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Last.fm is now independent

support.last.fm

171–180 of 232 posts

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#171

I hope this is a good change for last.fm! I love the service but it's been trickier to use since I switched from Spotify to Apple Music. Does anyone have a setup they're happy with for scrobbling from Apple Music across different types of devices?

NepTunes on macOS is nice - and it (optionally) adds the current track info to your menubar.

I haven't found anything reliable for iOS, however.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#172
Long may it continue. I've used Last.fm since it launched to keep track of my listening habits (albeit incomplete since iPhone) and all the gigs I've ever been to (complete to the best of my knowledge!).

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#173
post #6

Man i love last.fm even though it's been technically superseded (for most people) by Spotify's recommendation features. It just fit so well in the zeitgeist of 2000's indie scene, microblogs, early social media.

I find the current recommendations from spotify or youtube music don't actually help me find new music very well. They just end up shoehorning me, instead of widening my options.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#174
post #31
post #6

Man i love last.fm even though it's been technically superseded (for most people) by Spotify's recommendation features. It just fit so well in the zeitgeist of 2000's indie scene, microblogs, early social media.

I've felt a serious reduction in quality of recommendations from spotify the past couple years. Maybe I'll try last.fm

I don't really go for any of the spotify recommendations or algorithmic playlists, but I have great success with the weekly Release Radar playlist.

AFAIK, the playlist is only generated from artists that you've followed. It will pull in tracks from different artists that feature your followed artists as well, so you get some occasional drift, which I consider a positive.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#175
post #169
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the recommendation engine that Last.fm used back in the day was made the incredibly expensive way: the entire corpus was hand-tagged and cross-linked by humans atop an enormous CDDB. Last.fm, Audioscrobbler, and MusicBrainz (the association engine) were all linked together.

I think pandora had the best recommendations - because it was based on real human input, not AI and not even "group think". Sadly many years ago pandora bacame US only, so I couldnt use it (did not bother with VPN).

Yeah. 100% agree here. The Pandora algorithm was an absolute breath of fresh air relative to every other recommendation system. Just constantly surfacing new and interesting music that I had never heard of but was exactly what I liked. I spent so long hunting for info on how they achieved it and if their taxonomies had ever been open sourced.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#176

the previous owner doesnt appear to be mentioned in the post (or, at least, not easily found). CBS Coporation (owned by Paramount) bought last.fm in 2007

Purchased and then completely ignored. The only consequence from an insiders point of view is we suddenly needed training on the "Foreign Corrupt Practices Act" since last.fm was a UK company.

I guess thats better than being enshittified

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#177
post #49
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> shows your listening rankings by hours, minutes instead of just scrobble count I've wanted to build something like this for a long time, cool (and unsurprising, really) to see it's already done! Swans is my number 30 by scrobbles but 4 by playtime, which makes total sense.

If you're a Spotify user, you can get even more precise data by downloading your listening data. The website I linked gets data from MusicBrainz and tries to fill in the gaps with an average, but even then it gets some things wrong. E.g. Fishmans - Long Season is a 40 minute song, but the website's considers it as divided into 4-5 parts. And you don't have to listen to the full song to get a scrobble. In the Spotify…

Just this weekend I generated a really detailed breakdown from my Spotify dump, it's unfortunate they hide so much of the interesting stuff in a dump that takes a week+ to get access to: https://6fce3ff2.spotifyguy94-dashboard.pages.dev

The advertising profile was especially interesting since a) I don't think the brands expected anyone outside of their marketing teams to see some of these names b) I've had premium for most of the time I've used Spotify, but they're still putting in full effort on generating an ad profile in case that ever changes

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#179

So CBS spun them back out as their own corp or did the employee's or someone else buy it from CBS? Just declaring themselves independent without details doesn't provide much context. I feel like Michael Scott just declared bankruptcy.

see, to me, it feels like wuphf.com finding a buyer

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#180
post #49
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> shows your listening rankings by hours, minutes instead of just scrobble count I've wanted to build something like this for a long time, cool (and unsurprising, really) to see it's already done! Swans is my number 30 by scrobbles but 4 by playtime, which makes total sense.

If you're a Spotify user, you can get even more precise data by downloading your listening data. The website I linked gets data from MusicBrainz and tries to fill in the gaps with an average, but even then it gets some things wrong. E.g. Fishmans - Long Season is a 40 minute song, but the website's considers it as divided into 4-5 parts. And you don't have to listen to the full song to get a scrobble. In the Spotify…

Fuckkkk yes to Fishmans long season!!!
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