Mostly it's the artists on your lists, but a lot more goes into it too (they're quite secretive about their actual algorithms, so I don't know much to tell you, but the artists are the main influence).

Currently, the neighbours are based on your overall history, but a new system is on its way soon which will make neighbours and taste-o-meter readings more relevant to current tastes rather than overall histories.

As for people being on your neighbours list, but you not being on theirs, the best way to think of it is this:

Imagine you live on a farm 30 miles outside a city. The people who live in the last apartment block on the edge of that city are your closest neighbours, so your neighbours list fills up with them. But lots of other people (who live in the city, instead of 30 miles away) are closer to them than you are, so you won't be on their neighbour list.

Obviously, that scenario's a bit of an exaggeration, but it's quite a good analogy - if your tastes span more than one genre, it's less likely that other people are listening to the same stuff that you are. Also, the fact your account's relatively new may have something to do with it. I have no idea how often people's neighbours get recalculated, but I don't think it's all that regularly (though that will change in a few weeks when they introduce the new neighbours method I mentioned earlier).

For new beta neighbour calculation look here...

I wander if the new neighbours system will be recalculated on a regular basis? it appears that the current one has been updated once (or maybe twice).

originally by DFA1979:
As for people being on your neighbours list, but you not being on theirs, the best way to think of it is this:

Imagine you live on a farm 30 miles outside a city. The people who live in the last apartment block on the edge of that city are your closest neighbours, so your neighbours list fills up with them. But lots of other people (who live in the city, instead of 30 miles away) are closer to them than you are, so you won't be on their neighbour list.also, I probably live too far from a city. guess it should be something like a desert island -- the matter is absolutely no one of 20m has me on their neighbours list.

acreature said:

As the blog says, the new system will keep up-to-date with your listening habits:
In the first place we’re now able to use live charts to create a musical profile which we match against other users. This means that your neighbours can change as soon as you start to listen to new music.it's good to know. does this also imply that there will be a 'browsable' weekly snapshots of past neighbours lists, similar to the current weekly charts?

and thanks, btw, for quoting the blog. that's what I should have done to prevent a confusion and save the following paragraphs.

acreature said:

The neighbours system is about musical neighbours, not geographical - how close you live to a city doesn't matter. Your Last.fm neighbours are people who like the music you like.oh, of course, I meant exactly musical neighbours, not geographical.

that 'Living on the edge' was simply a metaphor which was inspired by and referring to the brilliant explanation provided by DFA1979 a bit earlier in this very thread. I am terribly sorry for the confusion! it was my mistake to omit the quotation, I just didn't expect that my words could be taken so literally -- they were all about musical neighbours, in fact.

just to be sure: yet I can see plenty of musical neighbours on my profile, but I'm not anyone's neighbour. i.e., how come that there's no one from the more than 20m lfm user-base who'd have *me* as their musical neighbour?

it's not that it would be a big deal, just curious.

Bloopy said:
I admire your perseverance. You could look at her top 50 artists and delete the ones you have also listened to from your library. Then you wouldn't have to change your listening habits, you would just be resetting your play count for some artists.

Haha. I haven't actually changed my listening habits, this just seemed like the only way to actually get her off my list. I suppose deleting top 50 artists would help, and I've been meaning to get rid of my excessive quantities of Green Day that somehow ended up in my history... (I like them, but not enough to be my number one played band by more than double!)

Yeah, well I appear to listen to Krezip the most, since I've copied my plays from Windows Media Player, and I can't say Krezip is a bad band, it's just that I don't listen to them that much anymore, and maybe even I could indeed change my profile to display, like, the last week or something? But I honestly wouldn't know how to >.<