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Until another service comes along that allows users to record which songs they've listened to, and be as ubiquitous (there's a Last.fm plugin of some sort for p

Until another service comes along that allows users to record which songs they've listened to, and be as ubiquitous (there's a Last.fm plugin of some sort for practically every music software player, and even for some hardware players), I think Last.fm is safe. With services such as Spotify competing with it, though, I think Last.fm has lost its chance in the music streaming industry. I have plenty of friends with Spotify accounts but very few with Last.fm accounts (and those that do have them solely as vestiges of the MySpace era). As the article says, the problem is, as with so many of these small, new companies that get bought by much bigger ones (Flickr and Delicious come to mind as similar cases), they stagnated and have done nothing new.

jessor 16y ago
See http://libre.fm/ http://libre.fm/
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- mkelly 16y ago
  libre.fm is cool, but the UI really disappointed me. The site does bad job explaining itself, and therefore only makes sense if you already use last.fm. The UI is crude (javascript links with 'href="#"' which bounce you up to the top of the page all the time, etc) and inconsistent (nav bars come and go). I think it's an awesome idea, but I think it needs some TLC from a good web developer. (And to be fair, here, I don't claim that I could do any better -- I'm bad at web UIs, and lean heavily on others when I have to make them.)
saucerful 16y ago
Typical startup fallacy. Just because they aren't overhauling their site every few months doesn't mean they are stagnating. There is a difference between being stagnant and being stable. The new content and change come from the data users scrobble and from the new music musicians make. The site is a platform for that, and IMHO it does its job perfectly. Not only that, but it makes a lot of money doing it.
- glenstein 16y ago
  That distinction exists out in conceptual space, yes. But I am not sure Last.fm falls on the right side of it. A startup can only live on "hey that's cool" for so long, when the promise of all these new ways of interacting is itself suggestive enough to capture people's imaginations even if it happens not to be very useful. But soon we get acclimated, and even bored. And to keep pace with the ever-receding limit of human curiosity there must be some combination of new innovation and enduring usefulness, if not just one or the other.
dsingleton 16y ago
(I work at Last.fm) Spotify is trying to be the perfect on demand music service, Last.fm isn't. It's something we tried and ended up moving away from a year or two back. On demand music is a very difficult market to be in. There are lots of companies trying but many failing or hitting difficulties, like Spotify in the US. There are real challenges in a) being profitable and b) stay on the good side of labels. Personally I believe that the on-demand part of music streaming is commodity and more can be easily replaced, where as scrobbling provides a richer and more personal experience. However, I do agree with parts of the article, Last.fm hasn't moved as fast as it could have, some features need adding and some improving. That's part of the plan for this year.
- zenocon 16y ago
  There are so many features, integrations, interesting things, etc. that you could do with your platform, userbase, and data, it just seems like after the acquisition, all future dev. halted. It is a shame, and I'm now looking for an alternative after years of scrobbling, and being an avid user. Lately I've been using http://hypem.com http://hypem.com -- it would be fantastic if they could mine my own personal scrobble data and make recommendations based on it.
  - dsingleton 16y ago
    I can entirely understand that, and kind of agree. We have more data that anyone could know what to do with, but we should be doing more, I'd certainly like us to be. To try and explain the apparent lack of activity; the last couple of years have had a lot of sorting-house, changes in product (moving away from on-demand, charging for some services, etc) and some technical "house keeping". Last.fm has been around for ~8 years, that is a long time and comes with a lot of technical debt, it can slow you down. PS: One of my favourite things about Last.fm is our approach to openness of data, our API makes it totally possible for hypem (who are awesome, especially Anthony) to use your scrobbling data, even the recommendations we generate for you, on hypem. We believe that if the data is visible on the website then there should probably be an API for it, because if there isn't, then someone will have to scrape it anyway.
chrischen 16y ago
My site, http://Like.fm http://Like.fm, is compatible with Last.fm's API for scrobbling and many services are already supported including YouTube. Adding support for music players is relatively easy, especially when considering Last.fm has already made the idea of scrobbling a commonly understood idea. Spotify will be a problem for Last.fm IF they can continue being free for everyone, and convert everyone to their service. Otherwise a decentralized social network will have that advantage from being able to collect more users faster.

jessor 16y ago

See http://libre.fm/ http://libre.fm/

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
mkelly 16y ago
libre.fm is cool, but the UI really disappointed me. The site does bad job explaining itself, and therefore only makes sense if you already use last.fm. The UI is crude (javascript links with 'href="#"' which bounce you up to the top of the page all the time, etc) and inconsistent (nav bars come and go). I think it's an awesome idea, but I think it needs some TLC from a good web developer. (And to be fair, here, I don't claim that I could do any better -- I'm bad at web UIs, and lean heavily on others when I have to make them.)

saucerful 16y ago

Typical startup fallacy. Just because they aren't overhauling their site every few months doesn't mean they are stagnating. There is a difference between being stagnant and being stable. The new content and change come from the data users scrobble and from the new music musicians make. The site is a platform for that, and IMHO it does its job perfectly. Not only that, but it makes a lot of money doing it.

glenstein 16y ago
That distinction exists out in conceptual space, yes. But I am not sure Last.fm falls on the right side of it. A startup can only live on "hey that's cool" for so long, when the promise of all these new ways of interacting is itself suggestive enough to capture people's imaginations even if it happens not to be very useful. But soon we get acclimated, and even bored. And to keep pace with the ever-receding limit of human curiosity there must be some combination of new innovation and enduring usefulness, if not just one or the other.

dsingleton 16y ago

(I work at Last.fm) Spotify is trying to be the perfect on demand music service, Last.fm isn't. It's something we tried and ended up moving away from a year or two back. On demand music is a very difficult market to be in. There are lots of companies trying but many failing or hitting difficulties, like Spotify in the US. There are real challenges in a) being profitable and b) stay on the good side of labels. Personally I believe that the on-demand part of music streaming is commodity and more can be easily replaced, where as scrobbling provides a richer and more personal experience. However, I do agree with parts of the article, Last.fm hasn't moved as fast as it could have, some features need adding and some improving. That's part of the plan for this year.

zenocon 16y ago
There are so many features, integrations, interesting things, etc. that you could do with your platform, userbase, and data, it just seems like after the acquisition, all future dev. halted. It is a shame, and I'm now looking for an alternative after years of scrobbling, and being an avid user. Lately I've been using http://hypem.com http://hypem.com -- it would be fantastic if they could mine my own personal scrobble data and make recommendations based on it.
- dsingleton 16y ago
  I can entirely understand that, and kind of agree. We have more data that anyone could know what to do with, but we should be doing more, I'd certainly like us to be. To try and explain the apparent lack of activity; the last couple of years have had a lot of sorting-house, changes in product (moving away from on-demand, charging for some services, etc) and some technical "house keeping". Last.fm has been around for ~8 years, that is a long time and comes with a lot of technical debt, it can slow you down. PS: One of my favourite things about Last.fm is our approach to openness of data, our API makes it totally possible for hypem (who are awesome, especially Anthony) to use your scrobbling data, even the recommendations we generate for you, on hypem. We believe that if the data is visible on the website then there should probably be an API for it, because if there isn't, then someone will have to scrape it anyway.

chrischen 16y ago

My site, http://Like.fm http://Like.fm, is compatible with Last.fm's API for scrobbling and many services are already supported including YouTube. Adding support for music players is relatively easy, especially when considering Last.fm has already made the idea of scrobbling a commonly understood idea. Spotify will be a problem for Last.fm IF they can continue being free for everyone, and convert everyone to their service. Otherwise a decentralized social network will have that advantage from being able to collect more users faster.