Last.fm Social Music Platform

[pzarquon]

I did. I am also looking at http://last.fm. There was a comparison posted on slashdot yesterday.

Holy cow. That's creepy. I just fired up my iTunes plug-in for Last.fm last night, for the first time since September! Just browsing this thread had made me remember various tools that were out there (one of which I know I saw on zztype's personal site!) that let you automatically update a public list of "latest tracks" played on your computer... fun little things that are especially popular in personal blogs (i.e. "Now Playing" gadgets).

Last.fm does this, but it's real strength is as an online music database, that does indeed "profile" you and thousands of other users. It finds music you like, artists you have in common with others, and from that comes up with suggestions of other stuff you might like, and mixes it all together in a "station" you can stream.

In any case, if you're on Last.fm, let's be friends! My profile is here. There's also a "Hawaii" group.

[liberty]

Re: What's playing on your iTunes & iPod?

[...]
In any case, if you're on Last.fm, let's be friends! My profile is here. There's also a "Hawaii" group.

Hey Ryan, looks like you'll be my first friend on Last.fm. And I've had a profile since October!

Below is an image that I taught myself how to make using some PHP code. It automatically updates recently played tracks posted on my Last.fm profile. This image is also posted on my Myspace.

[pzarquon]

Re: What's playing on your iTunes & iPod?

Always good to have more 'friends' on Last.FM, Liberty and Mel! I forgot about their 'auto-updating image' feature. Whee!



Though, there's a notice on the site right now that says: "Over the next 48 hours we are performing a major upgrade to our track submissions system. During this time, your "tracks played" counter and overall charts will be paused. Your "recent tracks" will function as normal, no data will be lost, and by the end of the week you'll be enjoying much better service from our shiny new system."

So of course I picked a fine day to start experimenting with it...

Do they have a setting for fixing the date/time stamp? I seem to be hours away from Hawaii Standard Time.

Yep. In the "Settings" screen under the "Preferences" submenu, "Time Settings" is the first item.

[liberty]

Re: What's playing on your iTunes & iPod?

I just submitted songs I listened to on my way to work this morning, but for some reason only the two most recent ones are showing up on my profile. And I know I listened to more than two songs on my way from Wai'anae!

I just looked it up on Last.fm's forums and it turns out to be a temporary glitch related to the upgrade Ryan mentioned (even though Last.fm said the recent tracks wouldn't be affected)... so if anyone else is getting this problem, that's why.

[liberty]

Re: What's playing on your iTunes & iPod?

Being a relative newbie on Last FM, I do notice that tracks played don't hang around on my Last FM homepage [...]

This is what I found on Last.FM's FAQ:

"Why do my recent tracks sometimes disappear? - The recent tracks lists are only held in memory on our servers. Occasionally we have to reboot them for maintenance, and in this case your list will be cleared. However, they will still be included in your profile."

I see you have a lot of songs listed on your main page charts below the most recently played list.

There's a minimum number of tracks that need to be played before it displays the overall top artists and top tracks. Forgot what the exact minimum is, though. The FAQ does say that it updates the overall top artists and songs charts every three days for profiles with fewer than 1,000 songs played, and every week for profiles with more than 1,000 songs played.

[liberty]

Re: What's playing on your iTunes & iPod?

Looks like Last.fm polished up the look and feel a bit. Check out my profile for an example. I like the incorporation of artist/band photos. There's also a My Dashboard feature that gives you an at-a-glance look at what your friends are listening to; a likewise widget for Mac OS X's Dashboard; and a new app that supposedly does away with plug-ins. (Mac users: As of now, the app is only compatible with Tiger 10.4, so older Mac systems still need the plug-in.) Read more about the updates.

[liberty]

Re: What's playing on your iTunes & iPod?

While the new iLike service is getting lots of raves, are people here still using Last.fm? I think they are still a good service, and works with older Mac OSX's.

I'm using both. Last.fm has the capability of submitting tracks played from an iPod, which iLike doesn't have.

[mel]

Re: What's playing on your iTunes & iPod?

If and when I get around to updating my system, I'll give iLike a try. For now I am content with Last FM.

[pzarquon]

Re: Last.fm Social Music Platform

With competition, everyone wins! Seems the arrival of iLike for iTunes has prompted a significant upgrade to Last.fm. An integrated, pop-up-able Flash-based audio player for Last.fm radio (one channel iLike doesn't offer), and integrated concert listings for starters... plus free downloads and a compatibility meter to compare your tastes to other users (part of iLike's core featureset).

The image-based widgets to post your tracks on other sites is also a major advantage. Many blogging systems and messages boards won't let you post Javascript or other executable code, but a dynamically-updated GIF? No problem!

Sadly, my Last.fm profile is kind of quiet, since I stopped running the separate "scrobbler" application to track what I'm listening to. While the advantages of this approach includes compatibility with other jukebox applications besides iTunes, there's something invisibly elegant about the plug-in approach they originally had (and that iLike has adopted).

[pzarquon]

Re: Last.fm Social Music Platform

After being hugely enamored of iLike, I'm giving Last.fm another look. Again, this is from the perspective of a Mac user.

Just this week, they updated their custom client. But as I mentioned, having to run a separate program to send my songs to the service always annoyed me. And I don't listen to its "custom radio stream" often enough to justify that.

But, thanks to the news of the custom client update, I found several users pointing the way to the old iScrobbler plug in. As it turns out, even though Last.fm changed from a plug-in to a stand-alone app, the plug-in was adopted by independent developers, and they're still tweaking and supporting it. Since I always thought a plug-in was the way to go (and why I gave iLike such high marks), I went back to it... and am happy to see my iTunes tracks again "scrobbled" to the web without any extra steps or programs on my end. And the "Growl"-enabled track name notices are a nice touch!

Indeed, while I think iLike has a lot of potential, they've ignored calls to add RSS feeds to their service... so I ended up putting my "Recent Tracks" on HawaiiBlog via Last.fm, rather than iLike's obnoxious orange Flash-based widget. There are too many widgets in sidebars and MySpace profiles these days, but RSS lets me cache the information and present it in a non-intrusive, quick-loading way.

[mel]

Re: Last.fm Social Music Platform

I don't know if this is new or not, but Last FM now has a FREE Download music chart section. They list a number of artists and you can download the free MP3s. All indie artists, none you probably heard of, but some good music in there. I already downloaded a half dozen songs on this first day of 2007.

http://www.last.fm/charts/free/

Here is a link to my Last FM page.

[pzarquon]

Re: Last.fm Social Music Platform

Last.fm has just announced a paid Subscription Service, for ad-free streaming, as well as other little goodies. It seems a natural response to a recent change in online radio royalty rates that many say will put hundreds of folks of business, and knock thousands of hobbyists offline. Last.fm competitor Pandora is certainly worried.

I continue to waver between Last.fm and iLike as my "preferred social music platform." Last.fm certainly has a lot to offer, though I don't plan on becoming a subscriber.

[Cameron]

Re: Last.fm Social Music Platform

I don't really use any of the social features but I do scrobble my music and listen to the last.fm streams. I use Amarok and last.fm is built right in. My only gripe is the is the streams aren't as selective as pandora's