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2002: Last.fm and Audioscrobbler Herald the Social Web

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101–110 of 149 posts

Re: 2002: Last.fm and Audioscrobbler Herald the Social Web

#101
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What.cd was the Library of Alexandria for recorded music, the depth of what was collated and properly labelled there was far beyond anything that has ever existed on any other service, paid for or not. Every permutation of every release, endless live recordings, often multiple of the same event, absolutely incredible.

Private trackers as I understand it, are still a thing in the mid 2020s. Did a replacement that matches (or surpasses) What.cd not pop up in the meantime? I'm just wondering how a strong community like that was struck a deathblow. It's not like all of its content disappeared.

It did, took only a few weeks iirc.

Re: 2002: Last.fm and Audioscrobbler Herald the Social Web

#102
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What.cd was the Library of Alexandria for recorded music, the depth of what was collated and properly labelled there was far beyond anything that has ever existed on any other service, paid for or not. Every permutation of every release, endless live recordings, often multiple of the same event, absolutely incredible.

Private trackers as I understand it, are still a thing in the mid 2020s. Did a replacement that matches (or surpasses) What.cd not pop up in the meantime? I'm just wondering how a strong community like that was struck a deathblow. It's not like all of its content disappeared.

Orpheus and Redacted existed but it's kind of hard to beat the convenience of streaming for the low price in 2025.

Granted you can set up automated *arr systems with PLEXAMP to get a pretty seamless "personal Spotify" setup IME getting true usefulness out of trackers of What's quality always required spending real money - to obtain rare records/CDs on marketplaces - or at least large amounts of time if you went the "rent CDs from the library" route. I personally haven't ran into much RYM releases lacking on Apple Music and what is lacking I can find on Bandcamp or YouTube.

Re: 2002: Last.fm and Audioscrobbler Herald the Social Web

#103

I love last.fm with all my being. I recently created a ListenBrainz (same org as MusicBrainz) account which is an open source alternative that you don’t have to host yourself. I’m scrobbling to both places now just in case. Check out tapmusic.net too to make cool diagrams out of your scrobbled music.

libre.fm is also back at it!

Re: 2002: Last.fm and Audioscrobbler Herald the Social Web

#104

I always thought Apple missed a huge opportunity to build a social network on top of iTunes. See what your friends are listening to, develop communities around shared musical interests, get better recommendations. Sort of like YouTube now.

They do? It's pretty limited but if you tap your profile photo at the bottom of Music and then tap your profile photo in the menu again it'll bring you to a "Apple Music profile" of sorts you can follow people with.

Re: 2002: Last.fm and Audioscrobbler Herald the Social Web

#105
post #35

The best ”algorithm” for discovering new music was digging through profiles on last.fm back when the social functions of the site were still active. Sure, it was a lot of manual work, but the results were amazing. It wasn't completely blind, I found that people I had high similarity with, it was more likely I'll like what they like, even across different genres. Sometimes people were nice and took the effort to recom…

Shameless plug: I'm building volt.fm for Spotify (3M users) which like last.fm lets you find people with similar taste.

You can even save their top songs as an auto-updating playlist. It's a great way to find new music that is not controlled by algorithms.

Here's my profile if anyone wants to have a look: https://volt.fm/soheilpro

Re: 2002: Last.fm and Audioscrobbler Herald the Social Web

#106
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What.cd was the Library of Alexandria for recorded music, the depth of what was collated and properly labelled there was far beyond anything that has ever existed on any other service, paid for or not. Every permutation of every release, endless live recordings, often multiple of the same event, absolutely incredible.

Private trackers as I understand it, are still a thing in the mid 2020s. Did a replacement that matches (or surpasses) What.cd not pop up in the meantime? I'm just wondering how a strong community like that was struck a deathblow. It's not like all of its content disappeared.

Orpheus and redacted (previously passtheheadphones) both appeared shortly after what.cd’s demise. I believe they both now have more total torrents than what.cd, however the depth is still not what what’s was 9 years on (I know this because some of my uploads from what are still missing, partially because I no longer have the source material). And, the “cultivation” (ensuring no duplicates, recommendations for releases, general community, etc) is nowhere near what’s.

I would say all other media (or at least, the media I care about - film, tv, books) has what.cd equivalents, sometimes multiple. I think Spotify and AM killed 95%+ of “true” private tracker interest for music, especially with lossless and surround releases being available. The diehard core are still there (names from 15 years ago are still active) but it’s really not the same.

Re: 2002: Last.fm and Audioscrobbler Herald the Social Web

#107

I'm still scrobbling after all these years.

I left Spotify when their CEO made a military investment. Breaking free from their recommendation algorithm and dedicating time to discovering music has been a transformative experience. I am delighted that numerous tools still utilize scrobbling. My favorite recent discovery is Tapmusic. [0] [0] https://www.tapmusic.net/

[flagged]

Re: 2002: Last.fm and Audioscrobbler Herald the Social Web

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my method is just internet/local radio stations ( there are many ) and browsing the lineups at venues near me simple, very little time investment required and avoids most modern fuckery

Shout out to KEXP!

looks cool I'll check them out, FWIW lately for me it's mostly chirpradio.org and somafm

Re: 2002: Last.fm and Audioscrobbler Herald the Social Web

#109
post #35

The best ”algorithm” for discovering new music was digging through profiles on last.fm back when the social functions of the site were still active. Sure, it was a lot of manual work, but the results were amazing. It wasn't completely blind, I found that people I had high similarity with, it was more likely I'll like what they like, even across different genres. Sometimes people were nice and took the effort to recom…

Shameless plug: I'm building volt.fm for Spotify (3M users) which like last.fm lets you find people with similar taste. You can even save their top songs as an auto-updating playlist. It's a great way to find new music that is not controlled by algorithms. Here's my profile if anyone wants to have a look: https://volt.fm/soheilpro

I've signed in and see my profile – how do I find people with similar taste?

Re: 2002: Last.fm and Audioscrobbler Herald the Social Web

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These integrations are lacking compared to Spotify. For example in Tidal you have to set it for each device where you install the app, and it doesn't work with things like casting. It's easy to forget to set it up which can cause gaps in your history. The Plex integration gets pretty close to native, but it only scrobbles after a track is done, it doesn't have 'Now Playing' support. As for Deezer and Quobuz I'm not s…

Qobuz works the same way. Set and forget. Don’t know about deezer.

Deezer is the same: set it and forget it once at a platform level.
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