Last.fm is now independent • Hacker News Board

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#211

Post by zimpenfish » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:35 PM UTC

kubanczyk wrote: post #199

zimpenfish wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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")

I've checked RFC 1738 and it's not the case. The only standard for "+" is: > (RFC 1866) specifies that space characters should be encoded as `+` in application/x-www-form-urlencoded content-type key-value pairs (see paragraph 8.2.1, subparagraph 1). From https://stackoverflow.com/a/40292770

RFC1738 is obsolete. RFC1866, referenced in that SO answer, is also obsolete.

But none of that matters, particularly, because lastfm are consuming the URLs, they know full well what "+" means in a URL submitted to their servers, and also they've been around for decades (well before the whole "use %20 instead") - why on earth would they change up their URL scheme when it's working fine?

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#212

Post by zahraarman » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:45 PM UTC

swatcoder wrote: post #41

fusslo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

More than a feeling. Pretty much all the machine learning recommendation engines that emerged in the Netflix era were doomed to collapse under their own weight over time for non-mainstream users because the some limited number of mainstream modes dominate as most statistically "optimal" across the total user pool. These algorithms are best in the early days, when they're still exploring the content space for good nov…

[flagged]

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#213

Post by wao0uuno » Thu, May 28, 2026, 4:16 PM UTC

bachmeier wrote: post #101

No idea what last.fm is. Clicked the logo at the top of the forum, but that's one of those prank links that takes you to the page you're already on. Typed in last.fm manually and got Your request was blocked To protect our website, our security firewall has flagged this request as potentially unsafe.

[flagged]

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#214

Post by twoWhlsGud » Thu, May 28, 2026, 4:33 PM UTC

sailfast wrote: post #99

retired wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to Apple Music to save some money and I find the curation and the recommendations to be significantly better than Spotify.

For me curation was better but I was really missing the ability to quickly seed a playlist with a specific vibe and build from there for specific moods. That, and the desktop app and confusion between library and Apple Music streaming was annoying to manage. They need to unify that experience or split it completely.

yes, I dropped it because simply favoriting a song seemed to require streamifying my entire personal library, which I didn't want to do.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#215

Post by aeontech » Thu, May 28, 2026, 6:05 PM UTC

Time to revive my account... (scrobbling since 2003, heh) - started in audioscrobbler days, before last.fm

My usage has gone way down since switching to streaming services, this made me search for ways to backfill the data...

For anyone using Apple Music, looks like you can request an export of your data from privacy.apple.com, then use https://github.com/nerveband/Apple-Music-Play-History-Conver... to convert it for Last.fm import (haven't tried it yet, but looks promising).

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#216

Post by randomeel » Thu, May 28, 2026, 8:04 PM UTC

This site blinded me at 12 AM

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#217

Post by herewulf » Thu, May 28, 2026, 8:38 PM UTC

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?

The "-" character appears pretty frequently in song/album titles, maybe even artist names. There could be some sense in not using it as a substitute for space in this context.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#218

Post by czottmann » Thu, May 28, 2026, 9:35 PM UTC

Excellent timing. I am currently working on a macOS scrobbler that (also) works with Last.fm, and supports music recogs from iOS, Apple Watch, and macOS.

https://actions.work/listening-post

(AFAIK, the official Mac scrobbler is dead by now.)

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#219

Post by mos_basik » Thu, May 28, 2026, 10:01 PM UTC

heavensteeth wrote: post #186

dqv wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Then it forces me to thumbs down the music, which also isn't what I want to do, because I have no idea what effect it's having on my recommendations. I feel this. Social media algorithms can be so complex and opaque now that I have to consciously consider what repercussions my interactions have. I have so little idea what interactions affect recommendations on e.g. Instagram that it almost feels random.

You know what I didn't expect?

That I would so well internalize the "big brother is always watching what you click, what you hover, what you rewatch, what you comment on, what you pause to read longer than average, what you favorite, what you thumbs-down, etc" default experience provided by facebook/amazon/youtube/streaming platform/short form video platform/etc

that when I stick my head back into 4chan from time to time (to see what the motorcycle thread is talking about these days, or get idea for a show to watch) it's a like a physical weight lifts off me as I realize that no one and nothing gives a toss about what threads I open, or what posts I respond to, or what images I save or post. It won't change any feeds in opaque ways. It won't pollute my recommends (jokes aside about how how the choice of website already polluted matters enough). It won't do anything.

Blew my mind when I put my finger on what I was feeling and realized how pervasive this sort of thing has gotten in most every big tech online product.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#220

Post by HeckFeck » Thu, May 28, 2026, 10:32 PM UTC

aeontech wrote: post #215

Time to revive my account... (scrobbling since 2003, heh) - started in audioscrobbler days, before last.fm My usage has gone way down since switching to streaming services, this made me search for ways to backfill the data... For anyone using Apple Music, looks like you can request an export of your data from privacy.apple.com, then use https://github.com/nerveband/Apple-Music-Play-History-Conver... to convert it for…

Would be nice but it can't be done. I stopped scrobbling in 2011, then found out the site was still alive in 2024, one email to support later and I was back in.

I wanted to import my Spotify listening history from the intervening years, but found that the LFM API limits scrobbles to no earlier than two weeks ago. A shame, because my current listening history is now very skewed between the two "eras".