How long is Last.fm gonna last?
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How long is Last.fm gonna last?
1–10 of 42 posts
Re: How long is Last.fm gonna last?
#2For me last.fm died (after years of being a subscriber just to support them, first during the "open for everyone" time and then during the "I'm from Germany and wouldn't need to pay" time) already. Scrobbling makes only sense for me if I actually do something with _my_ data. Which - I don't.
Listening to music on last.fm became unbearable after a while due to their inability to fix their product to distinguish artists by similar or the same name. ABS and A.B.S. is not the same. If there's both a punk rock band and a rapper with name "Foo" it probably doesn't make sense to mix them..
Re: How long is Last.fm gonna last?
#3For me last.fm died (after years of being a subscriber just to support them, first during the "open for everyone" time and then during the "I'm from Germany and wouldn't need to pay" time) already. Scrobbling makes only sense for me if I actually do something with _my_ data. Which - I don't. Listening to music on last.fm became unbearable after a while due to their inability to fix their product to distinguish artist…
> If there's both a punk rock band and a rapper with name "Foo" it probably doesn't make sense to mix them.
Damn right. And yet Last.fm does. An example: Felt. "There are three artists with the name Felt"[1]. I'm wondering if using MusicBrainz or another service they could manage to differentiate them.
Re: How long is Last.fm gonna last?
#4Until another service comes along that allows users to record which songs they've listened to, and be as ubiquitous (there's a Last.fm plugin of some sort for practically every music software player, and even for some hardware players), I think Last.fm is safe.
With services such as Spotify competing with it, though, I think Last.fm has lost its chance in the music streaming industry. I have plenty of friends with Spotify accounts but very few with Last.fm accounts (and those that do have them solely as vestiges of the MySpace era).
As the article says, the problem is, as with so many of these small, new companies that get bought by much bigger ones (Flickr and Delicious come to mind as similar cases), they stagnated and have done nothing new.
Re: How long is Last.fm gonna last?
#5Considering the fact that they recently settled on charging users for listening to their stations on the iPhone, and that Apple added the 30% subscription demand shortly after that, I'd say, well, prediction is bullshit.
Re: How long is Last.fm gonna last?
#6For me last.fm died (after years of being a subscriber just to support them, first during the "open for everyone" time and then during the "I'm from Germany and wouldn't need to pay" time) already. Scrobbling makes only sense for me if I actually do something with _my_ data. Which - I don't. Listening to music on last.fm became unbearable after a while due to their inability to fix their product to distinguish artist…
> If there's both a punk rock band and a rapper with name "Foo" it probably doesn't make sense to mix them. Damn right. And yet Last.fm does. An example: Felt. "There are three artists with the name Felt "[1]. I'm wondering if using MusicBrainz or another service they could manage to differentiate them. [1] http://www.last.fm/music/Felt
I could see some sort of "disambiguation" feature like on wikipedia. So when I click on your link above, it could give me links to Felt (rock), Felt (rap), and Felt (classic).
I made up the genres, but the point remains. Then clicking on Felt (rock) takes me to last.fm/music/Felt(rock).
Re: How long is Last.fm gonna last?
#7I've been using last.fm for just over 7 years (and I was one of the last of my friends to join). I love it. Why? Because unlike other "social networks", last.fm is actually useful. For me, its is about data, both aggregating my listening data (across several devices including desktop laptop and squeeezebox) and using it to recommend new bands to me as well as local concerts to go to.
This article is laughably bad. It's creating a problem where there isn't one. Last.fm is not on the decline. It is not any less exciting than it was 5 years ago. In fact, the service only gets more interesting the longer you use it. IMO the premise for the article is false. Moreover, the recommendations for improving Last.fm are weak and for the most part frivolous.
Re: How long is Last.fm gonna last?
#8Until another service comes along that allows users to record which songs they've listened to, and be as ubiquitous (there's a Last.fm plugin of some sort for practically every music software player, and even for some hardware players), I think Last.fm is safe. With services such as Spotify competing with it, though, I think Last.fm has lost its chance in the music streaming industry. I have plenty of friends with Sp…
See http://libre.fm/
Re: How long is Last.fm gonna last?
#9For me last.fm died (after years of being a subscriber just to support them, first during the "open for everyone" time and then during the "I'm from Germany and wouldn't need to pay" time) already. Scrobbling makes only sense for me if I actually do something with _my_ data. Which - I don't. Listening to music on last.fm became unbearable after a while due to their inability to fix their product to distinguish artist…
It's not ideal, but artist-disambiguation is also a non-trivial problem to solve. The effort of which needs to be balanced against a) how many people it affects and b) what else needs doing.
Re: How long is Last.fm gonna last?
#10Here in the US I use last.fm fairly regularly via firefox toolbar add-on fire.fm. With it I just hit play, pause, fwd and stop to listen to my last.fm station; it's controls sit at bottom right of my browser.
On my iPHone though I use Pandora more then Last.fm. Pandora for non indie/vanguard music plays better recommendation then last.fm does.