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Last.fm is now independent

support.last.fm

41–50 of 232 posts

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#41
post #31
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Man i love last.fm even though it's been technically superseded (for most people) by Spotify's recommendation features.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

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 novel fits but eventually get trapped into deep, boring grooves that work really well for tons of non-discriminating users with similar tastes.

Separately, in real commercial terms, they're all fundamentally poisoned by business model objectives of highlighting cheap content or servicing partnership/advertising deals, etc. And that problem also becomes more and more prominent as the companies running them grow and become more influential and as they need to squeeze harder and harder for revenue growth.

It was basically just a long, winding, wildly expensive road back to broadcast radio programming.

It was a good run for a while, but we're long due for a new model.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#42
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Man i love last.fm even though it's been technically superseded (for most people) by Spotify's recommendation features.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 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 "discover"

- they are way too biased towards recently listened music and will replay things over and over if you're not actively managing your queues.

- because they're so based on what you have listened to (recently) they suggest things that are extremely obvious music no one is "discovering"

- they suggest the "top" songs from artists, albums, etc, it's very hard to get it to play a "deep cut"

- if you have a large library you'll inevitably hit playlist song limits and other things silently. Each service handles this differently, Youtube Music seemingly kicks things out of my library or liked playlists each time I add something else.

I've literally just gotten in the habit of never using the autoplay features and just starting whole albums from start to finish again because the algorithms annoy me so much. Youtube Music has been getting worse about it too where now it often ignores the music you chose to start a playlist and starts playing things you've listened to recently regardless of it doesn't match the genre/vibe at all.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#43
post #21

"The company has generated an operating loss for the year to 31 December 2024 of £690,252 (2023: profit of £1,509,544) and revenue of £2,215,381 (2023: £1,960,340). As at 31 December 2024, net liabilities were £45,506,488 (2023: £44,855,202)." "The financial statements have been prepared on a going concern basis on the grounds that Paramount Global has confirmed that it will continue to provide financial and other su…

They have a lot of users paying to track their listening habits; I'm surprised.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#44
one of the very first programming projects I took on was to figure out how to scrobble the records that I was playing. It was my first exposure to so many things: Ruby, FFIs, audio processing, audio fingerprinting (I think I used echo nest ?). Ended up going to local meetups to ask for advice.

last.fm is one of those services that is from the pinnacle of the open web.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#45

115,000 scrobbles: https://www.last.fm/user/whalesalad I really only ever used it so that a girl I liked would be able to see what I was listening to. She commented on my page. We ended up getting together for a few years. I miss my youth.

I think Last.fm might have been a better friend finding and dating app than any of its contemporaries or anything that came after. Seems like everyone in this thread or anyone I know IRL has a story of making a good connection with someone via it. I know I'll always cherish the people I got to know on there.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#46
post #22
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 just think it's beautiful that I can see all the music I've listened to since 2005 (back when it was still called Audioscrobbler, before the Last.fm rename). And I never stopped scrobbling in all that time! I love these kinds of stats and being able to see how my taste has changed across more than 20 years, since I was a teenager. I do miss the old community forums they had integrated back in the day, though.

As a long-time user, I do enjoy seeing how my tastes have changed over the years and which artists and albums I play the most. I also tend to agree that the Last.fm recommendation engine was perfectly fine for my use case compared to the algo that Spotify uses now. https://www.last.fm/user/wyclif

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#47
post #33
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…

You can install your spotify and pull in all the data from Spotify.

https://github.com/Yooooomi/your_spotify

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#49
post #36
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.

If you're a Spotify user, you can get even more precise data by downloading your listening data. The website I linked gets data from MusicBrainz and tries to fill in the gaps with an average, but even then it gets some things wrong.

E.g. Fishmans - Long Season is a 40 minute song, but the website's considers it as divided into 4-5 parts. And you don't have to listen to the full song to get a scrobble.

In the Spotify data you get the exact number of seconds you listened to it. And it is surprisingly complete and easy to use too. With LLMs I bet you can load it into pandas and construct queries for any insight you want in seconds.

Re: Last.fm is now independent

#50
Anyone else music listening habits change in the past six months to listening to one owns AI Slop? My slop (been a real hobby songwriter of melodies & lyrics since a kid..decades ago) has the most meaning to me it’s just not me singing. Now it sounds pro and some ppl when I’m playing it actually like it vs. my own rough demos (guitar, vocal and added drums/bass via GarageBand). I actually don’t care if others hear my slop as it’s all my own ideas…words and melodies which have way more meaning then Listening to another’s music/songs.

I’ve been telling close friend about this and then I see this verge article saying in not the only one https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/937059/n...

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