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Like.fm (YC W11) Is A Social Network For Tracking Songs

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Re: Like.fm (YC W11) Is A Social Network For Tracking Songs

#51
post #48

If you're going to make a last.fm clone you could be a little more subtle about it.

I use last.fm heavily and i do not see anything for me on like.fm. it is basicly (for now) a bad copy.

Like.fm is new. Let me know what are the features you need. My email is chris@like.fm. This is, in essence, a preview of what's to come.

Re: Like.fm (YC W11) Is A Social Network For Tracking Songs

#52
Founder Chris Chen says that its emphasis on song tracking is what separates the Like.fm from streaming services like Last.fm and music buying networks like Apple’s Ping (which he describes as “a step above adding share buttons to the iTunes store.”) says Chen “Like.fm isn’t meant to be a destination music site, it’s meant to be a place to find songs that you like. It’s not meant to be a Pandora but a compliment to it, it’s a place for sound discovery, where you go and listen to music.”

It sounds to me like he's describing Last.FM perfectly. Last.FM is a social network for finding new music based on the songs you play/scrobble.

I think with Pandora and Last.FM already well established and Grooveshark certainly doing fine I struggle to see the room in this market and what Like.fm provides that's different. Even the name sounds like a rip off of last.fm.

Maybe there is something here that the others don't/can't provide, but I'm not seeing it - anyone have any ideas?

Re: Like.fm (YC W11) Is A Social Network For Tracking Songs

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the transcribing got a little messed up, but what I meant was that Like.fm isn't meant to be a listening destination. It's not meant to compete with Pandora, Rdio, or iTunes. It's supposed to work with content delivery platforms, aggregate the data, and the ability to play via youtube on the site is simply a convenience feature to aid in discovery.

Last.fm didn't let you listen to music through them at all in the beginning; they were just a sharing and recommendation service. And for a lot of people, that's what they still are. They also are an affiliate for content delivery platforms. They also let you listen to music via youtube on their site. They also aggregate metadata from other sites like wikipedia. How do you differentiate yourself from them?

Facebook did a lot of the same things other social networks did too on a high level. But you can't look at things only on a high level or else they all look the same. This is a preview of what's to come, since this site is new, and we're a much smaller company than Last.fm.

Re: Like.fm (YC W11) Is A Social Network For Tracking Songs

#54
Huge congrats Chris! Being a 20 year old solo founder is seriously impressive.

To everyone hating for how this borrows too heavily from last.fm: I think that you'll find soon enough that there's a serious opportunity in picking up where an acquired but now stagnating startup left off. Startups are so much more agile that this might turn out to be a consistently repeatable strategy.

Re: Like.fm (YC W11) Is A Social Network For Tracking Songs

#55
I know this is offtopic, but I'll throw it out here anyway. My Last.fm account is 3 or 4 years old. I was 16 then, I'm 20 now. My tastes today are radically different from what they were 4 years ago. 4 years ago I used to listen to KoRn, Marilyn Manson and Eminem, and nothing much besides. Predictably enough, they were the top 3 artists in my Last.fm charts for a long time. Now my tastes have not only changed, they've become more varied. Some of the artists I listen to now have pushed my old favorites down the charts, but the old favorites still appear the top 10, and Marilyn Manson is still #1.

Sadly, Last.fm insists on listing heavy metal and rap artists as my top recommendations. I'd kill for a music discovery service that could take my changing tasted into account.

Re: Like.fm (YC W11) Is A Social Network For Tracking Songs

#56
post #8

At Grooveshark, we have a feature that does this and it works amazingly well. If you click on the people icon at the upper left hand corner of the screen you'll see a feed of what your friends are currently listening to on Grooveshark. The feature has become so useful, that I often discover new music to listen to through it much more so than algorithmic recommendations. Social recommendations are indeed the best way…

10 months?

http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/hottest100/09/countdown/cd_lis... <-- That was the 2009 top list.

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