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Last.fm is now independent

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Re: Last.fm is now independent

#201

Post by BoingBoomTschak »

ilikegreen wrote: post #149
bool3max wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me last.fm's value lies in the community aspect: you can leave a comment on any artist, album, or individual track's page. There's not a single other place on the internet where I can go to to see what the people think of a song I'm listening to at any given moment (apart from perhaps YouTube, but we all know what the comments there are like - last.fm attracts a more sophisticated crowd by nature). Unfortunately…

I think RateYourMusic also allows for commenting pretty much on everything (and it also extends to film and, IIRC, videogames). It might not be as friendly as last.fm on the surface, but it is surely richer in content, and more diverse. It's a gem, and I hope Sonemnic (?) doesn't drive it to the ground.

> I hope Sonemnic (?) doesn't drive it to the ground.

It already has. Between the worst kind of Reddit tier moderation, the extreme anti-scraping measure affecting humans (can only access album pages from artist pages here, I get 503 errors otherwise) and the hiding of its forum from public view, it's already lying on said ground.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#202

Post by mariusor »

Semaphor wrote: post #53

Another alternative is listenbrainz [0], which is also self-hostable [1]. A smaller, lightweight, single user selfhostable alternative, and more about just the stats is Koito [2], and finally because obviously you want to scrobble everywhere at once, you can self-host Multi Scrobbler to scrobble to and from multiple sources at once. Yes, I like scrobbling ;) [0]: https://listenbrainz.org/ [1]: https://github.com/meta…

Lol, I had no idea scrobbling was popular again. I'm the maintainer of a scrobbler daemon for linux that gets the track info through MPRIS and can send it to last.fm, listenbrainz and libre.fm. :)

https://github.com/mariusor/mpris-scrobbler

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#204

Post by iamacyborg »

chickensong wrote: post #170
iamacyborg wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The will need to get the numbers up, but I'm hoping them being independent again is a good sign. The problem will be recovering from algorithmic poisoning from folks just scrobbling from spotify

Is that even a problem? If someone consumes a lot of algorithmic recommendations and you don't, wouldn't that drift you farther apart in the last.fm relationship?

If you really like Song X and Song X happens to be on a popular spotify playlist with a bunch of stuff you’re not into, you’ll start getting recommended all that other stuff on last.fm, no?

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#205

Post by kaizenb »

Congrats to the team. Always a fan.

Scrobbles: 301,223 Scrobbling since 4 Jan 2007.

They were also the inspiration for https://artconnects.club

Like folks here in the comments mentioned last.fm was great for meeting people through music and mutual taste. I had many friends and great conversations with people that share my music taste. That indicator design showing our common music was a great deal. Now I'm building that to connect people through movies, series, albums and books. Displaying their common stuff. This is the way!

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#206

Post by oscarcp »

shame I cant recover my original account. When they sold to spotify I hadn't accessed my account for a good while so they just moved everything over and deleted it. It was a shame, I'm one of the OGs that signed up when it still was audioscrobbler, 23 years of historic listening data through the drain. Shame. (did i mention it is a shame? XD)

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#207

Post by chickensong »

iamacyborg wrote: post #204
chickensong wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that even a problem? If someone consumes a lot of algorithmic recommendations and you don't, wouldn't that drift you farther apart in the last.fm relationship?

If you really like Song X and Song X happens to be on a popular spotify playlist with a bunch of stuff you’re not into, you’ll start getting recommended all that other stuff on last.fm, no?

Well, the current last.fm "play your recommendations" is linked to spotify, so maybe you're right? Last.fm has gone through phases of no streaming, streaming, and partner streaming, and TBH I haven't used last.fm as a stream source in quite a while. I guess it seems possible that if they outsource their recommendation playback to spotify, you'll get spotify recommendations.

Outside of the spotify integration, last.fm doesn't have visibility into anything that isn't scrobbled AFAIK. It's based on user data only. You have "neighbors" who have similar tastes, which I think is calculated based on overlapping scrobbles (not sure if time-weighted, or just top listens). If we both start scrobbling with a limited amount of artists, and 75% of our scrobbles are the band Primus, we're probably going to be neighbors. If I decide that Primus sucks and start listening to Coldplay all day, our venn diagram overlap separates and we're not neighbors anymore.

Maybe the neighbors influence the recommendations, but playback is outsourced to spotify? I guess I don't really know. You can still browse neighbors though, and use their top lists as "recommendations", which should only be based on listening history.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#208

Post by quirino »

joenot443 wrote: post #120
quirino wrote: post #29

last.fm is one of my very favorite services. It's rough around the edges in some parts, but I've gotten incredible value from it. A couple of websites built on it that I check out from time to time: - https://lastfmviz.netlify.app/ - shows what you've been listening to as a grid of album covers. You can scroll down as long as you want. It's cool to look back and remember where I was when listening to specific music.…

Give LastWave a try! My buddy built it back in college and updated it recently. https://savas.ca/lastwave/ Generates a groovy wave chart of all your past listening.

That's actually one of the more polished sites of this genre, thanks for sharing!

Sent some waves to a couple of friends

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#209

Post by Arubis »

steerpike wrote: post #175
rvba wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Pandora algorithm -- and Pandora's positioning -- is truly a product of its time. You'll want to look into the Music Genome Project (whose very name dates it; the Human Genome Project finished in 2003), but equally influential was the big labels' stranglehold on legal music distribution. When Pandora started and for years of profitability, they had no deals with major record labels, instead promoting small indie artists on the basis of their recommendation engine. If they were going to survive, that engine had to be _excellent_.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#210

Post by martin- »

elAhmo wrote: post #135

Is anyone using last.fm in 2026? This made sense when people were playing MP3s in their Windows Media Player or Winamp, but as 99% of the people just stream music now, what is the purpose of this service? It has been maybe a decade since I met someone who actually uses the service.

I don't see why it would have lost its purpose just because I'm now streaming instead of playing MP3s. It was always about the statistics for me.
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