Music sales don’t tell the whole story when it comes to what’s popular on the music landscape. It looks like folks in the UK have realized this and have turned to Last.fm for some help.

It’s been a good year for Last.fm, the social network / Internet radio station. It’s grown its market share amongst music websites by 22%, sold itself to CBS in May for $280m, and has now struck a deal with music industry bible Music Week to provide weekly charts based on its listening data. The idea behind the charts is track listening habits, rather than music sales, in order to identify up and coming new artists and songs.

Talk about a mini revolution. With changes like this, small bands with strong followings may actually have a better chance at obtaining some recognition for their hard work. Maybe not quite a full blow revolution, but definitely a solid evolution thanks to the very recent ability to easily track listening habits.

I can see this being extremely beneficial for bands who have managed to break out in various parts of the world, but have yet to crack the global scene on mass. Folks like Alexisonfire or the Gallows aren’t well known in the US but have huge followings in other countries. With greater exposure from things like the Last.fm powered charts, bands like these should pop up on the radar of more music fans pretty quickly.