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I should disclose that I am a massive music junkie. 94,000 plays on Last.FM to date[1] - it wasn't clear what the bet I was taking was with Like.FM (good domain

by pclark 16y ago

I should disclose that I am a massive music junkie. 94,000 plays on Last.FM to date[1] - it wasn't clear what the bet I was taking was with Like.FM (good domain) what is it? how is it different to Last.FM? Seems like its this: > Merge their top tracks intelligently into the ultimate list of new songs Sooo why not a Last.FM app? Just my brief $0.02 cents, feel free to reach out to me (or reply here) as I am obsessed with this space. edit: some thoughts... 1) nice simple sign up 2) omg is that ajax logging in? always wondered why people don't offer that, cute. 3) the player on the right is the right concept but wrong implementation - I like how hypem.com has done it. takes up less space. 4) still not entirely clear what the value proposition is - what does it do? specifically what value does it bring? After playing with service for a few moments and reading your comments, I can imagine this being an epic service that acts as a "Last.FM for Online Content" via scrobbler/bookmarklet, and tracks what i've recently watched/listened to - just my $0.0.2 [1]: http://www.last.fm/user/Hejog http://www.last.fm/user/Hejog

chrischen 16y ago
Honestly, when I started doing this I didn't even know Last.fm showed your play history. So I didn't know Last.fm already had some of the features. And before I started I had extremely limited exposure to Last.fm. I tried their Mac client once and it was a horrible experience (it was a windowed app whereas Like.fm is a menulet in OS X). I remember it being an additional layer on top of how you normally listen to music (hearting songs). Like.fm uses existing user interface to generate your top tracks (rate songs directly from iTunes + frequency of play). But most importantly, none of my friends, or anyone I knew, uses Last.fm (and I believe 2 out of 300 of my facebook friends have the Like.fm app installed). So I figured there's space to make a way for non-music-enthusiasts to share music info with each other. That's why Like.fm is really passive. You just play songs from iTunes like you normally do, rate them like you normally do (if you do). Then on Like.fm I guess what your current top tracks are, and share your play history with other people. Also Like.fm doesn't require you to play hundreds of songs to build up a robust profile. The top played list on your profile is meant to represent your recent top tracks. So you just have to play some of your current top songs and it should be accurate. Recommendations will be based on who you choose to follow, so it's not directly dependent on training the system with your playback data. However the one problem at the moment may be that there aren't enough users to follow.
- pclark 16y ago
  ahh, just noticed a problem for me - I've transitioned to using Spotify instead of iTunes... Service sounds intriguing though - i would recommend integration with Last.FM for scrobblers. Also, there are tons of 3rd party scrobblers for Mac. iScrobbler is pretty decent. I don't meant to sound negative. I think Last.FM has sewn up the "data" space (eg: what I'm playing, top artists) - but it sucks for recommendations, social, and everything else. It isn't clear to me how your service is different to Last.FM in terms of setup. EG: I'm not a Last.FM user ... am I going to use your service, instead? Saying only 2 of my friends use x service so I made a competitor for them to use seems like mildly false logic. In these spaces I'd like to see something that works around the barrier to entry (requiring a scrobbler of some sort)
  - chrischen 16y ago
    That's exactly where I'm going to hit hard: social. Integrating with Last.fm is a great idea. I honestly never event thought of that.
    - pclark 16y ago
      check out Spotify if you can, they've made sharing tracks super easy - but suck at the Last.FM bits. As a music junkie I use a few services: Last.FM for the data (on me & friends (but not Facebook friends...)) Spotify for playback and sharing songs to friends (but not Last.FM friends - Facebook friends) Hype Machine for hot music recently (scrobbled to Last.FM) The huge weak spot is recommendations. Where do I go for artists like Eminem? I currently use the Spotify related artists page, boy does it suck. Actually, I also use What.CD for music recommendations.. This is what What.CD suggests for Eminem: http://grab.by/5MLs http://grab.by/5MLs and this is what Spotify suggests for Eminem: http://grab.by/5MLu http://grab.by/5MLu Neither brilliant, honestly. So yes - recommendations - valuable. Powered by my friends, what's hot, and algo for similar. Make a Pandora Radio minus the Radio bit, sounds useful. Maybe a weekly digest of similar artists I'll enjoy based on what I listened to this week.
      - 16y ago
mitjak 16y ago
Wow man, you seriously like Spoon. I thought I was die hard. The last album is a bit of a disappointment for me though. Let's be friends though: last.fm/user/imissmyjuno
- pclark 16y ago
  Spoon, my favourite band, always nice to see another fan - always baffled by how few people know them. Never met anyone that didn't like them. Agreed on last album...
chrischen 16y ago
On point 4) you can merge peoples top tracks. You get (in my opinion) better at a glance top tracks than last.fm. The like.fm client is easier to use than scribbling and the client uses almost 10 megs less ram on osx than iscrobbler. I have better facebook integration (as far as I can tell) which means all in all the value proposition is better for the large population of non last.fm users. I guess adding in last.fm scrobbling may change that? As a last.fm what would you say could win you over besides better artist recommendations. Sorry i don't use last.fm so it's hard for me to determine the main differences. I probably should do some research. :)

by pclark 16y ago

chrischen 16y ago

Honestly, when I started doing this I didn't even know Last.fm showed your play history. So I didn't know Last.fm already had some of the features. And before I started I had extremely limited exposure to Last.fm. I tried their Mac client once and it was a horrible experience (it was a windowed app whereas Like.fm is a menulet in OS X). I remember it being an additional layer on top of how you normally listen to music (hearting songs). Like.fm uses existing user interface to generate your top tracks (rate songs directly from iTunes + frequency of play). But most importantly, none of my friends, or anyone I knew, uses Last.fm (and I believe 2 out of 300 of my facebook friends have the Like.fm app installed). So I figured there's space to make a way for non-music-enthusiasts to share music info with each other. That's why Like.fm is really passive. You just play songs from iTunes like you normally do, rate them like you normally do (if you do). Then on Like.fm I guess what your current top tracks are, and share your play history with other people. Also Like.fm doesn't require you to play hundreds of songs to build up a robust profile. The top played list on your profile is meant to represent your recent top tracks. So you just have to play some of your current top songs and it should be accurate. Recommendations will be based on who you choose to follow, so it's not directly dependent on training the system with your playback data. However the one problem at the moment may be that there aren't enough users to follow.

pclark 16y ago
ahh, just noticed a problem for me - I've transitioned to using Spotify instead of iTunes... Service sounds intriguing though - i would recommend integration with Last.FM for scrobblers. Also, there are tons of 3rd party scrobblers for Mac. iScrobbler is pretty decent. I don't meant to sound negative. I think Last.FM has sewn up the "data" space (eg: what I'm playing, top artists) - but it sucks for recommendations, social, and everything else. It isn't clear to me how your service is different to Last.FM in terms of setup. EG: I'm not a Last.FM user ... am I going to use your service, instead? Saying only 2 of my friends use x service so I made a competitor for them to use seems like mildly false logic. In these spaces I'd like to see something that works around the barrier to entry (requiring a scrobbler of some sort)
- chrischen 16y ago
  That's exactly where I'm going to hit hard: social. Integrating with Last.fm is a great idea. I honestly never event thought of that.
  - pclark 16y ago
    check out Spotify if you can, they've made sharing tracks super easy - but suck at the Last.FM bits. As a music junkie I use a few services: Last.FM for the data (on me & friends (but not Facebook friends...)) Spotify for playback and sharing songs to friends (but not Last.FM friends - Facebook friends) Hype Machine for hot music recently (scrobbled to Last.FM) The huge weak spot is recommendations. Where do I go for artists like Eminem? I currently use the Spotify related artists page, boy does it suck. Actually, I also use What.CD for music recommendations.. This is what What.CD suggests for Eminem: http://grab.by/5MLs http://grab.by/5MLs and this is what Spotify suggests for Eminem: http://grab.by/5MLu http://grab.by/5MLu Neither brilliant, honestly. So yes - recommendations - valuable. Powered by my friends, what's hot, and algo for similar. Make a Pandora Radio minus the Radio bit, sounds useful. Maybe a weekly digest of similar artists I'll enjoy based on what I listened to this week.
    - 16y ago

mitjak 16y ago

Wow man, you seriously like Spoon. I thought I was die hard. The last album is a bit of a disappointment for me though. Let's be friends though: last.fm/user/imissmyjuno

pclark 16y ago
Spoon, my favourite band, always nice to see another fan - always baffled by how few people know them. Never met anyone that didn't like them. Agreed on last album...

chrischen 16y ago

On point 4) you can merge peoples top tracks. You get (in my opinion) better at a glance top tracks than last.fm. The like.fm client is easier to use than scribbling and the client uses almost 10 megs less ram on osx than iscrobbler. I have better facebook integration (as far as I can tell) which means all in all the value proposition is better for the large population of non last.fm users. I guess adding in last.fm scrobbling may change that? As a last.fm what would you say could win you over besides better artist recommendations. Sorry i don't use last.fm so it's hard for me to determine the main differences. I probably should do some research. :)