New on PHPMaster.com today there's a tutorial showing you how to work with the Last.fm API from your PHP applications (a REST-based service). Last.fm is a social music site and recommendation service that takes what you already listen to and suggests other artists/songs you might like.

If you are building a site for a band or artist and you want to make it more social using Last.fm, it's a must to use their API. In this way artists and fans can become connected and fans can stay up to date on concerts and new albums. In this article I show you how to query the Last FM API to get information to build a fan website for Coldplay. We start with getting the basics about the band, then get their most popular song, the contents of their albums, and a list of the events where the band is going to play for fans to get tickets.

They show you how to use the Last.fm API library to work with the service, extracting data about the bad including basic descriptions, upcoming events, top tracks and album information.