sandstorm.

Backflips? Yes, and perhaps I ought to do a few of them to make up for the hours I sit in front of the computer enjoying last.fm for free.

See Princess Tightwad's last.fm music profile