10 ms·

Last.fm is now independent

822 points by twistslider 4mo ago

aaronmoodie 4mo ago
This is such great news. Instant upgrade.
nubinetwork 4mo ago
I don't know if I even have an account anymore, its been like 15 years since I last logged in...
- beardyw 4mo ago
  Me too. I tried loggin in, and after a forced password reset I am back, though back to 2018 it turns out. On Spotify I made a playlist with over 4,000 songs from Last FM. I remember doing it but I couldn't say how I did it now. And also a "loved" playlist which I am revisiting now. First track Whitest Boy Alive: Golden Cage, a stonker.
john_strinlai 4mo ago
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
- askl 4mo ago
  Thanks. My first thought was "independent from what?". I'm a last.fm user since 2006 but never noticed any ownership changes.
- NoboruWataya 4mo ago
  So what exactly happened, did management buy the company from them?
- themafia 4mo ago
  Purchased and then completely ignored. The only consequence from an insiders point of view is we suddenly needed training on the "Foreign Corrupt Practices Act" since last.fm was a UK company.
  - samtheDamned 4mo ago
    I guess thats better than being enshittified
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donalhunt 4mo ago
This seems like a positive step. It never made sense (to me at least) for CBS Paramount to own it. Huge opportunity to allow folk to own their own (meta)data. /fingerscrossed
ale 4mo ago
Man i love last.fm even though it's been technically superseded (for most people) by Spotify's recommendation features.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.
- tfrancisl 4mo ago
  I use it with Spotify to track my listens and sort by artist, album and the like. It definitely still has value, even for Spotify users!
  - mjr00 4mo ago
    Yep, member since May 21 2005 here, still scrobbling with Spotify. Don't think I've ever used any of the radio features on the site, really; even back in the 00s all I used were the WinAmp/Foobar plug-ins.
- tuvix 4mo ago
  I would argue it’s still unparalleled for recommendations
- alejoar 4mo ago
  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.
  - alejoar 4mo ago
    I just remembered that I met one of my best friends to this day through Last.fm. It was 2009 or so, and you could leave messages on concert pages. I posted asking if anyone wanted to go with me since I didn't want to go alone, and she sent me a message. Good times.
  - wyclif 4mo ago
jauntywundrkind 4mo ago
Last.fm & in particular audioscrobbling has been such an amazing joy to have in the world. Music is so important to me, and it's amazing having this system to help see over time what friends and I myself enjoy. These days, for auduiscrobbling, I recommend folks use either teal.fm (which alas is somewhat DIY or find-a-friend for their API service) or rocksky.app. There's a better credible exit, as it's based on atproto/Bluesky protocols, and a richer world of apps & interconnectivitiws emerging.
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BadBadJellyBean 4mo ago
I honestly forgot last.fm was a thing. But good for them that they have independence now.
Scene_Cast2 4mo ago
I remember Last.fm's value proposition was 1) discovery and 2) community. (1) is (mostly, for most people) covered by "feed" algorithms of Spotify and YouTube. I wonder how they're going to position themselves now.
- micromacrofoot 4mo ago
  a recommendation algorithm that isn't a box of pain they sell to advertisers?
- cesarvarela 4mo ago
  To me, it always was the scrobbler. I've been tracking what I listen to for 15+ years.
- AdmiralAsshat 4mo ago
  As someone who used to hang out on various music forums...a human recommendation based on careful analysis of your last.fm scrobbles was infinitely more useful and accurate than anything Pandora/YouTube/Spotify/Tidal ever recommended me. Humans can infer not just what you like, but what you don't like.
- TFNA 4mo ago
  Community largely died out already by 2012. Originally Last.fm enabled a lot of IRL socializing, connecting hipsters who lived in the same town and listened to the same music. Changes in music-listening habits, the atomization of tastes in a world where so much was available, and CBS not having a clue what to do with the site -- that killed Last.fm except for just a way to track one's own plays.
attilagyorffy 4mo ago
This is very exciting. The music landscape is just as chaotic as it was back in 2007 (when CBS acquired Last.fm) if not even more complex these days. Can't wait to see what's next. <3
- SoftTalker 4mo ago
  I fear that what's next is AI slop music, pushed by record companies so that no performers or songwriters need to be paid.
  - zero_bias 4mo ago
    So lastfm become relevant again because slop will not appear statistically in user scrobblings because of vast amount of "musicians" required to be profitable: if I listen to 1000 AI artists with one track produced and Linkin Park then my average will be Linkin Park
punkbit 4mo ago
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.
- verelo 4mo ago
  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.
  - punkbit 4mo ago
    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.
  - SyneRyder 4mo ago
    Among the people I know still using Last.FM, it's somewhere between having statistics about your music, and a recommendation engine. It isn't about playing the music, you can do that elsewhere. But by having data on every single piece of music you've listened to, it can recommend music you will like, and potentially recommend people with shared musical tastes as well. There's a feature to compare your musical compatibility with others. For me, many years ago Last.FM recommended this weird electronic band that I'd never heard of, with the strange name "Boards Of Canada". That Last.FM recommendation was responsible for introducing me to my 2nd most listened to band of all time (just behind NIN). 2026 is many hexagons, dandelions and an inferno later.
desireco42 4mo ago
And I try to "Start Now" Your request was blocked To protect our website, our security firewall has flagged this request as potentially unsafe. Please try clearing your cookies and refreshing the page. If the problem persists, try again later or on a different computer network. Error 406 :) I think this is fantastic change and wish them the best, this is probably just a small hickup I experienced and I wil try again later. BTW, I recently cancelled my youtube premium, it was just too expensive. Never was subscribed to Spotify, so I need different ways to listen to music.
sparrish 4mo ago
So CBS spun them back out as their own corp or did the employee's or someone else buy it from CBS? Just declaring themselves independent without details doesn't provide much context. I feel like Michael Scott just declared bankruptcy.
- JMiao 4mo ago
  see, to me, it feels like wuphf.com finding a buyer
- port11 4mo ago
  Exactly, there’s very little detail here. I’ve been a user for a long time and had no idea they were part of CBS. Also… independent? Come on, most businesses on Earth are ‘independent’. They don’t need “support”, they’re a business, they need a product to sell. I’m a big fan of their no-frills service, but I wonder if their ‘independence’ will push them down the road of weird ads and entshitification.
jaimie 4mo ago
I still use last.fm via Spotify. It is wild to see my entire listening history from 11th grade to present (20 years!). Always fun to poke through and see changes from one year or life phase to the next.
walthamstow 4mo ago
What a blast from the past. It was a pretty cool time to be a teenager in 04-06 with last.fm, MySpace, iPods, Limewire and music blogs.
fontain 4mo ago
"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 support to Last. FM Limited at least for the next twelve months and thereafter for the foreseeable future to enable Last.FM Limited to continue to meet all its liabilities as they fall due." I wonder what their financing plan is, and what shape this independence will take, whether Paramount is retaining a minority ownership take? Seems like they might just be able to scrape break even based on current revenue.
- punkbit 4mo ago
  They have a lot of users paying to track their listening habits; I'm surprised.
- twistslider 4mo ago
  Where did you get this quote? I can't seem to find the source
  - fontain 4mo ago
    U.K. company accounts are public. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/04569646/filing-history https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c... Click “view PDF” for “Full accounts made up to 31 December 2024”.
whalesalad 4mo ago
115,000 scrobbles: https://www.last.fm/user/whalesalad 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.
- tomashubelbauer 4mo ago
  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.
  - whalesalad 4mo ago
    Music taste is probably the all time best indicator of compatibility tbh. You can go to shows together. You can jam out in the car together.
- retired 4mo ago
  I miss the internet of old, where you would meet up with a cute girl you met online and she turned out to be a 39 year old man from Wisconsin.
  - whalesalad 4mo ago
    same tbh
  - tclancy 4mo ago
    Hey, we had some good times together you and me.
    - deleted 4mo ago
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- Semaphor 4mo ago
cdrnsf 4mo ago
There's still a ton of value in the historical recommendations on last.fm's site. What its future looks like, I'm not sure. I'd love to know who is going to operate it now that it is independent. I'd recommend ListenBrainz for folks interested in similar tracking and some recommendations with clearer ownership. For my own historical interests, I have a Navidrome plugin writing to my own API and surface charts across time periods by querying the postgres database it writes to.
quirino 4mo ago
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/ 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. - https://lastfmstats.com/ https://lastfmstats.com/ - generates tons of rankings, line charts, racing bar charts, etc. A couple I like: "Artist streaks" (I listened to Pavement tracks 122 times in a row in August 2023), "Unique artists in a single month" (225 in July 2025) and "Unique weeks per artist/album/track" (good to identify what you're always listening to vs. what you listened to heavily in a specific time) - https://pmcdonough8133.github.io/last.timer/ https://pmcdonough8133.github.io/last.timer/ - shows your listening rankings by hours, minutes instead of just scrobble count. This really should be a default feature in the site, as some artists have average track length 2-3x times of others. If you use Spotify, another site I've had loads of fun with is https://explorify.link/ https://explorify.link/.
- tyrust 4mo ago
  > 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.
  - quirino 4mo ago
    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.
simonw 4mo ago
This is awesome! Anyone know who the humans behind the new company are?
_-_-__-_-_- 4mo ago
Listenbrainz has been an excellent alternative for me.
- esskay 4mo ago
  Downside of it is like all Metabrainz projects they seem to intentionally go and make everything as utterly ugly as possible. It feels like someone there intentionally thinks up ways to make the worst UX possible.
  - Semaphor 4mo ago
    I don’t see how LB has a worse UX than LFM.
larrykubin 4mo ago
I have a history going back to 2012, which is great. I've always worried Spotify would stop working with last.fm, I wonder if this makes it more or less likely.
kevinwang 4mo ago
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.
ryanisnan 4mo ago
Interesting! Hope they have a super lean team, and just focus on the niche, legacy web experience.
oflannabhra 4mo ago
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.
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paul7986 4mo ago
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/nobody-wants-to-tell-me-why-they-only-listen-their-own-suno-slop https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/937059/n...
Semaphor 4mo ago
Another alternative is listenbrainz [0], which is also self-hostable [1]. A smaller, lightweight, single user selfhostable alternative, and more about just the stats is Koito [2], and finally because obviously you want to scrobble everywhere at once, you can self-host Multi Scrobbler to scrobble to and from multiple sources at once. Yes, I like scrobbling ;) [0]: https://listenbrainz.org/ https://listenbrainz.org/ [1]: https://github.com/metabrainz/listenbrainz-server https://github.com/metabrainz/listenbrainz-server [2]: https://github.com/gabehf/Koito/ https://github.com/gabehf/Koito/ [3]: https://github.com/FoxxMD/multi-scrobbler/ https://github.com/FoxxMD/multi-scrobbler/
- mariusor 4mo ago
  Lol, I had no idea scrobbling was popular again. I'm the maintainer of a scrobbler daemon for linux that gets the track info through MPRIS and can send it to last.fm, listenbrainz and libre.fm. :) https://github.com/mariusor/mpris-scrobbler https://github.com/mariusor/mpris-scrobbler
dfee 4mo ago
Unfortunately, unable to create an account on my laptop (WiFi) or phone (Verizon) - even in incognito. > Your request was blocked > To protect our website, our security firewall has flagged this request as potentially unsafe. > Please try clearing your cookies and refreshing the page. > If the problem persists, try again later or on a different computer network. > Error 406 edit: maybe they saw my message or fixed a bug? signup now works everywhere for me.
rrix2 4mo ago
i recommend installing a browser add-on like https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-scrobbler/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-scrobbler...
jdmnd 4mo ago
Great news! Related[0]. The presentation video in the linked article from 2002 is a gem. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46266875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46266875
donatj 4mo ago
I love Last.fm, I've been scrobbling for over 20 years now. It's amazing to me that they have managed to stick around like they have. They're very much an "old internet" site, and I hope they can stick around for many many more years.
- bredren 4mo ago
  Yes. Audio Scrobbler was the thing.
ChrisArchitect 4mo ago
Some previous discussions on this note: Last.fm and Audioscrobbler Herald the Social Web: 2002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46266875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46266875 Last.fm turns 20 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33722862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33722862
spenjovewkwhalo 4mo ago
Looking forward to scrobbling again Back in the day, was heavily influenced by last.fm for this BBC 6music GWAP mooso.fm https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2009/12/mooso.shtml https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2009/12/mooso.shtml
NiloCK 4mo ago
I'm mostly unfamiliar with the current offering of last.fm, but the name is familiar from way back. Glad to see something well-liked reclaim some independence. At a glance, they're providing an interface to YT sourced content with some value adds around tracking or categorizing listening. A quick question for users: can the site itself be configured as a listener without streaming / displaying the video? In general, YT has a lot of music, but the perf hit of streaming typically high-quality video as well is a blocker when doing dev work on my main machine.
- input_sh 4mo ago
  You can toggle between YouTube and Spotify as the default playback provider. Note that you do need to be a premium Spotify user for it to work. That's not needed for YouTube, so that explains why YouTube is the default.
- Ntrails 4mo ago
  I'd be way more sold if I could pass in a static dump of my library music and get a handful of suggestions to demonstrate value.
Thev00d00 4mo ago
I've moved over to ListenBrainz, it's quite nice and I like that the data is open and not trying to be monitized
jamesbvaughan 4mo ago
I hope this is a good change for last.fm! I love the service but it's been trickier to use since I switched from Spotify to Apple Music. Does anyone have a setup they're happy with for scrobbling from Apple Music across different types of devices?
- caffeinewriter 4mo ago
  On desktop devices, I'm using Cider.sh which supports scrobbling, and on Android I use Pano Scrobbler.
- doublepg23 4mo ago
  QuietScrob on iOS/iPadOS works pretty well - it seems any breakage is due to Apple silently changing APIs more than anything on the dev's end. On Desktop (macOS) I use the official Last.FM app - however it's still a Rosetta 2 app which will be sunset in the fall :(
- joshuat 4mo ago
  NepTunes on macOS is nice - and it (optionally) adds the current track info to your menubar. I haven't found anything reliable for iOS, however.
  - frodprefect 4mo ago
    Marvis Pro!
- 4diii 4mo ago
  Sleeve on MacOS, last.fm app on iOS (have to manually check for new scrobbles every so often and it only counts songs from your library) and a web extension scrobbler for when I’m on Linux using the web version.
- HeckFeck 4mo ago
  I wish Apple Music would support scrobbling to the Last.FM API like Spotify, but to get the ball rolling we'd need someone on the Apple Music team who can nudge it up the list.
bachmeier 4mo ago
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.
- wao0uuno 4mo ago
  [flagged]
chipotle_coyote 4mo ago
Congratulations to last.fm on this, although I'm not sure what I can do that actually "scrobbles" at this point. I went to their download page for the Mac desktop app, which somewhat forebodingly referred to "what you've been playing in iTunes" rather than Apple Music, and downloaded it anyway. It's an Intel-only app, not universal, and it doesn't appear to be signed, so macOS Tahoe screams about it being possible malware. After going through the hula dance to open it anyway, it looks like it's working, but it sure doesn't look like it's received a lot of love recently.
- SyneRyder 4mo ago
  Spotify scrobbles to Last.FM (it's built-in to Spotify as a setting somewhere, from memory). On Windows, MusicBee will scrobble everything you play through it. On Android, the Last.FM app can watch playback notifications of Android music apps that you select and scrobble those - the app itself doesn't have to have Last.FM support. But I don't know about for Mac & iOS.
  - fundatus 4mo ago
    > it's built-in to Spotify as a setting somewhere, from memory That setting has been removed a few years ago. It now works the other way round: You authorise last.fm to access your Spotify data.
- yankcrime 4mo ago
  There are a number of utilities like Neptunes (https://micropixels.software/apps/neptunes https://micropixels.software/apps/neptunes) that will do this for you on macOS.
solarkraft 4mo ago
Congratulations (I guess), but what does “independent” mean here? Who bought it from whom (and why)? Is it employee owned now? Is it transitioning to a foundation?
lolive 4mo ago
May be they will once again invest in their smartphone app.
pdxandi 4mo ago
This is great news! I worked on the redesign and replatform with last.fm when they were part CBS Interactive. They were a lovely team of engineers and designers who cared about their product, and I appreciated their culture. Fun memories spending time in London with the team. Glad to hear they found a new home!
kgwxd 4mo ago
Clicked join: "Your request was blocked. To protect our website, our security firewall has flagged this request as potentially unsafe." Linux, Firefox, uBlock Origin. Nothing else special. I've really been looking for an alternative too. Thanks for at least showing me what to expect before sign up. Guess I'll pass.
dateutli 4mo ago
Happy to see they mentioned their API usage won't change. Last year I was working on a small project (https://listeningfacts.com https://listeningfacts.com) around spotify's API but they decided to suddenly restrict access to it. I was able to make it work with last.fm's API with no issue and they're more generous with the information they provide.
- lawlesst 4mo ago
  I've had the same experience. Spotify abruptly deprecated their recommendations API endpoint (https://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-for-Developers/spotify-api-Get-Recommendations-alternative/td-p/6540653 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-for-Developers/spot...). I recently switched to last.fm and am able to generate recommendations via their API just fine and without being a pro subscriber. I also had the delight of finding my streams from 2008 still in my history after not logging in for several years.
thinkdecidedo 4mo ago
Wow, I hope this is good news! I'm in my 21st year of scrobbling and still so obsessed with the stats. Just recently, I built a browser extension [1] to make batch editing more convenient and to get even more data about my scrobbles. [1] https://github.com/hummingme/scrobblescrubbler https://github.com/hummingme/scrobblescrubbler
progmetaldev 4mo ago
I'm glad I kept using an Audioscrobbler since 2008. Right now I have it hooked up to Spotify, but I've used one with foobar2000 for non-streaming, and have found other players to have the functionality for the most part (at least the ones I've made use of). I even had an extension for Chrome and Firefox that would send the data from YouTube's website when I used to listen to music on there. Happy they are independent and allowing access to their API. Seems like it may be time to work on a personal project to track the data in a way that matters to me, rather than just what you normally get built in.
jopsen 4mo ago
I loved last.fm when every tag was a custom radio station.. It's not anymore, right?
zkxjzmswkwl1 4mo ago
Many many years ago I wrote a small platform to serve as an off-ramp for Last users. They had just been acquired and it wasn't going over super well with users. "What I listen to" (coworker suggested the name), shortened to wilt. 17 year old me had no idea what I was getting into. It was the best and worst project I've ever worked on. A lot of respect to the guys and girls still working on Last and I'm very excited to see where it goes from here.
MadrasTh0rn 4mo ago
Love last.fm may it live a long life
elAhmo 4mo ago
Is anyone using last.fm in 2026? This made sense when people were playing MP3s in their Windows Media Player or Winamp, but as 99% of the people just stream music now, what is the purpose of this service? It has been maybe a decade since I met someone who actually uses the service.
- podgietaru 4mo ago
  My partner swears by it for the Data when scrobbing with Deezer (and formally spotify.) He pays for it.
- antinomicus 4mo ago
  I can’t stand streaming and wanted to get off all streaming services and now self host every single piece of my digital media. Last.fm is an important component for the music side of my services in order to use the last.fm api to track listens and provide recommendations.
- sylens 4mo ago
  I recently left streaming and started buying music again and in the process dusted off my 20 year old Last.fm account to begin scrobbling again
- dhruvmittal 4mo ago
  I really enjoy having almost 2 decades of my music listening history to play with + I use a couple different streaming services as well as vinyl and local playback, so it's nice to see my overall habits.
- thesuitonym 4mo ago
  I still listen to the majority of my music as downloaded MP3s, but no, I do not use Last.FM anymore. I've become much more wary of being tracked and have no desire to give them information for free, much less pay for the privilege!
- aembleton 4mo ago
  I still use it. I use the Pulsar music player on Android which has an Audioscrobbler built in. I have my entire mp3/flac collection extra compressed into opus files, so that my 120GB of music is only taking up 43GB on my phone. When I'm listening in the car or on the train I really can't tell the drop in quality.
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superkuh 4mo ago
It was such a hassle exporting my data from last.fm to libre.fm when they were bought out in 2007 (and then all the founders left in 2009). But I'm glad I did it. While it's nice that last.fm is "independent" now, they're still for-profit and probably should be avoided.
ssl-3 4mo ago
The last time it was mentioned here, perhaps a couple of weeks ago, I tried to warm up my old last.fm account. I once used it for a long time, but that time was maybe 20 years ago now. I wasn't even sure what my username, password, or email address would have been -- but I had some guesses. So I guessed a few times. I guessed wrong. The wrong guesses apparently blocked me, since the sign-up page now always goes 403 for me. When I tried with my pocket supercomputer instead, the infection spread to its signature as well: It 403s there, too. Fun times. edit: Tried again. It didn't work yesterday or the couple of weeks prior. But it worked the first time today. So now I have a shiny new last.fm account with no history. :)
- HeckFeck 4mo ago
  Get in touch with LFM support, it's good. I hadn't used my LFM since 2011, but I remembered my old email address that was likely used with the account. I emailed support asking them kindly to reset my password to my new email, and they obliged.
  - ssl-3 4mo ago
    Crazy. I might give it a shot. That era of my email is long gone, but I might be able to give them a very short list.
  - ssl-3 4mo ago
    Sorry to reply twice. My previous reply is too old to edit. I looked for contact info, but https://www.last.fm/about/contact https://www.last.fm/about/contact only lists one email address and says not to use that for tech support. It says to use support.lastfm.com -- a forum -- for technical questions. But I'm pretty unwilling to throw a bunch account data, even if it's already public and already very old, into one place for the bots to hoover up, ruminate upon, correlate, and then keep track of until the earth cools. Any tips on proceeding?
    - HeckFeck 4mo ago
      I've found the support email address. It might still be open for support queries. If you send me an email I'll send you what I know. My email address is in my profile.
ryanmcbride 4mo ago
I've used last.fm since the beginning and I still use it to scrobble. I hope it goes back to the more open api and the ability to more freely customize the profile pages like was possible back before last.fm 2.0 or whatever it was when they massively overhauled everything.
smurda 4mo ago
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 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?
- zimpenfish 4mo ago
  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")
  - kubanczyk 4mo ago
    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 https://stackoverflow.com/a/40292770
    - zimpenfish 4mo ago
      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?
- kevinsync 4mo ago
  I suspect it was an intentional choice so that artist names like Jay-Z remain properly separated in the URL, especially in cases of multiple-artist billings (ex. https://www.last.fm/music/Nas+&+Jay-Z https://www.last.fm/music/Nas+&+Jay-Z)
- herewulf 4mo ago
basisword 4mo ago
Wish I'd kept using my last.fm account. It's a shame that although Apple + Spotify both allow you to download your full listening history you can't upload it (and keep dates/times) to fill out your historical data. I'd start using it in a heartbeat again if they allowed that.
youarenotyu 4mo ago
yay! I love last.fm so much and glad they can maintain the platform
msephton 4mo ago
Long may it continue. I've used Last.fm since it launched to keep track of my listening habits (albeit incomplete since iPhone) and all the gigs I've ever been to (complete to the best of my knowledge!).
bronny1989 4mo ago
I’ve been trying for years to get my data off of last fm, and it has seemed impossible compared to other platforms
- mariusor 4mo ago
  Listenbrainz has a page that allows you to fetch your history from last.fm, and knowing them, the scraper is probably open-source.
pyk 4mo ago
This is pretty amazing, I have been scrobblin’ for 23 years (pre-rename from audioscrobbler to last.fm), from Winamp and foobar2000 to iTunes to Spotify over the years - amazing to see them continue this service for the dedicated music lovers. One of the few services spanning decades of analytics - excited for the team!
theden 4mo ago
Glad they're not changing the API! I'm hopeful things will get better with them regaining their independence. Shameless plug: We run https://songstitch.art/ https://songstitch.art/ for collage generation.
carimura 4mo ago
TIL last.fm is still around!
moomoo11 4mo ago
i discovered so much music i love to this day thanks to their scrobbling or whatever discovery service was. i’m talking like 2000s
murlax 4mo ago
What a blast from the past! I met my ex-girlfriend from half-way across the globe on last.fm. Lots of fond memories of sharing music on this lovely platform. My first anniversary gift to her was a pro subscription (whatever it was called at that time). I still "scrobble" via Spotify and its still the destination for my 20+ years of listening history. I am not active on any social media except last.fm... Its crazy that when I die, my music taste is the only thing that will survive in the cloud.
ultrasandwich 4mo ago
Last.fm is my favorite service I've ever used, period. Been using it since the early days, met real people through its comments section, and generally never had complaints about the quality of recommendations, etc.
deleted 4mo ago
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kaizenb 4mo ago
Congrats to the team. Always a fan. Scrobbles: 301,223 Scrobbling since 4 Jan 2007. They were also the inspiration for https://artconnects.club https://artconnects.club Like folks here in the comments mentioned last.fm was great for meeting people through music and mutual taste. I had many friends and great conversations with people that share my music taste. That indicator design showing our common music was a great deal. Now I'm building that to connect people through movies, series, albums and books. Displaying their common stuff. This is the way!
oscarcp 4mo ago
shame I cant recover my original account. When they sold to spotify I hadn't accessed my account for a good while so they just moved everything over and deleted it. It was a shame, I'm one of the OGs that signed up when it still was audioscrobbler, 23 years of historic listening data through the drain. Shame. (did i mention it is a shame? XD)
aeontech 4mo ago
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-Converter https://github.com/nerveband/Apple-Music-Play-History-Conver... to convert it for Last.fm import (haven't tried it yet, but looks promising).
- HeckFeck 4mo ago
  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".
randomeel 4mo ago
This site blinded me at 12 AM
czottmann 4mo ago
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 https://actions.work/listening-post (AFAIK, the official Mac scrobbler is dead by now.)
HeckFeck 4mo ago
Wild shot - but I wonder whether the newly emancipated Last.FM are looking to hire? I've loved the site since I got my old account back in 2024. Recently I created a fun widget maker using its API: https://github.com/lordfeck/last.played/ https://github.com/lordfeck/last.played/ If any of the team wants to reach me, my email is in my profile.

822 points by twistslider 4mo ago

aaronmoodie 4mo ago

This is such great news. Instant upgrade.

nubinetwork 4mo ago

I don't know if I even have an account anymore, its been like 15 years since I last logged in...

beardyw 4mo ago
Me too. I tried loggin in, and after a forced password reset I am back, though back to 2018 it turns out. On Spotify I made a playlist with over 4,000 songs from Last FM. I remember doing it but I couldn't say how I did it now. And also a "loved" playlist which I am revisiting now. First track Whitest Boy Alive: Golden Cage, a stonker.

john_strinlai 4mo ago

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

askl 4mo ago
Thanks. My first thought was "independent from what?". I'm a last.fm user since 2006 but never noticed any ownership changes.
NoboruWataya 4mo ago
So what exactly happened, did management buy the company from them?
themafia 4mo ago
Purchased and then completely ignored. The only consequence from an insiders point of view is we suddenly needed training on the "Foreign Corrupt Practices Act" since last.fm was a UK company.
- samtheDamned 4mo ago
  I guess thats better than being enshittified

deleted 4mo ago

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donalhunt 4mo ago

This seems like a positive step. It never made sense (to me at least) for CBS Paramount to own it. Huge opportunity to allow folk to own their own (meta)data. /fingerscrossed

ale 4mo ago

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.

tfrancisl 4mo ago
I use it with Spotify to track my listens and sort by artist, album and the like. It definitely still has value, even for Spotify users!
- mjr00 4mo ago
  Yep, member since May 21 2005 here, still scrobbling with Spotify. Don't think I've ever used any of the radio features on the site, really; even back in the 00s all I used were the WinAmp/Foobar plug-ins.
tuvix 4mo ago
I would argue it’s still unparalleled for recommendations
alejoar 4mo ago
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.
- alejoar 4mo ago
  I just remembered that I met one of my best friends to this day through Last.fm. It was 2009 or so, and you could leave messages on concert pages. I posted asking if anyone wanted to go with me since I didn't want to go alone, and she sent me a message. Good times.
- wyclif 4mo ago

jauntywundrkind 4mo ago

Last.fm & in particular audioscrobbling has been such an amazing joy to have in the world. Music is so important to me, and it's amazing having this system to help see over time what friends and I myself enjoy. These days, for auduiscrobbling, I recommend folks use either teal.fm (which alas is somewhat DIY or find-a-friend for their API service) or rocksky.app. There's a better credible exit, as it's based on atproto/Bluesky protocols, and a richer world of apps & interconnectivitiws emerging.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

BadBadJellyBean 4mo ago

I honestly forgot last.fm was a thing. But good for them that they have independence now.

Scene_Cast2 4mo ago

I remember Last.fm's value proposition was 1) discovery and 2) community. (1) is (mostly, for most people) covered by "feed" algorithms of Spotify and YouTube. I wonder how they're going to position themselves now.

micromacrofoot 4mo ago
a recommendation algorithm that isn't a box of pain they sell to advertisers?
cesarvarela 4mo ago
To me, it always was the scrobbler. I've been tracking what I listen to for 15+ years.
AdmiralAsshat 4mo ago
As someone who used to hang out on various music forums...a human recommendation based on careful analysis of your last.fm scrobbles was infinitely more useful and accurate than anything Pandora/YouTube/Spotify/Tidal ever recommended me. Humans can infer not just what you like, but what you don't like.
TFNA 4mo ago
Community largely died out already by 2012. Originally Last.fm enabled a lot of IRL socializing, connecting hipsters who lived in the same town and listened to the same music. Changes in music-listening habits, the atomization of tastes in a world where so much was available, and CBS not having a clue what to do with the site -- that killed Last.fm except for just a way to track one's own plays.

attilagyorffy 4mo ago

This is very exciting. The music landscape is just as chaotic as it was back in 2007 (when CBS acquired Last.fm) if not even more complex these days. Can't wait to see what's next. <3

SoftTalker 4mo ago
I fear that what's next is AI slop music, pushed by record companies so that no performers or songwriters need to be paid.
- zero_bias 4mo ago
  So lastfm become relevant again because slop will not appear statistically in user scrobblings because of vast amount of "musicians" required to be profitable: if I listen to 1000 AI artists with one track produced and Linkin Park then my average will be Linkin Park

punkbit 4mo ago

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.

verelo 4mo ago
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.
- punkbit 4mo ago
  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.
- SyneRyder 4mo ago
  Among the people I know still using Last.FM, it's somewhere between having statistics about your music, and a recommendation engine. It isn't about playing the music, you can do that elsewhere. But by having data on every single piece of music you've listened to, it can recommend music you will like, and potentially recommend people with shared musical tastes as well. There's a feature to compare your musical compatibility with others. For me, many years ago Last.FM recommended this weird electronic band that I'd never heard of, with the strange name "Boards Of Canada". That Last.FM recommendation was responsible for introducing me to my 2nd most listened to band of all time (just behind NIN). 2026 is many hexagons, dandelions and an inferno later.

desireco42 4mo ago

And I try to "Start Now" Your request was blocked To protect our website, our security firewall has flagged this request as potentially unsafe. Please try clearing your cookies and refreshing the page. If the problem persists, try again later or on a different computer network. Error 406 :) I think this is fantastic change and wish them the best, this is probably just a small hickup I experienced and I wil try again later. BTW, I recently cancelled my youtube premium, it was just too expensive. Never was subscribed to Spotify, so I need different ways to listen to music.

sparrish 4mo ago

So CBS spun them back out as their own corp or did the employee's or someone else buy it from CBS? Just declaring themselves independent without details doesn't provide much context. I feel like Michael Scott just declared bankruptcy.

JMiao 4mo ago
see, to me, it feels like wuphf.com finding a buyer
port11 4mo ago
Exactly, there’s very little detail here. I’ve been a user for a long time and had no idea they were part of CBS. Also… independent? Come on, most businesses on Earth are ‘independent’. They don’t need “support”, they’re a business, they need a product to sell. I’m a big fan of their no-frills service, but I wonder if their ‘independence’ will push them down the road of weird ads and entshitification.

jaimie 4mo ago

I still use last.fm via Spotify. It is wild to see my entire listening history from 11th grade to present (20 years!). Always fun to poke through and see changes from one year or life phase to the next.

walthamstow 4mo ago

What a blast from the past. It was a pretty cool time to be a teenager in 04-06 with last.fm, MySpace, iPods, Limewire and music blogs.

fontain 4mo ago

"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 support to Last. FM Limited at least for the next twelve months and thereafter for the foreseeable future to enable Last.FM Limited to continue to meet all its liabilities as they fall due." I wonder what their financing plan is, and what shape this independence will take, whether Paramount is retaining a minority ownership take? Seems like they might just be able to scrape break even based on current revenue.

punkbit 4mo ago
They have a lot of users paying to track their listening habits; I'm surprised.
twistslider 4mo ago
Where did you get this quote? I can't seem to find the source
- fontain 4mo ago
  U.K. company accounts are public. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/04569646/filing-history https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c... Click “view PDF” for “Full accounts made up to 31 December 2024”.

whalesalad 4mo ago

115,000 scrobbles: https://www.last.fm/user/whalesalad 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.

tomashubelbauer 4mo ago
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.
- whalesalad 4mo ago
  Music taste is probably the all time best indicator of compatibility tbh. You can go to shows together. You can jam out in the car together.
retired 4mo ago
I miss the internet of old, where you would meet up with a cute girl you met online and she turned out to be a 39 year old man from Wisconsin.
- whalesalad 4mo ago
  same tbh
- tclancy 4mo ago
  Hey, we had some good times together you and me.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
Semaphor 4mo ago

cdrnsf 4mo ago

There's still a ton of value in the historical recommendations on last.fm's site. What its future looks like, I'm not sure. I'd love to know who is going to operate it now that it is independent. I'd recommend ListenBrainz for folks interested in similar tracking and some recommendations with clearer ownership. For my own historical interests, I have a Navidrome plugin writing to my own API and surface charts across time periods by querying the postgres database it writes to.

quirino 4mo ago

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/ 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. - https://lastfmstats.com/ https://lastfmstats.com/ - generates tons of rankings, line charts, racing bar charts, etc. A couple I like: "Artist streaks" (I listened to Pavement tracks 122 times in a row in August 2023), "Unique artists in a single month" (225 in July 2025) and "Unique weeks per artist/album/track" (good to identify what you're always listening to vs. what you listened to heavily in a specific time) - https://pmcdonough8133.github.io/last.timer/ https://pmcdonough8133.github.io/last.timer/ - shows your listening rankings by hours, minutes instead of just scrobble count. This really should be a default feature in the site, as some artists have average track length 2-3x times of others. If you use Spotify, another site I've had loads of fun with is https://explorify.link/ https://explorify.link/.

tyrust 4mo ago
> 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.
- quirino 4mo ago
  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.

simonw 4mo ago

This is awesome! Anyone know who the humans behind the new company are?

_-_-__-_-_- 4mo ago

Listenbrainz has been an excellent alternative for me.

esskay 4mo ago
Downside of it is like all Metabrainz projects they seem to intentionally go and make everything as utterly ugly as possible. It feels like someone there intentionally thinks up ways to make the worst UX possible.
- Semaphor 4mo ago
  I don’t see how LB has a worse UX than LFM.

larrykubin 4mo ago

I have a history going back to 2012, which is great. I've always worried Spotify would stop working with last.fm, I wonder if this makes it more or less likely.

kevinwang 4mo ago

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.

ryanisnan 4mo ago

Interesting! Hope they have a super lean team, and just focus on the niche, legacy web experience.

oflannabhra 4mo ago

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.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

paul7986 4mo ago

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/nobody-wants-to-tell-me-why-they-only-listen-their-own-suno-slop https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/937059/n...

Semaphor 4mo ago

Another alternative is listenbrainz [0], which is also self-hostable [1]. A smaller, lightweight, single user selfhostable alternative, and more about just the stats is Koito [2], and finally because obviously you want to scrobble everywhere at once, you can self-host Multi Scrobbler to scrobble to and from multiple sources at once. Yes, I like scrobbling ;) [0]: https://listenbrainz.org/ https://listenbrainz.org/ [1]: https://github.com/metabrainz/listenbrainz-server https://github.com/metabrainz/listenbrainz-server [2]: https://github.com/gabehf/Koito/ https://github.com/gabehf/Koito/ [3]: https://github.com/FoxxMD/multi-scrobbler/ https://github.com/FoxxMD/multi-scrobbler/

mariusor 4mo ago
Lol, I had no idea scrobbling was popular again. I'm the maintainer of a scrobbler daemon for linux that gets the track info through MPRIS and can send it to last.fm, listenbrainz and libre.fm. :) https://github.com/mariusor/mpris-scrobbler https://github.com/mariusor/mpris-scrobbler

dfee 4mo ago

Unfortunately, unable to create an account on my laptop (WiFi) or phone (Verizon) - even in incognito. > Your request was blocked > To protect our website, our security firewall has flagged this request as potentially unsafe. > Please try clearing your cookies and refreshing the page. > If the problem persists, try again later or on a different computer network. > Error 406 edit: maybe they saw my message or fixed a bug? signup now works everywhere for me.

rrix2 4mo ago

i recommend installing a browser add-on like https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-scrobbler/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-scrobbler...

jdmnd 4mo ago

Great news! Related[0]. The presentation video in the linked article from 2002 is a gem. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46266875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46266875

donatj 4mo ago

I love Last.fm, I've been scrobbling for over 20 years now. It's amazing to me that they have managed to stick around like they have. They're very much an "old internet" site, and I hope they can stick around for many many more years.

bredren 4mo ago
Yes. Audio Scrobbler was the thing.

ChrisArchitect 4mo ago

Some previous discussions on this note: Last.fm and Audioscrobbler Herald the Social Web: 2002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46266875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46266875 Last.fm turns 20 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33722862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33722862

spenjovewkwhalo 4mo ago

Looking forward to scrobbling again Back in the day, was heavily influenced by last.fm for this BBC 6music GWAP mooso.fm https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2009/12/mooso.shtml https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2009/12/mooso.shtml

NiloCK 4mo ago

I'm mostly unfamiliar with the current offering of last.fm, but the name is familiar from way back. Glad to see something well-liked reclaim some independence. At a glance, they're providing an interface to YT sourced content with some value adds around tracking or categorizing listening. A quick question for users: can the site itself be configured as a listener without streaming / displaying the video? In general, YT has a lot of music, but the perf hit of streaming typically high-quality video as well is a blocker when doing dev work on my main machine.

input_sh 4mo ago
You can toggle between YouTube and Spotify as the default playback provider. Note that you do need to be a premium Spotify user for it to work. That's not needed for YouTube, so that explains why YouTube is the default.
Ntrails 4mo ago
I'd be way more sold if I could pass in a static dump of my library music and get a handful of suggestions to demonstrate value.

Thev00d00 4mo ago

I've moved over to ListenBrainz, it's quite nice and I like that the data is open and not trying to be monitized

jamesbvaughan 4mo ago

I hope this is a good change for last.fm! I love the service but it's been trickier to use since I switched from Spotify to Apple Music. Does anyone have a setup they're happy with for scrobbling from Apple Music across different types of devices?

caffeinewriter 4mo ago
On desktop devices, I'm using Cider.sh which supports scrobbling, and on Android I use Pano Scrobbler.
doublepg23 4mo ago
QuietScrob on iOS/iPadOS works pretty well - it seems any breakage is due to Apple silently changing APIs more than anything on the dev's end. On Desktop (macOS) I use the official Last.FM app - however it's still a Rosetta 2 app which will be sunset in the fall :(
joshuat 4mo ago
NepTunes on macOS is nice - and it (optionally) adds the current track info to your menubar. I haven't found anything reliable for iOS, however.
- frodprefect 4mo ago
  Marvis Pro!
4diii 4mo ago
Sleeve on MacOS, last.fm app on iOS (have to manually check for new scrobbles every so often and it only counts songs from your library) and a web extension scrobbler for when I’m on Linux using the web version.
HeckFeck 4mo ago
I wish Apple Music would support scrobbling to the Last.FM API like Spotify, but to get the ball rolling we'd need someone on the Apple Music team who can nudge it up the list.

bachmeier 4mo ago

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.

wao0uuno 4mo ago
[flagged]

chipotle_coyote 4mo ago

Congratulations to last.fm on this, although I'm not sure what I can do that actually "scrobbles" at this point. I went to their download page for the Mac desktop app, which somewhat forebodingly referred to "what you've been playing in iTunes" rather than Apple Music, and downloaded it anyway. It's an Intel-only app, not universal, and it doesn't appear to be signed, so macOS Tahoe screams about it being possible malware. After going through the hula dance to open it anyway, it looks like it's working, but it sure doesn't look like it's received a lot of love recently.

SyneRyder 4mo ago
Spotify scrobbles to Last.FM (it's built-in to Spotify as a setting somewhere, from memory). On Windows, MusicBee will scrobble everything you play through it. On Android, the Last.FM app can watch playback notifications of Android music apps that you select and scrobble those - the app itself doesn't have to have Last.FM support. But I don't know about for Mac & iOS.
- fundatus 4mo ago
  > it's built-in to Spotify as a setting somewhere, from memory That setting has been removed a few years ago. It now works the other way round: You authorise last.fm to access your Spotify data.
yankcrime 4mo ago
There are a number of utilities like Neptunes (https://micropixels.software/apps/neptunes https://micropixels.software/apps/neptunes) that will do this for you on macOS.

solarkraft 4mo ago

Congratulations (I guess), but what does “independent” mean here? Who bought it from whom (and why)? Is it employee owned now? Is it transitioning to a foundation?

lolive 4mo ago

May be they will once again invest in their smartphone app.

pdxandi 4mo ago

This is great news! I worked on the redesign and replatform with last.fm when they were part CBS Interactive. They were a lovely team of engineers and designers who cared about their product, and I appreciated their culture. Fun memories spending time in London with the team. Glad to hear they found a new home!

kgwxd 4mo ago

Clicked join: "Your request was blocked. To protect our website, our security firewall has flagged this request as potentially unsafe." Linux, Firefox, uBlock Origin. Nothing else special. I've really been looking for an alternative too. Thanks for at least showing me what to expect before sign up. Guess I'll pass.

dateutli 4mo ago

Happy to see they mentioned their API usage won't change. Last year I was working on a small project (https://listeningfacts.com https://listeningfacts.com) around spotify's API but they decided to suddenly restrict access to it. I was able to make it work with last.fm's API with no issue and they're more generous with the information they provide.

lawlesst 4mo ago
I've had the same experience. Spotify abruptly deprecated their recommendations API endpoint (https://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-for-Developers/spotify-api-Get-Recommendations-alternative/td-p/6540653 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-for-Developers/spot...). I recently switched to last.fm and am able to generate recommendations via their API just fine and without being a pro subscriber. I also had the delight of finding my streams from 2008 still in my history after not logging in for several years.

thinkdecidedo 4mo ago

Wow, I hope this is good news! I'm in my 21st year of scrobbling and still so obsessed with the stats. Just recently, I built a browser extension [1] to make batch editing more convenient and to get even more data about my scrobbles. [1] https://github.com/hummingme/scrobblescrubbler https://github.com/hummingme/scrobblescrubbler

progmetaldev 4mo ago

I'm glad I kept using an Audioscrobbler since 2008. Right now I have it hooked up to Spotify, but I've used one with foobar2000 for non-streaming, and have found other players to have the functionality for the most part (at least the ones I've made use of). I even had an extension for Chrome and Firefox that would send the data from YouTube's website when I used to listen to music on there. Happy they are independent and allowing access to their API. Seems like it may be time to work on a personal project to track the data in a way that matters to me, rather than just what you normally get built in.

jopsen 4mo ago

I loved last.fm when every tag was a custom radio station.. It's not anymore, right?

zkxjzmswkwl1 4mo ago

Many many years ago I wrote a small platform to serve as an off-ramp for Last users. They had just been acquired and it wasn't going over super well with users. "What I listen to" (coworker suggested the name), shortened to wilt. 17 year old me had no idea what I was getting into. It was the best and worst project I've ever worked on. A lot of respect to the guys and girls still working on Last and I'm very excited to see where it goes from here.

MadrasTh0rn 4mo ago

Love last.fm may it live a long life

elAhmo 4mo ago

Is anyone using last.fm in 2026? This made sense when people were playing MP3s in their Windows Media Player or Winamp, but as 99% of the people just stream music now, what is the purpose of this service? It has been maybe a decade since I met someone who actually uses the service.

podgietaru 4mo ago
My partner swears by it for the Data when scrobbing with Deezer (and formally spotify.) He pays for it.
antinomicus 4mo ago
I can’t stand streaming and wanted to get off all streaming services and now self host every single piece of my digital media. Last.fm is an important component for the music side of my services in order to use the last.fm api to track listens and provide recommendations.
sylens 4mo ago
I recently left streaming and started buying music again and in the process dusted off my 20 year old Last.fm account to begin scrobbling again
dhruvmittal 4mo ago
I really enjoy having almost 2 decades of my music listening history to play with + I use a couple different streaming services as well as vinyl and local playback, so it's nice to see my overall habits.
thesuitonym 4mo ago
I still listen to the majority of my music as downloaded MP3s, but no, I do not use Last.FM anymore. I've become much more wary of being tracked and have no desire to give them information for free, much less pay for the privilege!
aembleton 4mo ago
I still use it. I use the Pulsar music player on Android which has an Audioscrobbler built in. I have my entire mp3/flac collection extra compressed into opus files, so that my 120GB of music is only taking up 43GB on my phone. When I'm listening in the car or on the train I really can't tell the drop in quality.

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superkuh 4mo ago

It was such a hassle exporting my data from last.fm to libre.fm when they were bought out in 2007 (and then all the founders left in 2009). But I'm glad I did it. While it's nice that last.fm is "independent" now, they're still for-profit and probably should be avoided.

ssl-3 4mo ago

The last time it was mentioned here, perhaps a couple of weeks ago, I tried to warm up my old last.fm account. I once used it for a long time, but that time was maybe 20 years ago now. I wasn't even sure what my username, password, or email address would have been -- but I had some guesses. So I guessed a few times. I guessed wrong. The wrong guesses apparently blocked me, since the sign-up page now always goes 403 for me. When I tried with my pocket supercomputer instead, the infection spread to its signature as well: It 403s there, too. Fun times. edit: Tried again. It didn't work yesterday or the couple of weeks prior. But it worked the first time today. So now I have a shiny new last.fm account with no history. :)

HeckFeck 4mo ago
Get in touch with LFM support, it's good. I hadn't used my LFM since 2011, but I remembered my old email address that was likely used with the account. I emailed support asking them kindly to reset my password to my new email, and they obliged.
- ssl-3 4mo ago
  Crazy. I might give it a shot. That era of my email is long gone, but I might be able to give them a very short list.
- ssl-3 4mo ago
  Sorry to reply twice. My previous reply is too old to edit. I looked for contact info, but https://www.last.fm/about/contact https://www.last.fm/about/contact only lists one email address and says not to use that for tech support. It says to use support.lastfm.com -- a forum -- for technical questions. But I'm pretty unwilling to throw a bunch account data, even if it's already public and already very old, into one place for the bots to hoover up, ruminate upon, correlate, and then keep track of until the earth cools. Any tips on proceeding?
  - HeckFeck 4mo ago
    I've found the support email address. It might still be open for support queries. If you send me an email I'll send you what I know. My email address is in my profile.

ryanmcbride 4mo ago

I've used last.fm since the beginning and I still use it to scrobble. I hope it goes back to the more open api and the ability to more freely customize the profile pages like was possible back before last.fm 2.0 or whatever it was when they massively overhauled everything.

smurda 4mo ago

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 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?

zimpenfish 4mo ago
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")
- kubanczyk 4mo ago
  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 https://stackoverflow.com/a/40292770
  - zimpenfish 4mo ago
    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?
kevinsync 4mo ago
I suspect it was an intentional choice so that artist names like Jay-Z remain properly separated in the URL, especially in cases of multiple-artist billings (ex. https://www.last.fm/music/Nas+&+Jay-Z https://www.last.fm/music/Nas+&+Jay-Z)
herewulf 4mo ago

basisword 4mo ago

Wish I'd kept using my last.fm account. It's a shame that although Apple + Spotify both allow you to download your full listening history you can't upload it (and keep dates/times) to fill out your historical data. I'd start using it in a heartbeat again if they allowed that.

youarenotyu 4mo ago

yay! I love last.fm so much and glad they can maintain the platform

msephton 4mo ago

Long may it continue. I've used Last.fm since it launched to keep track of my listening habits (albeit incomplete since iPhone) and all the gigs I've ever been to (complete to the best of my knowledge!).

bronny1989 4mo ago

I’ve been trying for years to get my data off of last fm, and it has seemed impossible compared to other platforms

mariusor 4mo ago
Listenbrainz has a page that allows you to fetch your history from last.fm, and knowing them, the scraper is probably open-source.

pyk 4mo ago

This is pretty amazing, I have been scrobblin’ for 23 years (pre-rename from audioscrobbler to last.fm), from Winamp and foobar2000 to iTunes to Spotify over the years - amazing to see them continue this service for the dedicated music lovers. One of the few services spanning decades of analytics - excited for the team!

theden 4mo ago

Glad they're not changing the API! I'm hopeful things will get better with them regaining their independence. Shameless plug: We run https://songstitch.art/ https://songstitch.art/ for collage generation.

carimura 4mo ago

TIL last.fm is still around!

moomoo11 4mo ago

i discovered so much music i love to this day thanks to their scrobbling or whatever discovery service was. i’m talking like 2000s

murlax 4mo ago

What a blast from the past! I met my ex-girlfriend from half-way across the globe on last.fm. Lots of fond memories of sharing music on this lovely platform. My first anniversary gift to her was a pro subscription (whatever it was called at that time). I still "scrobble" via Spotify and its still the destination for my 20+ years of listening history. I am not active on any social media except last.fm... Its crazy that when I die, my music taste is the only thing that will survive in the cloud.

ultrasandwich 4mo ago

Last.fm is my favorite service I've ever used, period. Been using it since the early days, met real people through its comments section, and generally never had complaints about the quality of recommendations, etc.

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kaizenb 4mo ago

Congrats to the team. Always a fan. Scrobbles: 301,223 Scrobbling since 4 Jan 2007. They were also the inspiration for https://artconnects.club https://artconnects.club Like folks here in the comments mentioned last.fm was great for meeting people through music and mutual taste. I had many friends and great conversations with people that share my music taste. That indicator design showing our common music was a great deal. Now I'm building that to connect people through movies, series, albums and books. Displaying their common stuff. This is the way!

oscarcp 4mo ago

shame I cant recover my original account. When they sold to spotify I hadn't accessed my account for a good while so they just moved everything over and deleted it. It was a shame, I'm one of the OGs that signed up when it still was audioscrobbler, 23 years of historic listening data through the drain. Shame. (did i mention it is a shame? XD)

aeontech 4mo ago

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-Converter https://github.com/nerveband/Apple-Music-Play-History-Conver... to convert it for Last.fm import (haven't tried it yet, but looks promising).

HeckFeck 4mo ago
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".

randomeel 4mo ago

This site blinded me at 12 AM

czottmann 4mo ago

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 https://actions.work/listening-post (AFAIK, the official Mac scrobbler is dead by now.)

HeckFeck 4mo ago

Wild shot - but I wonder whether the newly emancipated Last.FM are looking to hire? I've loved the site since I got my old account back in 2024. Recently I created a fun widget maker using its API: https://github.com/lordfeck/last.played/ https://github.com/lordfeck/last.played/ If any of the team wants to reach me, my email is in my profile.