Last.fm started out as a combination of two different sources: autoscrobbler and last.fm. Autoscrobbler is the recommendation system that allows last.fm to access what music is being played. According to their site:
“A scrobble is a little note The Scrobbler sends to Last.fm to let us know what song you’re playing. Scrobbling helps us tell you what songs you play most often, which songs you like the most, how much you’ve played an artist over a certain amount of time, which of your friends have similar tastes… all kinds of stuff. By focusing on the music you already play we can help you discover more music.”
It currently is an application programming interface that allows users to recommend and share music with each other, all while maintaining their goal of being, primarily, a music recommendation site. Users can love, ban or skip as many tracks as they wish. Although the company recently parted ways with their on-demand music function, this was a painful yet necessary step towards focusing on becoming a dominant music discovery program. As well as solidifying their position at being a leading social media music recommendation site.
Last.fm is a social media site that is adapting to the constant change of the industry-listener relationship. Many music aficionados are no longer turning to Rolling Stone to tell them what they should be listening to. Instead, people as a whole are moving towards utilizing social media platforms to gain a greater insight as to what’s hot and what’s not. With a society that’s headed towards abandoning traditional methods of music discovery altogether, it’s important for social media music sites to hone in on what it is that people want. With the internet, thousands of blogs are being created and read daily. This not only gives people the opportunity to voice their own critical opinion, but it allows these trusted voices a chance to have their opinions heard by a wider audience. With last.fm, people are able to share their comments on a particular song or artist with countless other people, which creates a sense of community that people long for.
People want control, it’s as simple as that. Last.fm understands that the music industry-listener relationship is usually very one-sided. So in order to compensate for that, they’ve created a very social media friendly interface: “ Users can add shouts to songs, view what their friends are listening to, find music neighbors, and join groups.” This is just a handful of features that allows the listener the chance to have more input and control.
Last.fm is a free service (if you live in certain areas) and unlike most of its competition, it allows the user to skip as many tracks as they want, create personalized listening stations by tracking what music is played (whether it’s on their mobile device, computer, or a website),
give feedback, connect through other popular platforms such as Facebook, view what friends are listening to, share playlists/stations, lists upcoming shows in their area, and that’s just to name a few. Last.fm allows its user the chance to interact with other people as well. You can have your friends imported from a variety of other social networking sites or even from your list of email contacts. This not only gives you a way to see what other people are listening to, but you can keep up to date on other people’s opinions on music that’s similar to your own.
Last.fm also has a mobile component that is definitely a viable asset. Listeners everywhere, want to be able to listen to their personalized stations on the go. With last.fm, people are no longer tied to specific genres that the industry creates. Tags can be added to certain songs/artists which allow similar tags to be grouped together. This creates opportunity for people to listen to appropriate music for their current situation or mood. Originally, people were bound to whatever songs the radio DJ wanted to play. You had to listen to commercials, and if you wanted to listen to a specific type of music you had to change your dial all together. Last.fm understands that people want to be able to control the music they listen to, and with good reason. For instance if you’re throwing a party, you can have guests create their own playlists and then share them with you to create the ultimate set: all while avoiding the infamous “can you play (insert song title here)”. The mobile component allows listeners to do all that, while being virtually anywhere: granted you have access to web.
Unlike other choices such as Pandora or Slacker, last.fm is completely reliant on user input, and knows how important control is. The more you use last.fm the more tailored it is towards your music taste: whereas Pandora relies on an algorithm to generate similar songs or artists. Although Pandora may do a better job at coming up with artists you have never heard or before, last.fm tends to have less duplicates. With last.fm focusing on becoming a place where people can discover new music, they have some features that make it easy for listeners to stay in the know: “last.fm also uses your scrobbling data to keep you informed of new albums as your favorite bands release their latest singles and full length albums.” This not only allows you to be kept up to date, but you can find out which artists are on the up and up either by what your friends are listening to or what’s being recommended to you.
Last.fm is definitely aware that people want to be able to control how they listen to their music, not just when or where. They recently partnered up with Microsoft’s Xbox, so now their users can use last.fm on their gaming console as well.
Although you can’t listen to music and play videogames at the same time, last.fm gained nearly one million new users just by offering their service on a popular mode of entertainment. It may not be that much of a success because you can’t listen to music simultaneously, but it’s definitely a sign that last.fm is trying to set itself apart from the competition, while changing the way people listen to music. Another popular service that has linked up with last.fm is Klout. For those that have no idea what Klout is, it’s pretty much a marker of how much you influence others through different social media platforms. People today are constantly reading what others have to say, whether it’s on forums, blogs or just mere comments. With the music industry moving towards relying on social media for input, this is definitely something that people would love to add to their repertoire: “On Last.fm the amount of activity a user or listener generates on their profile will almost certainly be a factor”.
Last.fm does a great job at recognizing the shift in the industry-listener relationship in the sense that listeners are moving away from relying on what the industry tells them they should listen to. People are relying on others who might even be self-appointed to tell them what up and coming artists to listen to: as opposed to reading reviews from once popular sources such as Rolling Stone, Spin or Blender. Last.fm is a leader in utilizing social media to benefit not only the artist but listener as well. With scrobbles being a tell-tale sign of which artists are popular or not, people can also read direct insight on artists they find appealing. Last.fm also incorporates a wide variety of information for the listener: you can view music videos as well as read detailed information about a particular song or artist.
Last.fm’s decision to stop on-demand streaming may be seen as a negative to its users, but it hasn’t changed the fact that people still rely on last.fm : “Our scrobbling data shows that, for some time now, people have been using multiple music services and devices, then coming back to their Last.fm profiles to answer the question ‘what should I hear next?’ and to see / show off all their listening united in one place”. It’s clear that last.fm provides many valuable services to its users, but I think the better question is: Can last.fm maintain its relevance as a leader in music discovery? Or will its very method of utilizing social media be its demise.
Sources:
"Last.fm's Personalized Radio Unveils its Radio.com Player." Entertainment Close-up 15 June 2011. General Business ASAP.
"Last.fm adds deeper ties to Facebook to ease sharing." New Media Age 19 May 2011: 10. Expanded Academic ASAP.
"Xbox 360 Teams Up with Entertainment Leaders to Transform TV." Targeted News Service: n/a. ProQuest Central. Oct 05 2011.
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