Last.fm turns 20

Still use last.fm. Most "You might like this" algorithms go straight for the low-hanging fruit, and often fail to take any kind of nuance into account.

I can't tell you how many of the streaming services will see my Black Sabbath play history and immediately recommend, "If you like Black Sabbath, you should love...Slipknot!" But I've never had a real person make that mistake, because a real person who looks at my last.fm history and has an understanding of the genre says "Gee, this guy has plenty of Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, and tons of doom metal on his list, but doesn't have Slipknot, Korn, or Pantera in his history. Maybe that's intentional."

Human review and recommendation still beats algorithmic recommendation by a mile if you have discerning tastes.

Their recommendations that I got then seem leagues better than what the big modern streamers give now.

For all their AI and ginourmous models, they mostly seem to be stuck on "what you listened to yesterday".

Love the service. Been using it for most of its life cycle and pay for the Pro service when I can. I don’t really utilize the features but like to support services I find useful.

It’s no Rdio [RIP :(] but the recommendations from LastFM are probably the best I’ve encountered.

When I come across mentions of new artists, I use last.fm to quickly find out which is the most popular song by that artist, on the assumption that listening to that song will give me the best indication of whether I might like them.

This has taken me back. I used to have last.fm on all day when I was working at home. I moved to Spotify in 2014 (it turns out). I moved my loved tracks into a playlist (in 2014) and a 4500 song playlist somehow. Looking through the tracks most of the artists haven't released anything in the last few years. So its like a time caught in a bottle. Getting quite nostalgic listening through.

Last.fm was great - I wish I could work out why I left.