Last.fm Tells You What You Should Be Listening To (According to Age and Gender)

The nerd in me loves this sort of thing, but the amateur Judith Bulter in me says, "OH RLY?" Last.fm just launched an app that graphs the average age and gender of your top artists listeners, and you can how you measure up. I am apparently in my mid-twenties, almost decade off, but very much a "girl" in my musical taste:

These kinds of tools are fun and shouldn't be taken too seriously (no one can tell you what you should be listening to), but I do have a few questions, namely what is the average age of a last.fm user in general? I'm guessing the results skew sort of young because (from what I can tell from using the site for the past four years) last.fm users tend to be in their twenties. I popped some of my friends' names in, most of whom are in their thirties and forties, and all of them had the musical taste of someone much younger, according to last.fm's data. And the site overall is rather "indie heavy." It seems that certain types of music fans use last.fm. The site's own particular demographic should be taken into consideration. (You can look at last.fm's users' most listened to artists by age and gender here. )

One thing no one would find surprising is how certain styles of music -- and some highly acclaimed artists -- broke down across gender lines.  According to my very unscientific data, men generally don't listen to female artists much, and last.fm agrees. I thought this proclamation from their blog was disappointing -- but not at all shocking:

"So, you can now use this plot to decide which music you might want to listen to. For example, if you are a healthy young male in your early twenties, you probably should listen to bands such as Iron Maiden and Metallica. Gorillaz and Radiohead might just be acceptable. If you get older you can then switch to artists like Neil Young and Genesis. It’s all quite obvious really."