I’ve been thinking over the past few weeks how music is such a great motivational tool for me. I have looked at my workflow during times when I don’t have music playing and it’s far less than when I do have music playing – and from studying my ‘creative moments with music’ it’s almost always in the evening after 8pm, with me peaking at around 11pm. I tend not to listen to music quite as much during the earlier part of the day. If I do then it’s pretty much DI.FM Deep House streaming through iTunes or DJ ALA’s Dive Radio mix session podcasts, not a selection of my personally picked music from my music library, which brings me neatly to Last.fm.

I’ve had an account for a couple of years but rarely ever enabled scrobbling via the Lastfm software. Then a few weeks I found out that I could ‘scrobble’ using CoverSutra, a full registered program I have had installed on my Mac since buying the MacHeist bundle earlier in the year. It’s far prettier than the Lastfm software, with quite a few nice features including music search, cool album art in a virtual jewel case on your desktop, shortcuts and more.

Today Last.fm Beta launched with a whole new design but is currently only accessible by subscribers. I wasn’t one, but it didn’t take me long to pay up £1.50 for one months subscription just so that I could have a look around this exclusive little club. Beta gets a big thumbs up from me. It feels cleaner, much less cluttered and easier to find what you’re looking for, like wandering through an airy room.

So, back to music that motivates me and perks up my creativeness. At the moment I am going crazy over Tales From The Beach, Incognito’s new album which was released two weeks ago. It’s not often I buy an actual physical CD, but Incognito had me up and out the door in search of this just 5 minutes after hearing short track samples on the HMV website. It wasn’t for a couple of days more that I was able to locate it and paid £11-99 for the privilege from HMV. Usually I’d download my most favourite tracks from iTunes rather than a whole album…but since they didn’t have the album I was forced to buy the CD. Since I have all of Incognito’s work on this format then I didn’t mind keeping up that tradition too much.

When I’m not listening to Incognito (a rarity at the moment) then I listen to Miguel Migs, Jamiroquai, Basement Jaxx, Daft Punk, Royksopp, Groove Armada and Scissor Sisters amongst many many others. Those are the artists that ‘move’ me the most. Take a look through my Last.fm profile and feel free to add me as a friend. It’s fun to see who I have the best music compatibility with :)