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Last.fm is now independent

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Re: Last.fm is now independent

#161

Post by ClikeX »

dqv wrote: post #133
wldcordeiro wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the recommendation engines behind Spotify, Youtube Music, etc compare to the recommendations I got from last.fm over the years. The algorithmic ones seem to have a bunch of issues that bug me as a long time music listener and someone with a large music library. - their memory is short as hell so you can listen to something for a while, stop and then it'll suggest it to you later as something to "discove…

One really annoying example of YTM's algorithm is it (or whoever works on it) doesn't understand that a genre can have diverse sounds and instruments, so it will recommend songs that all sound the same. Like if I start listening to house music, it will just recommend 100 songs that have organ 2 [0], even though house music is more diverse than that. Then it forces me to thumbs down the music, which also isn't what I…

One of the most infuriating things about recommendations engines is the way they handle non-English music. Maybe it's not with every language, but as soon as I listen to a Dutch song; the engines will recommend me ALL Dutch music, regardless of genre.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#162

Post by smurda »

I love last.fm but never understood the URL structure naming convention. Why use a "+" instead of a "-" for every band page (e.g. https://www.last.fm/music/The+Beatles).

I thought Kebab-case is usually the norm, and I don't think I've seen the "+" in any other URL paths that aren't query strings. Any ideas why they formatted it like this?

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#163

Post by zimpenfish »

smurda wrote: post #162

I love last.fm but never understood the URL structure naming convention. Why use a "+" instead of a "-" for every band page (e.g. https://www.last.fm/music/The+Beatles ). I thought Kebab-case is usually the norm, and I don't think I've seen the "+" in any other URL paths that aren't query strings. Any ideas why they formatted it like this?

I believe "+" is the URL encoding for space and they're just putting the band names into the URL before encoding (thus "The Beatles" -> "The+Beatles")

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#164

Post by basisword »

Wish I'd kept using my last.fm account. It's a shame that although Apple + Spotify both allow you to download your full listening history you can't upload it (and keep dates/times) to fill out your historical data. I'd start using it in a heartbeat again if they allowed that.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#165

Post by kevinsync »

smurda wrote: post #162

I love last.fm but never understood the URL structure naming convention. Why use a "+" instead of a "-" for every band page (e.g. https://www.last.fm/music/The+Beatles ). I thought Kebab-case is usually the norm, and I don't think I've seen the "+" in any other URL paths that aren't query strings. Any ideas why they formatted it like this?

I suspect it was an intentional choice so that artist names like Jay-Z remain properly separated in the URL, especially in cases of multiple-artist billings (ex. https://www.last.fm/music/Nas+&+Jay-Z)

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#167

Post by stingraycharles »

ale wrote: 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’m proud to say that I’m still using it, connected through Spotify! 23 years and counting, and it pretty much captured 100% of my listening activity. It’s a gimmick, but a nice gimmick to have and to be able to look up my music taste over time.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#168

Post by FelipeCortez »

smcg wrote: post #139
zero_bias wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cannot call lastfm algorithm advanced in any sense. Just opened Amon Tobin page: "similar artists: Kid Koala and DJ Kush", which is an impressively shallow understanding of the last 20 (!!) years of his life, and this happened with almost every artist on the platform, because the average sum of tastes of every listener does not exist in reality. E.g. in the case of Amon Tobin, Kid Koala is the average of similarities…

do you know of a better recommendation algorithm?

RateYourMusic’s recommendations are solid

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#169

Post by rvba »

Arubis wrote: post #89
wldcordeiro wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the recommendation engines behind Spotify, Youtube Music, etc compare to the recommendations I got from last.fm over the years. The algorithmic ones seem to have a bunch of issues that bug me as a long time music listener and someone with a large music library. - their memory is short as hell so you can listen to something for a while, stop and then it'll suggest it to you later as something to "discove…

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).

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#170

Post by chickensong »

iamacyborg wrote: post #143
lonelyasacloud wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recommendations engine used them but it's main strength was it was primarily based on collaborative filtering ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last.fm ). Essentially if people who listen to many of the same artists/tracks as I do have discovered other things I have not, then those unseen artists/tracks become candidate recommendations. It worked as well as it did because they had a user base of music fans with a w…

> 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?
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