11–20 of 42 posts
Until 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/
Until 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…
There is a difference between being stagnant and being stable.
The new content and change come from the data users scrobble and from the new music musicians make. The site is a platform for that, and IMHO it does its job perfectly. Not only that, but it makes a lot of money doing it.
Until 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…
Spotify is trying to be the perfect on demand music service, Last.fm isn't. It's something we tried and ended up moving away from a year or two back.
On demand music is a very difficult market to be in. There are lots of companies trying but many failing or hitting difficulties, like Spotify in the US. There are real challenges in a) being profitable and b) stay on the good side of labels.
Personally I believe that the on-demand part of music streaming is commodity and more can be easily replaced, where as scrobbling provides a richer and more personal experience. However, I do agree with parts of the article, Last.fm hasn't moved as fast as it could have, some features need adding and some improving. That's part of the plan for this year.
I use Spotify these days, which never pretended to be anything else but a music industry outlet, but I'm not half as passionate about it as I used to be about Last.fm. I really miss Last.fm's sofar unrivaled community driven recommendations.
I'm afraid the perfect music service will only come if the industry finally gives up its outdated restrictions.
Just sayin' and that's not even counting the amount of people that don't go to the website and just scrobble all day (me), or use the streaming app (me sometimes).
Last.fm is far from dead, in fact I love it (and many people does). Like a previous comment said: it's actually useful.
I am listening to all the music through this plugin for last 1 year.
I quit Last.fm when they sold out to become yet another mouthpiece for the music industry instead of a social service for music lovers that put their users first. I use Spotify these days, which never pretended to be anything else but a music industry outlet, but I'm not half as passionate about it as I used to be about Last.fm. I really miss Last.fm's sofar unrivaled community driven recommendations. I'm afraid the…
Can you explain what that means? I'm only a casual user of last.fm, so I wouldn't notice a negative change even it slapped me in face; I'm genuinely curious about how they've become a mouthpiece for industry, and how that's changed the user experience.
Morning Mr Magpie is in position 8 instead of position 4 where it should be, because 8105 people scrobbled Morning Mr. Magpie with a dot. Tip of the iceberg.
Really egregious are the albums with no scrobbles because every track on the album has "(Album Version)" or some such affixed to its name.
Once on a Pandora station they played me a track by a band called Burial, instead of the dubstep artist Burial I had added to the station. So I sent them an email and they thanked me and told me the issue was very important to them and they cleaned their data. Last.fm doesn't bother, even when it causes their top-20 charts to be completely wrong.
Until 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…
Typical startup fallacy. Just because they aren't overhauling their site every few months doesn't mean they are stagnating. There is a difference between being stagnant and being stable. The new content and change come from the data users scrobble and from the new music musicians make. The site is a platform for that, and IMHO it does its job perfectly. Not only that, but it makes a lot of money doing it.
A startup can only live on "hey that's cool" for so long, when the promise of all these new ways of interacting is itself suggestive enough to capture people's imaginations even if it happens not to be very useful.
But soon we get acclimated, and even bored. And to keep pace with the ever-receding limit of human curiosity there must be some combination of new innovation and enduring usefulness, if not just one or the other.
Until 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…
(I work at Last.fm) Spotify is trying to be the perfect on demand music service, Last.fm isn't. It's something we tried and ended up moving away from a year or two back. On demand music is a very difficult market to be in. There are lots of companies trying but many failing or hitting difficulties, like Spotify in the US. There are real challenges in a) being profitable and b) stay on the good side of labels. Persona…