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Last.fm is now independent

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Re: Last.fm is now independent

#31

Post by fusslo »

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Man i love last.fm even though it's been technically superseded (for most people) by Spotify's recommendation features.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've felt a serious reduction in quality of recommendations from spotify the past couple years. Maybe I'll try last.fm

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#33

Post by aurmc »

punkbit wrote: post #16

Last.fm used to be special, but this was a long time ago. Just tried to login, recovered the password and seems that its just a tracker nowadays. In the past I could listen to music and drop a comment, meet new people, etc.

It still has comments on albums/songs/artists, but most of the conversations are a bit dead.

I've still been using it since it's the best service (in my opinion) for simply tracking everything you listen to. Spotify does track the same thing but they don't really let you view the information the same way. For example, there's no way to view the list of your top artists ever like there is with last.fm (I just checked mine, it's: https://www.last.fm/user/[your username]/library/artists).

Hopefully the developers being unchained from CBS/Paramount can only mean good changes are coming to last.fm in the near future.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#34

Post by punkbit »

verelo wrote: post #25
punkbit wrote: post #16

Last.fm used to be special, but this was a long time ago. Just tried to login, recovered the password and seems that its just a tracker nowadays. In the past I could listen to music and drop a comment, meet new people, etc.

Came here to say the same. I don't even know what this product is anymore. The website makes it sound like its about music but there is no music? I'm lost. The last time I paid for LastFM was some time in 2009...but the home page just isn't clearly telling me what the service offers.

Originally, it kind of worked like radio; it curated music for you, you could like, comment or skip tracks. It'd reinforce the algorithm, and you'd start finding great artists. I liked the Blues catalogue a lot, even though I was listening to reggae, ska, punk, etc. It just seemed they had the best music catalogue. I remember checking how big the catalogue was, comparatively with others, which was much smaller, but much, much better!

Today, we have Generative AI, generating an incomprehensible number of songs that no one will ever listen to.

I don't remember if I had to pay for Last.fm or not back then, but I'd definitely pay to have access to that old system.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#36

Post by tyrust »

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.…

> 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.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#37

Post by askl »

john_strinlai wrote: post #3

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

Thanks. My first thought was "independent from what?". I'm a last.fm user since 2006 but never noticed any ownership changes.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#38

Post by kevinwang »

I hope that means it will improve now. There's such a rich space of features that they could do. Had some hope with their experimental Labs but I remember being underwhelmed and not seeing anything about it recently.
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