Last.fm
Encyclopedia
Last.fm is a music website, founded in the United Kingdom
in 2002. It has claimed 30 million active users in March 2009. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for UK£
140m (US$
280m).
Using a music recommender system called "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of the songs the user listens to, either from Internet radio
stations, or the user's computer or many portable music devices. This information is transferred ("scrobbled") to Last.fm's database either via the music player itself (Rdio
, Spotify
, Clementine
, Amarok) or via a plugin installed into the user's music player
. The data is then displayed on the user's profile page and also compiled to create reference pages for individual artists. By April 2011 Last.fm reported more than 50 billion scrobbles.
The service is free; however, users living outside the UK, US, and Germany, require a subscription to use the radio service (€3.00 per month after a 50 track free trial). The site offers numerous social networking
features and can recommend and play artists similar to the user's favourites.
project by Richard Jones while he attended the University of Southampton School of Electronics and Computer Science in the United Kingdom
. Jones developed the first plugins, and then opened an API
to the community, after which many music players on different operating system
platforms were supported. Audioscrobbler was limited to recording music its users played on a registered computer, which allowed for charting and collaborative filtering.
Last.fm was founded in 2002 by Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel, Michael Breidenbruecker and Thomas Willomitzer, all of them from Germany
or Austria
, as an internet radio station and music community site, using similar music profiles to generate dynamic playlists. The site name takes advantage of a domain hack
using .fm
, the top level domain of Micronesia
, popular with FM radio related sites. The "love" and "ban" buttons allowed users to gradually customise their profiles. Last.fm won the Europrix
2002 and was nominated for the Prix Ars Electronica
in 2003.
The Audioscrobbler and Last.fm teams began to work closely together, both teams moving into the same offices in Whitechapel
, London
, and by 2003 Last.fm was fully integrated with Audioscrobbler profiles. Input could come through an Audioscrobbler plugin or a Last.fm station. The sites also shared many community forums, although a few were unique to each site. The old Audioscrobbler site at the audioscrobbler.com domain name
was wholly merged into the new Last.fm site on 9 August 2005. This launched audioscrobbler.net as a separate development-oriented site on 5 September 2005. However, at the very bottom of each of the Last.fm pages there was an Audioscrobbler "slogan
", which changes each time the page is refreshed. Based on well-known sayings or advertisements, these originally appeared at the top of the old Audioscrobbler website pages and were all created and contributed by the original site members.
An update to the site was made on 14 July 2006 which included a new software application
for playing Last.fm radio streams and for logging of tracks played with other media players. Other changes included the improvement of the friends system and updating it to require a two-way
friendship, the addition of the Last.fm "Dashboard" where users can see on one page relevant information for their profile, expanded options for purchasing music from online retailers
and a new visual design
for the web site (including an optional black colour scheme
). The site began expanding its language base on 15 July 2006, when a Japanese
version of the site was launched. Currently, the site is available in various other languages, including German
, Spanish
, French
, Italian
, Polish
, Portuguese
, Swedish
, Russian
, Turkish
and Simplified Chinese. In late 2006, the site won Best Community Music
Site at the BT
Digital Music
Awards in October. Last.fm also teamed with EMI
on Tuneglue-Audiomap. Furthermore, in January 2007 it was nominated for Best Website at the NME Awards
.
and Last.fm emerged, suggesting that Viacom intended to purchase Last.fm for about £225 million. ($449 million USD) In May 2007 it was announced that Channel 4 Radio
was to broadcast a weekly show called Worldwide Chart reflecting what Last.fm users around the world were listening to. On 30 May 2007, it was announced that Last.fm has been bought by CBS
for £140 million with Last.fm's current management team staying in place. In July 2008, the "new generation" Last.fm was launched featuring a completely new layout, color-scheme and several new features as well as some old ones removed. This was, however, met with dissatisfaction amongst some users, who complained about
"ugly and non-user-friendly layout", bugs and slowness. Still, a month after the redesign a CBS press release credited the redesign with generating a 20% growth in the site's traffic.
On 22 February 2009, Techcrunch
claimed that "[the] RIAA asked social music service Last.fm for data about its user's listening habits to find people with unreleased tracks on their computers. And Last.fm, which is owned by CBS, allegedly handed the data over to the RIAA." This led to several public postings from both Last.fm and Techcrunch, with Last.fm denying passing any personal data to RIAA. The request was purportedly prompted by the leak of U2
's then-unreleased album No Line On The Horizon, and its subsequent widespread distribution via peer-to-peer file sharing
services and BitTorrent.
Three months later, on 22 May 2009, Techcrunch claimed that it was CBS, the parent company of Last.fm, that handed over the data. Last.fm again denied that this was the case, saying that CBS couldn't have handed over the data without Last.fm knowing.
post "[...] In the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, nothing will change. In all other countries, listening to Last.fm Radio will soon require a subscription of €3.00 per month." The change went into effect on 22 April 2009. The announcement has led to a wave of disappointment among the users, resulting in users stopping the submission of their data, refusing to change signatures/avatars and even deleting their accounts.
On 11 September 2009, CBS Radio
announced that Last.fm programming will be available in four major market FM stations for the first time on their HD Radio
multicasts. This includes KCBS-HD2
in Los Angeles, CA
; KITS-HD3
in San Francisco, CA; WWFS-HD2 in New York City
; and WXRT-HD3 in Chicago, IL
. The programming, which consists mostly of music aggregated by Last.fm's user-generated weekly music charts as well as live performances and interviews from the Last.fm studios in New York City debuted on October 5.
On 12 April 2010, Last.fm announced that they would be removing the option to preview entire tracks, instead redirecting to sites such as the free 'Hype Machine
' and pay-to-listen 'Mog
' for this purpose. This provoked a large negative reaction from some of the Last.fm user community who perceive the removal as hindering the ability of lesser-known and unsigned artists to gain exposure for their music and general enjoyment of the site. A new 'Play direct from artist' feature was introduced soon after, which allowed artists to select individual tracks for users to be able to stream in full.
The ability to listen to custom radio stations ('personal tag radio', 'loved tracks radio') was withdrawn on 17 November 2010 (tag radio still exists but the criteria for calling up tracks has been widened). This change provoked an angry response among some users. Last FM claim that the move is due to "licensing". The change of 17 November 2010 means that a tag radio stream will include ALL music tagged as such, not just that tagged by each individual user: effectively widening the number of tracks that might be streamed under any one tag set.
space, monthly user subscriptions, and donations. On Tuesday, 24 March 2009 it was announced on the official Last.fm blog that Last.fm will charge users—except for those in the United States, United Kingdom, or Germany—a subscription fee of €3.00 per month for use of Last.fm radio.
who was introduced to the founders as early as 2002. A second round was led by Stefan Glaenzer (joined by Joi Ito
and Reid Hoffman
), who bought into Michael Breidenbrueckers shares as well. In 2006 the company received the first round of venture capital
funding from European investors Index Ventures, whose General Partners Neil Rimer and Danny Rimer also joined Last.fm's board of directors
, consisting of Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel and Stefan Glaenzer (Chair).
Original founders Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel and Richard Jones left the company in summer 2009.
includes access to all the main features listed below. Registered Users are also able to post in the Last.fm forums, send and receive private messages and use the Last.fm client music player. For users living outside the UK, US and Germany, the radio service will require a subscription for €3.00 per month after a 30 track free trial.
service, either with the Last.fm client, or with the embedded flash player
. All songs played are added to a log from which personal top artist/track bar chart
s and musical recommendations are calculated
. This automatic track logging is called scrobbling.
Last.fm automatically generates a profile page for every user which includes basic information such as their user name, avatar, date of registration and total number of tracks played. This can be customized with additional information or photographs if desired but the fundamental layout cannot be changed. There is also a Shoutbox
for public messages. Profile pages are visible to all, together with a list of top artists and tracks, and the 10 most recently played tracks (can be expanded). Each user's profile has a 'Taste-o-Meter' which gives a rating of how compatible your music taste is.
Profile pages can also include lists of friends, weekly musical "neighbours", favourite tags, groups and events. An optional customizable playlist may be also added, with tracks that the user wishes to share or promote. Other features include the ability to remove songs listened to within a 2 week time-frame, navigation to linked profiles (such as friends and musical neighbours) and a list of individual users' favourite albums.
A customizable display of Recently Played tracks, is now available via web services, allowing users to add them to blog
s, MySpace
or as forum
signatures.
Recommendations are calculated using a collaborative filtering
algorithm
so users can browse and hear previews of a list of artists not listed on their own profile but which appear on those of others with similar musical tastes. The page also lists music that has been directly recommended to the user and groups the user belongs to, journals written by users about artists the user listens to, and other users who have listened to similar music recently. There is also a 'recommendation radio' station which will play music specifically filtered based on the user's last week of listening. Last.fm also permits users to manually recommend specific artists, songs or albums to other users on their friends list
or groups they belong to, providing the recommendation in question is included in the Last.fm database.
, or membership of another internet forum
). Groups may be linked to artists and countries. Any user may start a group and add members. Most groups are open to all, but membership may be subject to approval by the Group Leader. Last.fm will generate a group profile similar to the users' profiles, showing an amalgamated set of data and charting the group's overall tastes. Individual groups have their own discussion forums and journal space, and a group radio station based on members' music profiles is automatically generated once a sufficient number of members have joined. Group members are also able to submit recommendations of artists or tracks to all the other members of their group.
3, €
3 or $
3 per month. Some of the extra features that paid users receive are:
Dashboard. Users cannot listen whilst playing games; reasons for this are still unclear but point to Microsoft not allowing the application to use too much of system resources to allow maximum processing for games and live services.
Last.fm on the Xbox 360 is available only to players in the United States
and United Kingdom
, regardless of Last.fm or Xbox LIVE
subscription status.
Microsoft
announced that Last.fm for Xbox 360 will also be available in Germany
soon.
may also be viewed on the relevant artist and track pages.
Users may add relevant biographical details and other information to any artist's main page in the form of a Wiki. Edits are regularly moderated to prevent vandalism
. A photograph of the artist may also be added. If more than one is submitted, the most popular is chosen by public vote. User submitted content is licensed for use under the Creative Commons
Attribution Share-Alike License and GNU Free Documentation License
.
Last.fm currently cannot disambiguate artists with the same name; a single artist profile is shared between valid artists with the same name. Also Last.fm currently does not differentiate between the Composer and the Artist of music which makes for disorganization in classical music genres.
In February 2007 Warner Music, the world's third-largest music company, announced that it had signed a deal to allow its entire catalogue to be played on Last.fm. Warner's music would be made available over Last.fm's service in Europe and North America. The site's co-founder, Martin Stiksel, said they were also in talks with the other three major labels and content holders. However in June 2008 Warner cancelled its deal with last.fm and removed all Warner artists from the site's on demand streaming catalogue, Warner have indicated that they are in disagreement over the financial compensation offered by last.fm.
On 9 July 2007, it was announced that Last.fm had also signed a deal with the Sony BMG record label
. The partnership will give the service's users access to the entire Sony BMG catalogue of music.
labels and unsigned artist
s are encouraged to promote their music on Last.fm, because the filtering and recommendation features mean that the music will be played for users who already like similar artists. Labels and artists can upload their own music for streaming and Last.fm provides access to weekly airplay statistics, with facilities for promoting individual artists or tracks. Labels and artists may choose whether their music is to be made available for streaming only, or for purchase or free download.
In October 2006, Last.fm brought back its free download service which allowed users to download select tracks as specified by the artist or the label. The service only includes tracks on "indie" labels or by bands who upload their own material, although some artists who have since moved onto a major label (such as Coheed and Cambria
and My Chemical Romance
) have kept their free songs available for download. More than 500,000 indie artists and labels have used the Last.fm Music Manager to upload more than 3 million tracks to be played on Last.fm's radio, 2 Million can be played "directly from artist" and more than 1M of these songs are currently downloadable, and there is a separate free download chart, updated weekly, showing the 200 most popular tracks. This database of music currently powers the relaunched Mp3.com site that went live in June 2011.
with the Free the Music initiative. Most tracks and albums could be streamed from the website free of charge up to three times. The artists were paid each time the track is played. This service was still in beta mode and free on demand listening was only available to users in the US, UK and Germany.
Last.fm switched this off on April 12, 2010, which upset some Last.fm users, instead partnering with third party music services as MOG
, Spotify
, and Hype Machine to provide listenable content. All tracks are played in full when users listen to Last.fm's radio.
or labeling of artists, albums, and tracks to create a site-wide folksonomy
of music. Users can browse via tags
, but the most important benefit is tag radio, permitting users to play music that has been tagged a certain way. This tagging can be by genre
, mood, artist characteristic, or any other form of user-defined classification. However, since tagging is not moderated, it is prone to manipulation by the site's users, most often resulting in genre disagreements among users or pushing certain artists higher up on certain tag charts.
Until November 2010, subscribers were also able to create personal tag radio stations containing only tracks and artists that they have tagged themselves. All tag radio stations (including subscriber's personal tag stations) could be played by anybody, including non-subscribers in certain countries including US and some others. In other countries playing requires subscribing.
Additionally, charts are available for the top tracks by each artist in the Last.fm system as well as the top tracks for individual albums (when the tagging information of the audio file is available). Artist profiles also keep track of a short list
of Top Fans, which is calculated by a formula meant to portray the importance of an artist in a fan's own profile, balancing out users who play hundreds of tracks overall versus those who play only a few.
As the information generated is largely compiled from the ID3
data from audio files "scrobbled" from user's own computers, and which may be incorrect or misspelled, there are many errors in the listings. Tracks with ambiguous punctuation are especially prone to separate listings, which can dilute the apparent popularity of a track. Artists or bands with the same name are not always differentiated. The system attempts to translate some different artist tags to a single artist profile, and has recently attempted to harmonise track names.
Charts are also available for user groups, thus providing a view into a demographic slice, and can reveal interesting new music based on the preferences of similar users.
The result is notably different from traditional commercial music charts provided by the UK Top 40, Billboard magazine, Soundscan and others, which are based on radio plays or sales. Last.fm charts are less volatile and a new album's release may be reflected in play data for many months or years after it drops out of commercial charts. For example, The Beatles
have consistently been a top 5 band at Last.fm, reflecting the continued popularity of the band's music irrespective of current album sales. Significant events, such as the release of a highly anticipated album or the death of an artist can have a large impact on the charts.
The Global Tag Chart shows the 100 most popular tags that have been used to describe artists, albums, and tracks. This is based on the total number of times the tag has been applied by Last.fm users since the tagging system was first introduced and does not necessarily reflect the number of users currently listening to any of the related "global tag radio" stations.
Stations can be based on the user's personal profile
, the user's "musical neighbors", or the user's "friends". Groups based around common interests or geography also have radio stations if there are enough members, and tags also have radio stations if enough music has the same tag. Radio stations can also be created on the fly
, and each artist page allows selection of a "similar artists" or "artist fan" radio station. As of May 2009, Last.fm introduced Visual Radio, an improved version of last.fm radio. This brought features such as an artist slideshow and combo stations, which allows for listening to stations consisting of common similar artists of up to either 3 artists or 3 tags.
Under the terms of the station's "radio" license, listeners may not select specific tracks (except as previews), or choose the order in which they are played, although any of the tracks played may be skipped or banned completely. The appropriate royalties are paid to the copyright holders of all streamed audio tracks according to the law in the UK. The radio stream uses an MP3
stream encoded at 128 kbit/s 44.1 kHz, which may be played using the in-page flash
player or the downloaded Last.fm client, but other community-supported players are available as well as a proxy which allows using a media player of choice.
On 24 March 2009, Last.fm announced that Last.fm Radio will require a subscription of €3.00 per month for users living outside the US, the UK and Germany. This change was to take effect on March 30, but was postponed until April 22. The decision resulted in over 1000 comments, most of them negative, on the last.fm blog.
-based player is provided automatically for all listeners with Adobe Flash
installed on their computers; it is necessary to download and install the Flash software in order to listen to the music available from the Last.fm music library using this method if it is not already installed. Furthermore, it is necessary to download and install the Last.fm client if a user also wishes information about played tracks from their own digital music collection to be included in their personal music profile.
Prior to August 2005, Last.fm generated an open stream
that could be played in the user's music player of choice, with a browser-based
player control panel
. This proved difficult to support and has been officially discontinued. The Last.fm client is currently the only officially supported music player for playing customized Last.fm radio streams on desktop computers. The current version combines the functions of the music player with the plugin that transmits all track data to the Last.fm server, and effectively replaces the separate Last.fm Player and the standalone track submission plugins. It is also free software
licensed under the GNU General Public License
and available for GNU/Linux
, Mac OS X
and Microsoft Windows
operating systems.
The player allows the user to enter the name of any artist or tag which then gives a choice of a number of similar artist stations, or similar global tag stations. Alternatively, Recommendation radio or any of the user's personal radio stations may be played without the necessity to visit the website.
The player displays the name of the station and track currently playing, the song artist, title and track length as well as album details, the artist's photo and biographical details, album cover
art when available, lists of similar artists and the most popular tags and top fans. There are several buttons, allowing the user to love, skip, or ban a song. The love button adds the song to the user's loved tracks list; the ban button ensures that the song will not be played again. Both features affect the user's profile. The skip button does not. Other buttons allow the user to tag or recommend the currently playing track. Other features offered by the application are: minor editing of the user's profile including removing recently played artists and songs from the loved, banned, or previously played track lists; lists of friends and neighbours, lists of tags and a list of previously played radio stations. Users can also open their full Last.fm profile page directly from the player.
The client also enables the user to install player plugins, these integrate with various standalone media players to allow the submission of tracks played in those programs.
In the latest version of the Last.fm Player application, the user can select to use an external player. When this is done, the Last.fm Player provides the user with a local URL, through which the Last.fm music stream is proxied. Users can then open the URL in their preferred media player.
Last.fm has also developed client software for mobile phones running the iPhone OS, BlackBerry OS and the Android OS. Last.fm has only released these apps in the United States, United Kingdom and Germany claiming for four years that they are negotiating licenses for making the streaming available in other countries.
after either half the song or the first four minutes have played, whichever comes first. When the track is shorter than 30 seconds (31 seconds in iTunes
) or the track lacks metadata (ID3
, CDDB
, etc.), the track is not submitted. To accommodate dial-up users, caching
of the data and submitting it in bulk is also possible.
The following services support sending service-specific recently played track feeds:
Plugins are available for the following applications:
s. Since most of these are offline (which breaks the Last.fm concept), track info has to be batch scrobbled.
Players for which batch upload software is available:
As of March 2008, the website has added a section titled "Build" where third party applications can be submitted for review, and then posted to the page.
SXSW Band-Aid
Last.fm partnered up with the SXSW festival by creating an application embedded in the corresponding group page that filters the various artists at the festival by a user's listening statistics, and then uses Last.fm's recommendation service to also suggest other performing artists that said user hasn't listened to.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
in 2002. It has claimed 30 million active users in March 2009. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for UK£
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
140m (US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
280m).
Using a music recommender system called "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of the songs the user listens to, either from Internet radio
Internet radio
Internet radio is an audio service transmitted via the Internet...
stations, or the user's computer or many portable music devices. This information is transferred ("scrobbled") to Last.fm's database either via the music player itself (Rdio
Rdio
Rdio is an ad-free music subscription service available in the United States, Canada and Brazil. It is available as a website and also has clients for the iPhone, iPod Touch & iPad, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone mobile devices, which can play streaming music or cache songs for offline...
, Spotify
Spotify
Spotify is a Swedish-founded, UK-headquartered DRM-based music streaming service offering streaming of selected music from a range of major and independent record labels, including Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group, and Universal. Launched in October 2008 by Swedish startup Spotify AB, the service had...
, Clementine
Clementine (software)
Clementine is a cross-platform free and open source music player and library organizer. It is a port of Amarok 1.4 to the Qt 4 framework and the GStreamer multimedia framework. It is available for Unix-like, Windows and Mac OS X...
, Amarok) or via a plugin installed into the user's music player
Audio player (software)
An audio player is a kind of media player for playing back digital audio, including optical discs such as CDs, SACDs, DVD-Audio, HDCD, audio files and streaming audio....
. The data is then displayed on the user's profile page and also compiled to create reference pages for individual artists. By April 2011 Last.fm reported more than 50 billion scrobbles.
The service is free; however, users living outside the UK, US, and Germany, require a subscription to use the radio service (€3.00 per month after a 50 track free trial). The site offers numerous social networking
Social network service
A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, who, for example, share interests and/or activities. A social network service consists of a representation of each user , his/her social...
features and can recommend and play artists similar to the user's favourites.
Audioscrobbler and Last.fm (2002–2006)
The current Last.fm website was developed from two separate sources: Audioscrobbler and Last.fm, which were merged in 2005. Audioscrobbler began as a computer scienceComputer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
project by Richard Jones while he attended the University of Southampton School of Electronics and Computer Science in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. Jones developed the first plugins, and then opened an API
Application programming interface
An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
to the community, after which many music players on different operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
platforms were supported. Audioscrobbler was limited to recording music its users played on a registered computer, which allowed for charting and collaborative filtering.
Last.fm was founded in 2002 by Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel, Michael Breidenbruecker and Thomas Willomitzer, all of them from Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
or Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, as an internet radio station and music community site, using similar music profiles to generate dynamic playlists. The site name takes advantage of a domain hack
Domain hack
A domain hack is an unconventional domain name that combines domain levels, especially the top-level domain , to spell out the full "name" or title of the domain. Examples include del.icio.us , goo.gl and fold.it...
using .fm
.fm
.fm is the country code top-level domain for the Federated States of Micronesia, a group of islands located in the Pacific Ocean.Except for reserved names like .com.fm, .net.fm, .org.fm and others, any person in the world can register a .fm domain for a fee, much of the income from which goes to...
, the top level domain of Micronesia
Federated States of Micronesia
The Federated States of Micronesia or FSM is an independent, sovereign island nation, made up of four states from west to east: Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei and Kosrae. It comprises approximately 607 islands with c...
, popular with FM radio related sites. The "love" and "ban" buttons allowed users to gradually customise their profiles. Last.fm won the Europrix
Europrix
AwardThe EUROPRIX Multimedia Awards are Europe’s contest for young professionals and students who work on innovative projects in the field of e-contents and design - using whichever multimedia channel or platform...
2002 and was nominated for the Prix Ars Electronica
Prix Ars Electronica
The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the most important yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music...
in 2003.
The Audioscrobbler and Last.fm teams began to work closely together, both teams moving into the same offices in Whitechapel
Whitechapel
Whitechapel is a built-up inner city district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, London, England. It is located east of Charing Cross and roughly bounded by the Bishopsgate thoroughfare on the west, Fashion Street on the north, Brady Street and Cavell Street on the east and The Highway on the...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, and by 2003 Last.fm was fully integrated with Audioscrobbler profiles. Input could come through an Audioscrobbler plugin or a Last.fm station. The sites also shared many community forums, although a few were unique to each site. The old Audioscrobbler site at the audioscrobbler.com domain name
Domain name
A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....
was wholly merged into the new Last.fm site on 9 August 2005. This launched audioscrobbler.net as a separate development-oriented site on 5 September 2005. However, at the very bottom of each of the Last.fm pages there was an Audioscrobbler "slogan
Slogan
A slogan is a memorable motto or phrase used in a political, commercial, religious and other context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose. The word slogan is derived from slogorn which was an Anglicisation of the Scottish Gaelic sluagh-ghairm . Slogans vary from the written and the...
", which changes each time the page is refreshed. Based on well-known sayings or advertisements, these originally appeared at the top of the old Audioscrobbler website pages and were all created and contributed by the original site members.
An update to the site was made on 14 July 2006 which included a new software application
Application software
Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...
for playing Last.fm radio streams and for logging of tracks played with other media players. Other changes included the improvement of the friends system and updating it to require a two-way
Two-way
Two-way, two way, 2-way, or 2way may refer to:* Two-way communication occurs when information flows in both directions between two parties** Two-way radio...
friendship, the addition of the Last.fm "Dashboard" where users can see on one page relevant information for their profile, expanded options for purchasing music from online retailers
Online shop
Online shopping is the process whereby consumers directly buy goods or services from a seller in real-time, without an intermediary service, over the Internet. It is a form of electronic commerce...
and a new visual design
Graphic design
Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...
for the web site (including an optional black colour scheme
Colour Scheme
Colour Scheme is a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh; it is the twelfth novel to feature Roderick Alleyn, and was first published in 1943. The novel takes place in New Zealand during World War II; the plot involves suspected Nazi activity at a hot springs resort on the New Zealand coast and a...
). The site began expanding its language base on 15 July 2006, when a Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
version of the site was launched. Currently, the site is available in various other languages, including German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
and Simplified Chinese. In late 2006, the site won Best Community Music
Community Music
Community Music is an album by British band Asian Dub Foundation, released on 20 March 2000. The album reached #20 in the UK album charts.-Track listing:All songs by Das, Pandit, Tailor, Savale, Zaman unless otherwise stated....
Site at the BT
BT Group
BT Group plc is a global telecommunications services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is one of the largest telecommunications services companies in the world and has operations in more than 170 countries. Through its BT Global Services division it is a major supplier of...
Digital Music
Digital audio
Digital audio is sound reproduction using pulse-code modulation and digital signals. Digital audio systems include analog-to-digital conversion , digital-to-analog conversion , digital storage, processing and transmission components...
Awards in October. Last.fm also teamed with EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
on Tuneglue-Audiomap. Furthermore, in January 2007 it was nominated for Best Website at the NME Awards
NME Awards
The NME Awards is an annual music awards show in the United Kingdom, founded by the music magazine, NME .The first awards show was held in 1953 as the NME Poll Winners Concerts, shortly after the founding of the magazine....
.
CBS Acquisition and redesign (2007–2009)
At the end of April 2007, rumours of negotiations between ViacomViacom
Viacom Inc. , short for "Video & Audio Communications", is an American media conglomerate with interests primarily in, but not limited to, cinema and cable television...
and Last.fm emerged, suggesting that Viacom intended to purchase Last.fm for about £225 million. ($449 million USD) In May 2007 it was announced that Channel 4 Radio
Channel 4 Radio
Channel 4 Radio was a radio brand launched by Channel 4 in January 2007. On October 11, 2008 the closure was announced. It incorporated Oneword, in which Channel 4 purchased a 51% share in 2005, although it relinquished this share to co-owner UBS Media in January 2008.Listeners were required to...
was to broadcast a weekly show called Worldwide Chart reflecting what Last.fm users around the world were listening to. On 30 May 2007, it was announced that Last.fm has been bought by CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
for £140 million with Last.fm's current management team staying in place. In July 2008, the "new generation" Last.fm was launched featuring a completely new layout, color-scheme and several new features as well as some old ones removed. This was, however, met with dissatisfaction amongst some users, who complained about
"ugly and non-user-friendly layout", bugs and slowness. Still, a month after the redesign a CBS press release credited the redesign with generating a 20% growth in the site's traffic.
On 22 February 2009, Techcrunch
TechCrunch
TechCrunch is a web publication that offers technology news and analysis, as well as profiling of startup companies, products, and websites. It was founded by Michael Arrington in 2005, and was first published on June 11, 2005....
claimed that "[the] RIAA asked social music service Last.fm for data about its user's listening habits to find people with unreleased tracks on their computers. And Last.fm, which is owned by CBS, allegedly handed the data over to the RIAA." This led to several public postings from both Last.fm and Techcrunch, with Last.fm denying passing any personal data to RIAA. The request was purportedly prompted by the leak of U2
U2
U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...
's then-unreleased album No Line On The Horizon, and its subsequent widespread distribution via peer-to-peer file sharing
Peer-to-peer file sharing
P2P or Peer-to-peer file sharing allows users to download files such as music, movies, and games using a P2P software client that searches for other connected computers. The "peers" are computer systems connected to each other through internet. Thus, the only requirements for a computer to join...
services and BitTorrent.
Three months later, on 22 May 2009, Techcrunch claimed that it was CBS, the parent company of Last.fm, that handed over the data. Last.fm again denied that this was the case, saying that CBS couldn't have handed over the data without Last.fm knowing.
Changes to streaming and access on other platforms (2009–present)
On 24 March 2009, Last.fm announced a change in free stream listening policy. According to the blogBlog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
post "[...] In the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, nothing will change. In all other countries, listening to Last.fm Radio will soon require a subscription of €3.00 per month." The change went into effect on 22 April 2009. The announcement has led to a wave of disappointment among the users, resulting in users stopping the submission of their data, refusing to change signatures/avatars and even deleting their accounts.
On 11 September 2009, CBS Radio
CBS Radio
CBS Radio, Inc., formerly known as Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, is one of the largest owners and operators of radio stations in the United States, third behind main rival Clear Channel Communications and Cumulus Media. CBS Radio owns around 130 radio stations across the country...
announced that Last.fm programming will be available in four major market FM stations for the first time on their HD Radio
HD Radio
HD Radio, which originally stood for "Hybrid Digital", is the trademark for iBiquity's in-band on-channel digital radio technology used by AM and FM radio stations to transmit audio and data via a digital signal in conjunction with their analog signals...
multicasts. This includes KCBS-HD2
KCBS-FM
KCBS-FM is a radio station in Los Angeles, California broadcasting to the Greater Los Angeles area on 93.1 FM. KCBS-FM airs an adult hits music format branded as "Jack-FM"....
in Los Angeles, CA
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
; KITS-HD3
KITS
KITS is a San Francisco, California, USA-based radio station broadcasting at 105.3 MHz. The station is owned by CBS Radio and programs a modern rock format. The station also broadcasts on HD channel L2, locally on Comcast cable channel 986, and is streaming online.-Hot Hits:The station's...
in San Francisco, CA; WWFS-HD2 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
; and WXRT-HD3 in Chicago, IL
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. The programming, which consists mostly of music aggregated by Last.fm's user-generated weekly music charts as well as live performances and interviews from the Last.fm studios in New York City debuted on October 5.
On 12 April 2010, Last.fm announced that they would be removing the option to preview entire tracks, instead redirecting to sites such as the free 'Hype Machine
The Hype Machine
-History:The Hype Machine was created in 2005 by Anthony Volodkin, a sophomore computer science major at Hunter College. The site was born out of Volodkin's frustration with music magazines and radio stations. He said, "I discovered MP3 blogs like Stereogum and Music for Robots...
' and pay-to-listen 'Mog
MOG (online music)
MOG is a paid subscription online music service and blog network, where users can listen to, read about, and discover music. Users can play any song in MOG's catalog on their computer through their web browser; on their mobile device through MOG's applications for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and...
' for this purpose. This provoked a large negative reaction from some of the Last.fm user community who perceive the removal as hindering the ability of lesser-known and unsigned artists to gain exposure for their music and general enjoyment of the site. A new 'Play direct from artist' feature was introduced soon after, which allowed artists to select individual tracks for users to be able to stream in full.
The ability to listen to custom radio stations ('personal tag radio', 'loved tracks radio') was withdrawn on 17 November 2010 (tag radio still exists but the criteria for calling up tracks has been widened). This change provoked an angry response among some users. Last FM claim that the move is due to "licensing". The change of 17 November 2010 means that a tag radio stream will include ALL music tagged as such, not just that tagged by each individual user: effectively widening the number of tracks that might be streamed under any one tag set.
Funding and staff
Last.fm Ltd is funded from the sale of online advertisingOnline advertising
Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web to deliver marketing messages to attract customers. Examples of online advertising include contextual ads on search engine results pages, banner ads, blogs, Rich Media Ads, Social network advertising, interstitial...
space, monthly user subscriptions, and donations. On Tuesday, 24 March 2009 it was announced on the official Last.fm blog that Last.fm will charge users—except for those in the United States, United Kingdom, or Germany—a subscription fee of €3.00 per month for use of Last.fm radio.
Funding prior to acquisition
In 2004, the company received the first round of angel money, from Peter Gardner, an investment bankerInvestment banking
An investment bank is a financial institution that assists individuals, corporations and governments in raising capital by underwriting and/or acting as the client's agent in the issuance of securities...
who was introduced to the founders as early as 2002. A second round was led by Stefan Glaenzer (joined by Joi Ito
Joi Ito
is a Japanese activist, entrepreneur, venture capitalist and Director of the MIT Media Lab.Ito has received recognition for his role as an entrepreneur focused on Internet and technology companies and has founded, among other companies, PSINet Japan, Digital Garage and Infoseek Japan. He maintains...
and Reid Hoffman
Reid Hoffman
Reid G. Hoffman is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Hoffman is best known as the co-founder of LinkedIn, a social network used primarily for business connections and job searching.-Early education and career:...
), who bought into Michael Breidenbrueckers shares as well. In 2006 the company received the first round of venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
funding from European investors Index Ventures, whose General Partners Neil Rimer and Danny Rimer also joined Last.fm's board of directors
Board of directors
A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...
, consisting of Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel and Stefan Glaenzer (Chair).
Original founders Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel and Richard Jones left the company in summer 2009.
User accounts
The free user accountUser (computing)
A user is an agent, either a human agent or software agent, who uses a computer or network service. A user often has a user account and is identified by a username , screen name , nickname , or handle, which is derived from the identical Citizen's Band radio term.Users are...
includes access to all the main features listed below. Registered Users are also able to post in the Last.fm forums, send and receive private messages and use the Last.fm client music player. For users living outside the UK, US and Germany, the radio service will require a subscription for €3.00 per month after a 30 track free trial.
Profile
A Last.fm user can build a musical profile using any or all of several methods: by listening to their personal music collection on a music player application on a computer or an iPod with an Audioscrobbler plugin, or by listening to the Last.fm internet radioInternet radio
Internet radio is an audio service transmitted via the Internet...
service, either with the Last.fm client, or with the embedded flash player
Adobe Flash Player
The Adobe Flash Player is software for viewing multimedia, Rich Internet Applications and streaming video and audio, on a computer web browser or on supported mobile devices. Flash Player runs SWF files that can be created by the Adobe Flash authoring tool, by Adobe Flex or by a number of other...
. All songs played are added to a log from which personal top artist/track bar chart
Bar chart
A bar chart or bar graph is a chart with rectangular bars with lengths proportional to the values that they represent. The bars can be plotted vertically or horizontally....
s and musical recommendations are calculated
Calculation
A calculation is a deliberate process for transforming one or more inputs into one or more results, with variable change.The term is used in a variety of senses, from the very definite arithmetical calculation of using an algorithm to the vague heuristics of calculating a strategy in a competition...
. This automatic track logging is called scrobbling.
Last.fm automatically generates a profile page for every user which includes basic information such as their user name, avatar, date of registration and total number of tracks played. This can be customized with additional information or photographs if desired but the fundamental layout cannot be changed. There is also a Shoutbox
Shoutbox
A shoutbox, saybox, tagboard, or chatterbox is a chat-like feature of some websites that allows people to quickly leave messages on the website, generally without any form of user registration....
for public messages. Profile pages are visible to all, together with a list of top artists and tracks, and the 10 most recently played tracks (can be expanded). Each user's profile has a 'Taste-o-Meter' which gives a rating of how compatible your music taste is.
Profile pages can also include lists of friends, weekly musical "neighbours", favourite tags, groups and events. An optional customizable playlist may be also added, with tracks that the user wishes to share or promote. Other features include the ability to remove songs listened to within a 2 week time-frame, navigation to linked profiles (such as friends and musical neighbours) and a list of individual users' favourite albums.
A customizable display of Recently Played tracks, is now available via web services, allowing users to add them to blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
s, MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
or as forum
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
signatures.
Recommendations
The most recent expanded service on Last.fm is a personal recommendations page known as "The Dashboard". This is only visible to the user concerned and lists suggested new music, events, journal entries and other people with similar tastes, all tailored to the user's own preferences.Recommendations are calculated using a collaborative filtering
Collaborative filtering
Collaborative filtering is the process of filtering for information or patterns using techniques involving collaboration among multiple agents, viewpoints, data sources, etc. Applications of collaborative filtering typically involve very large data sets...
algorithm
Algorithm
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning...
so users can browse and hear previews of a list of artists not listed on their own profile but which appear on those of others with similar musical tastes. The page also lists music that has been directly recommended to the user and groups the user belongs to, journals written by users about artists the user listens to, and other users who have listened to similar music recently. There is also a 'recommendation radio' station which will play music specifically filtered based on the user's last week of listening. Last.fm also permits users to manually recommend specific artists, songs or albums to other users on their friends list
Contact list
A contact list is a collection of screen names in an instant messaging or e-mail program or online game or mobile phone. It has various trademarked and proprietary names in different contexts....
or groups they belong to, providing the recommendation in question is included in the Last.fm database.
Groups
Last.fm allows the formation of user groups between users with something in common (for example, fans of an artist, a genre of musicMusic genre
A music genre is a categorical and typological construct that identifies musical sounds as belonging to a particular category and type of music that can be distinguished from other types of music...
, or membership of another internet forum
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
). Groups may be linked to artists and countries. Any user may start a group and add members. Most groups are open to all, but membership may be subject to approval by the Group Leader. Last.fm will generate a group profile similar to the users' profiles, showing an amalgamated set of data and charting the group's overall tastes. Individual groups have their own discussion forums and journal space, and a group radio station based on members' music profiles is automatically generated once a sufficient number of members have joined. Group members are also able to submit recommendations of artists or tracks to all the other members of their group.
Events
With the October 2006 update, events functionality was added, which lets users specify a location and a radius from the location, then suggests gigs or festivals that that user may want to see in the area. Users can set themselves as attending an event. Any registered user may add a new venue or event which will then be listed on the band or artist's main page, together with other details if available. There is also a facility to submit reviews and photographs of past events.Subscriber accounts
Last.fm offers paid accounts, costing £Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
3, €
Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...
3 or $
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
3 per month. Some of the extra features that paid users receive are:
- No advertising
- The ability to view recent visitors to one's own profile page
- Priority on Last.fm server
- The ability to play Last.fm radio outside of the UK, US or Germany
- Access to radio on mobile apps and hardware devices
Xbox 360
On November 17, 2009, Last.fm was fully rolled out to all Xbox Live Gold members, after a 3 month successful trial to selected gold members via a redeemable code. The application may be downloaded from the Xbox 360Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
Dashboard. Users cannot listen whilst playing games; reasons for this are still unclear but point to Microsoft not allowing the application to use too much of system resources to allow maximum processing for games and live services.
Last.fm on the Xbox 360 is available only to players in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, regardless of Last.fm or Xbox LIVE
Xbox Live
Xbox Live is an online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service created and operated by Microsoft Corporation. It is currently the only online gaming service on consoles that charges users a fee to play multiplayer gaming. It was first made available to the Xbox system in 2002...
subscription status.
Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
announced that Last.fm for Xbox 360 will also be available in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
soon.
Artist pages
Once an artist has had a track or tracks "scrobbled" by at least one user, Last.fm automatically generates a main artist page, even if there is no music available for streaming on the radio. This page shows details of the total number of plays, the total number of listeners, the most popular weekly and overall tracks, the top weekly listeners, linked groups and journals, a list of similar artists, most popular tags and a shoutbox for messages. There are also links to events, additional album and individual track pages and similar artists radio. Official music videos and other videos imported from YouTubeYouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
may also be viewed on the relevant artist and track pages.
Users may add relevant biographical details and other information to any artist's main page in the form of a Wiki. Edits are regularly moderated to prevent vandalism
Vandalism
Vandalism is the behaviour attributed originally to the Vandals, by the Romans, in respect of culture: ruthless destruction or spoiling of anything beautiful or venerable...
. A photograph of the artist may also be added. If more than one is submitted, the most popular is chosen by public vote. User submitted content is licensed for use under the Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
Attribution Share-Alike License and GNU Free Documentation License
GNU Free Documentation License
The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and...
.
Last.fm currently cannot disambiguate artists with the same name; a single artist profile is shared between valid artists with the same name. Also Last.fm currently does not differentiate between the Composer and the Artist of music which makes for disorganization in classical music genres.
Music catalogue
Last.fm's music library contains well over 12 million individual audio tracks from artists on all the major commercial and independent labels. Users are not allowed to upload copyrighted audio files but commercially available albums are regularly added by Last.fm staff. Most currently popular and other well-known artists have tracks available for streaming, although there are significant gaps in coverage and the most recent releases are not always added immediately. The music catalogue includes a wide variety of genres including classical, opera and musicals, as well as many little known and specialist recordings which are no longer generally available.In February 2007 Warner Music, the world's third-largest music company, announced that it had signed a deal to allow its entire catalogue to be played on Last.fm. Warner's music would be made available over Last.fm's service in Europe and North America. The site's co-founder, Martin Stiksel, said they were also in talks with the other three major labels and content holders. However in June 2008 Warner cancelled its deal with last.fm and removed all Warner artists from the site's on demand streaming catalogue, Warner have indicated that they are in disagreement over the financial compensation offered by last.fm.
On 9 July 2007, it was announced that Last.fm had also signed a deal with the Sony BMG record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
. The partnership will give the service's users access to the entire Sony BMG catalogue of music.
Independent artists and record labels
Independent recordIndependent Record
The Independent Record is a daily newspaper printed and distributed in Helena, Montana. Its has a daily and Sunday circulation of approximately 14,000, according to a September 30, 2005 Audit Bureau of Circulations Publisher Statement...
labels and unsigned artist
Unsigned artist
The term "unsigned artist" or "independent artist" is used in the music industry as a marketing technique.-History and current scene:Many unsigned artists used to sell their music and music-related merchandise without the financial support of a record label, while often seeking a recording contract...
s are encouraged to promote their music on Last.fm, because the filtering and recommendation features mean that the music will be played for users who already like similar artists. Labels and artists can upload their own music for streaming and Last.fm provides access to weekly airplay statistics, with facilities for promoting individual artists or tracks. Labels and artists may choose whether their music is to be made available for streaming only, or for purchase or free download.
Full length promotional tracks and free downloads
30-second previews of any of the 12 million streamable tracks are available on demand, from anywhere in the site, by clicking on the grey arrow next to the name of the track or artist. Some tracks were also available to preview in full if the label or artist has specifically authorized it.In October 2006, Last.fm brought back its free download service which allowed users to download select tracks as specified by the artist or the label. The service only includes tracks on "indie" labels or by bands who upload their own material, although some artists who have since moved onto a major label (such as Coheed and Cambria
Coheed and Cambria
Coheed and Cambria is an American progressive rock band from Nyack, New York. Formed in 1995, the group incorporates aspects of progressive rock, punk rock, metal and post-hardcore....
and My Chemical Romance
My Chemical Romance
My Chemical Romance is an American alternative rock band from New Jersey, formed in 2001. The band consists of lead vocalist Gerard Way, guitarists Ray Toro and Frank Iero, and bassist Mikey Way and have a diverse sound incorporating elements of punk, emo, glam metal, and progressive rock...
) have kept their free songs available for download. More than 500,000 indie artists and labels have used the Last.fm Music Manager to upload more than 3 million tracks to be played on Last.fm's radio, 2 Million can be played "directly from artist" and more than 1M of these songs are currently downloadable, and there is a separate free download chart, updated weekly, showing the 200 most popular tracks. This database of music currently powers the relaunched Mp3.com site that went live in June 2011.
Play-on-demand features and their removal
On 23 January 2008, Last.fm changed its business modelBusiness model
A business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value...
with the Free the Music initiative. Most tracks and albums could be streamed from the website free of charge up to three times. The artists were paid each time the track is played. This service was still in beta mode and free on demand listening was only available to users in the US, UK and Germany.
Last.fm switched this off on April 12, 2010, which upset some Last.fm users, instead partnering with third party music services as MOG
MOG (online music)
MOG is a paid subscription online music service and blog network, where users can listen to, read about, and discover music. Users can play any song in MOG's catalog on their computer through their web browser; on their mobile device through MOG's applications for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and...
, Spotify
Spotify
Spotify is a Swedish-founded, UK-headquartered DRM-based music streaming service offering streaming of selected music from a range of major and independent record labels, including Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group, and Universal. Launched in October 2008 by Swedish startup Spotify AB, the service had...
, and Hype Machine to provide listenable content. All tracks are played in full when users listen to Last.fm's radio.
Tags
Last.fm supports user-end taggingTag (metadata)
In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information . This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching...
or labeling of artists, albums, and tracks to create a site-wide folksonomy
Folksonomy
A folksonomy is a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content; this practice is also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, and social tagging...
of music. Users can browse via tags
Tag (metadata)
In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information . This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching...
, but the most important benefit is tag radio, permitting users to play music that has been tagged a certain way. This tagging can be by genre
Music genre
A music genre is a categorical and typological construct that identifies musical sounds as belonging to a particular category and type of music that can be distinguished from other types of music...
, mood, artist characteristic, or any other form of user-defined classification. However, since tagging is not moderated, it is prone to manipulation by the site's users, most often resulting in genre disagreements among users or pushing certain artists higher up on certain tag charts.
Until November 2010, subscribers were also able to create personal tag radio stations containing only tracks and artists that they have tagged themselves. All tag radio stations (including subscriber's personal tag stations) could be played by anybody, including non-subscribers in certain countries including US and some others. In other countries playing requires subscribing.
Charts
One particular feature of Last.fm is the automatic weekly generation and archiving of detailed personal music charts and statistics which are created as part of its profile building. Users have several different charts available, including Top Artists, Top Tracks, and Top Albums, as well as Weekly Top Artists and Weekly Top Tracks. Each of these charts is based on the actual number of people listening to the track, album or artist recorded either through an Audioscrobbler plugin or the Last.fm radio stream.Additionally, charts are available for the top tracks by each artist in the Last.fm system as well as the top tracks for individual albums (when the tagging information of the audio file is available). Artist profiles also keep track of a short list
Short list
A short list or shortlist is a list of candidates for a job, prize, award, political position, etc., that has been reduced from a longer list of candidates . The length of short lists varies according to the context.-U.S...
of Top Fans, which is calculated by a formula meant to portray the importance of an artist in a fan's own profile, balancing out users who play hundreds of tracks overall versus those who play only a few.
As the information generated is largely compiled from the ID3
ID3
ID3 is a metadata container most often used in conjunction with the MP3 audio file format. It allows information such as the title, artist, album, track number, and other information about the file to be stored in the file itself....
data from audio files "scrobbled" from user's own computers, and which may be incorrect or misspelled, there are many errors in the listings. Tracks with ambiguous punctuation are especially prone to separate listings, which can dilute the apparent popularity of a track. Artists or bands with the same name are not always differentiated. The system attempts to translate some different artist tags to a single artist profile, and has recently attempted to harmonise track names.
Charts are also available for user groups, thus providing a view into a demographic slice, and can reveal interesting new music based on the preferences of similar users.
Global charts
Last.fm generates weekly "global" charts of the top 400 artists and tracks listened to by all Last.fm users. To prevent the artificial boosting of an artist or song by deliberately repeated tracks from a single listener, these charts are based on the total number of individual listeners (the reach) and not the number of actual plays.The result is notably different from traditional commercial music charts provided by the UK Top 40, Billboard magazine, Soundscan and others, which are based on radio plays or sales. Last.fm charts are less volatile and a new album's release may be reflected in play data for many months or years after it drops out of commercial charts. For example, The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
have consistently been a top 5 band at Last.fm, reflecting the continued popularity of the band's music irrespective of current album sales. Significant events, such as the release of a highly anticipated album or the death of an artist can have a large impact on the charts.
The Global Tag Chart shows the 100 most popular tags that have been used to describe artists, albums, and tracks. This is based on the total number of times the tag has been applied by Last.fm users since the tagging system was first introduced and does not necessarily reflect the number of users currently listening to any of the related "global tag radio" stations.
Radio stations
Last.fm offers customized virtual "radio stations" consisting of uninterrupted audio streams of individual tracks selected from the music files in the music library.Stations can be based on the user's personal profile
Personal Profile
May refer to either:A section or a CV/Resume that details the interests, skills and ambitions of the writer.Or:A framework for Java ME applications called the Personal Profile . It is a sub-set of the Connected Device Configuration....
, the user's "musical neighbors", or the user's "friends". Groups based around common interests or geography also have radio stations if there are enough members, and tags also have radio stations if enough music has the same tag. Radio stations can also be created on the fly
On the fly
-Colloquial usage:In colloquial use, on the fly means something created when needed. The phrase is used to mean:# something that was not planned ahead# changes that are made during the execution of same activity: ex tempore, impromptu.-Automotive usage:...
, and each artist page allows selection of a "similar artists" or "artist fan" radio station. As of May 2009, Last.fm introduced Visual Radio, an improved version of last.fm radio. This brought features such as an artist slideshow and combo stations, which allows for listening to stations consisting of common similar artists of up to either 3 artists or 3 tags.
Under the terms of the station's "radio" license, listeners may not select specific tracks (except as previews), or choose the order in which they are played, although any of the tracks played may be skipped or banned completely. The appropriate royalties are paid to the copyright holders of all streamed audio tracks according to the law in the UK. The radio stream uses an MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
stream encoded at 128 kbit/s 44.1 kHz, which may be played using the in-page flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
player or the downloaded Last.fm client, but other community-supported players are available as well as a proxy which allows using a media player of choice.
On 24 March 2009, Last.fm announced that Last.fm Radio will require a subscription of €3.00 per month for users living outside the US, the UK and Germany. This change was to take effect on March 30, but was postponed until April 22. The decision resulted in over 1000 comments, most of them negative, on the last.fm blog.
Player
An "in-page" FlashAdobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
-based player is provided automatically for all listeners with Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
installed on their computers; it is necessary to download and install the Flash software in order to listen to the music available from the Last.fm music library using this method if it is not already installed. Furthermore, it is necessary to download and install the Last.fm client if a user also wishes information about played tracks from their own digital music collection to be included in their personal music profile.
Prior to August 2005, Last.fm generated an open stream
Streaming media
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...
that could be played in the user's music player of choice, with a browser-based
Web application
A web application is an application that is accessed over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. The term may also mean a computer software application that is coded in a browser-supported language and reliant on a common web browser to render the application executable.Web applications are...
player control panel
Control panel
Control panel may refer to:* Control panel , a flat, often vertical, area where control instrumentation is mounted.* Control panel , the tool in the operating system which allows most or all of the settings to be changed through a user interface** Control panel ** Control Panel ** Web hosting...
. This proved difficult to support and has been officially discontinued. The Last.fm client is currently the only officially supported music player for playing customized Last.fm radio streams on desktop computers. The current version combines the functions of the music player with the plugin that transmits all track data to the Last.fm server, and effectively replaces the separate Last.fm Player and the standalone track submission plugins. It is also free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
licensed under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
and available for GNU/Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
and Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
operating systems.
The player allows the user to enter the name of any artist or tag which then gives a choice of a number of similar artist stations, or similar global tag stations. Alternatively, Recommendation radio or any of the user's personal radio stations may be played without the necessity to visit the website.
The player displays the name of the station and track currently playing, the song artist, title and track length as well as album details, the artist's photo and biographical details, album cover
Album cover
An album cover is the front of the packaging of a commercially released audio recording product, or album. The term can refer to either the printed cardboard covers typically used to package sets of 10" and 12" 78 rpm records, single and sets of 12" LPs, sets of 45 rpm records , or the front-facing...
art when available, lists of similar artists and the most popular tags and top fans. There are several buttons, allowing the user to love, skip, or ban a song. The love button adds the song to the user's loved tracks list; the ban button ensures that the song will not be played again. Both features affect the user's profile. The skip button does not. Other buttons allow the user to tag or recommend the currently playing track. Other features offered by the application are: minor editing of the user's profile including removing recently played artists and songs from the loved, banned, or previously played track lists; lists of friends and neighbours, lists of tags and a list of previously played radio stations. Users can also open their full Last.fm profile page directly from the player.
The client also enables the user to install player plugins, these integrate with various standalone media players to allow the submission of tracks played in those programs.
In the latest version of the Last.fm Player application, the user can select to use an external player. When this is done, the Last.fm Player provides the user with a local URL, through which the Last.fm music stream is proxied. Users can then open the URL in their preferred media player.
Last.fm has also developed client software for mobile phones running the iPhone OS, BlackBerry OS and the Android OS. Last.fm has only released these apps in the United States, United Kingdom and Germany claiming for four years that they are negotiating licenses for making the streaming available in other countries.
Audioscrobbler plugin
Last.fm can optionally build a profile directly from a user's music played on their personal computer. Users must download and install a plugin for their music player, which will automatically submit the artist and title of the songSong
In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...
after either half the song or the first four minutes have played, whichever comes first. When the track is shorter than 30 seconds (31 seconds in iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
) or the track lacks metadata (ID3
ID3
ID3 is a metadata container most often used in conjunction with the MP3 audio file format. It allows information such as the title, artist, album, track number, and other information about the file to be stored in the file itself....
, CDDB
CDDB
CDDB, short for Compact Disc Database, is a database for software applications to look up audio CD information over the Internet. This is performed by a client which calculates a unique disc ID and then queries the database. As a result, the client is able to display the artist name, CD title,...
, etc.), the track is not submitted. To accommodate dial-up users, caching
Web cache
A web cache is a mechanism for the temporary storage of web documents, such as HTML pages and images, to reduce bandwidth usage, server load, and perceived lag...
of the data and submitting it in bulk is also possible.
List of supported media players
The following applications have native support for sending song information:- 1by1
- AlbumPlayer
- AmarokAmarok (audio)Amarok is a cross-platform free and open source music player for KDE, but is released independently of the central KDE Software Compilation release cycle...
- aTunesATunesaTunes is a free audio player with MPlayer as its playback engine. aTunes supports MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and other formats. aTunes allows users to edit tags, organize music and rip audio CDs easily.-Media Library:...
- AudaciousAudacious Media PlayerAudacious is a free software audio player with a focus on low resource usage, high audio quality, and support for a wide range of audio formats. It is designed primarily for use on POSIX-compatible systems such as Linux, with limited support for Microsoft Windows...
- BansheeBanshee (music player)Banshee is an open-source media player, called Sonance until 2005. Built upon Mono and Gtk#, it uses the GStreamer multimedia platform for encoding and decoding various media formats, including Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and FLAC. Banshee can play and import audio CDs and supports many portable media players,...
- Billy
- BMPx
- ClementineClementine (software)Clementine is a cross-platform free and open source music player and library organizer. It is a port of Amarok 1.4 to the Qt 4 framework and the GStreamer multimedia framework. It is available for Unix-like, Windows and Mac OS X...
- cmusCmuscmus is a small and fast console audio player for Unix-like operating systems.cmus is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License and operates exclusively through a text-only interface, built with ncurses....
- CogCog (software)Cog is an open source audio player for Mac OS X. The basic layout is a single-paned playlist interface with two retractable drawers, one for navigating the user's music folders and another for viewing audio file properties, like bitrate...
- EMMS (Emacs Multimedia System)
- ExaileExaileExaile is a music player that was originally conceived to be similar in style and function to KDE's Amarok 1.4, but use the GTK+ widget toolkit rather than Qt...
- EzmoEzmoEzmo was a free, online music player which let you listen to your and your friends' entire music collections anywhere. Ezmo was in its beta phase. The service uses technology from Fast Search & Transfer and Adobe Flex. Ezmo is a fully owned subsidiary of Fast Search & Transfer and is based in...
- Google ChromeGoogle ChromeGoogle Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or...
- GroovesharkGroovesharkGrooveshark is an international online music search engine, music streaming service and music recommendation web software application, allowing users to search for, stream, and upload music that can be played immediately or added to a playlist...
- Guayadeque
- Helium Music Manager
- iScrob
- iScrobble Pick 'n' Mix
- iScrobble Premium
- Herrie
- Listen
- LobsterTunes
- MediaMaster
- MediaPortalMediaPortalMediaPortal is an open-source media center software project, often considered an alternative to Windows Media Center. It provides a 10-foot user interface for performing typical PVR/TiVo functionality, including playing, pausing, and recording live TV; playing DVDs, videos, and music; viewing...
- MOGMOG (online music)MOG is a paid subscription online music service and blog network, where users can listen to, read about, and discover music. Users can play any song in MOG's catalog on their computer through their web browser; on their mobile device through MOG's applications for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and...
- MP3Toys
- MusicIP Mixer
- Pocket TunesPocket TunesPocket Tunes by Normsoft, Inc. is shareware software used for playing music, Internet radio, podcasts, and other audio files for Palm OS 5 and Windows Mobile 5 or 6. Pocket Tunes supports MP3, AAC, HE-AAC, WMA, and Windows Media DRM files. It also supports MTP for transferring audio files from...
- RdioRdioRdio is an ad-free music subscription service available in the United States, Canada and Brazil. It is available as a website and also has clients for the iPhone, iPod Touch & iPad, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone mobile devices, which can play streaming music or cache songs for offline...
- Sansa San Clip+
- SongbirdSongbird (software)Songbird is a free and open source software audio player and web browser, with a stated mission "to incubate Songbird, the first Web player, to catalyze and champion a diverse, open Media Web."...
- SpotifySpotifySpotify is a Swedish-founded, UK-headquartered DRM-based music streaming service offering streaming of selected music from a range of major and independent record labels, including Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group, and Universal. Launched in October 2008 by Swedish startup Spotify AB, the service had...
- Subsonic
- Vagalume
- Vibe Streamer
- VLC media playerVLC media playerVLC media player is a free and open source media player and multimedia framework written by the VideoLAN project.VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to...
- Vox
- VUPlayer
- WiMPWiMPWiMP is a Norwegian proprietary music streaming service, similar to Spotify, that allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums, with virtually no buffering delay. Music can be browsed by artist, by album or by created playlists as well as by direct searches...
- Xbox 360Xbox 360The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
- XBMC Media CenterXbox Media CenterXBMC Media Center is a free and open source cross-platform digital media hub and HTPC software with a 10-foot user interface designed to be a media player for the living-room TV...
- YamiPod
The following services support sending service-specific recently played track feeds:
- Rhobbler for RhapsodyRhapsody (online music service)Rhapsody is an online music store subscription service, launched in December 2001, and available in the United States only. On April 6, 2010, Rhapsody officially declared its independence from RealNetworks. Downloaded files come with restrictions on their use, enforced by Helix, Rhapsody's version...
(beta)
Plugins are available for the following applications:
- AmigaAMP
- AudiosurfAudiosurfAudiosurf is a puzzle/rhythm hybrid game created by Invisible Handlebar, a personal company created by Dylan Fitterer. Its track-like stages visually mimic the music the player chooses, while the player races across several lanes collecting colored blocks that appear in sync with the music...
- BansheeBanshee (music player)Banshee is an open-source media player, called Sonance until 2005. Built upon Mono and Gtk#, it uses the GStreamer multimedia platform for encoding and decoding various media formats, including Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and FLAC. Banshee can play and import audio CDs and supports many portable media players,...
- Beep Media PlayerBeep Media PlayerThe Beep Media Player was a free audio player, based on the XMMS multimedia player. The lead developer was Milosz “deadchip” Derezynski. The BMP is mainly a port of XMMS to GTK+ 2 and, as such, integrates better with the look and feel of more recent versions of GNOME, Xfce, and, if using the...
- Beat Hazard
- DeaDBeeF
- foobar2000Foobar2000foobar2000 is a freeware audio player for Windows developed by Peter Pawlowski, a former freelance contractor for Nullsoft. It is known for its highly modular design and extensive SDK which allows third-party developers to do such things as completely replace the interface...
- DivX Connected
- gmusicbrowser (unofficial plugin)
- iTunesITunesiTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
- iPod touchIPod touchThe iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPod Touch adds the multi-touch graphical user interface to the iPod line...
and iPhoneIPhoneThe iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007... - LAUNCHcastLAUNCHcastYahoo! Music Radio is an Internet radio service offered by CBS Radio through Yahoo! Music. The service, formerly offered by LAUNCH Media, and originally developed by Todd Beaupré and Jeff Boulter, debuted on November 11, 1999, and was purchased by Yahoo! in October, 2001...
- J. River Media CenterMedia Center (software application)Media Center, or formally, "JRiver Media Center" is a multimedia application that allows the user to play and organize various types of media on a computer running Windows....
- MediaMonkeyMediaMonkeyMediaMonkey is a proprietary digital media player and media library application developed by Ventis Media Inc., for organizing and playing audio on Microsoft Windows operating systems. By using plugins, it can be extended to handle video and other media formats as well.MediaMonkey is available in a...
(using Winamp plugin, or official beta plugin) - MuineMuineMuine is an audio player for the GNOME desktop environment which runs on Linux, Solaris, BSD and other UNIX and UNIX-like systems. Muine is written in C# using Mono and Gtk#...
(unofficial plugin) - MPDMusic Player DaemonMusic Player Daemon is a music player server.- Design :MPD simply runs in the background playing music from its playlist. Client programs communicate with MPD to manipulate playback, the playlist, and the database...
(unofficial) - musikCubeMusikCubemusikCube is a partially open source audio player. Originally created as a fork of wxMusik, it has since been expanded to include capabilities not available in wxMusik. Internally, musikCube uses the proprietary BASS audio library to provide playback support....
(unofficial beta plugin) - MXPlay
- NapsterNapsterNapster is an online music store and a Best Buy company. It was originally founded as a pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing Internet service that emphasized sharing audio files that were typically digitally encoded music as MP3 format files...
Web Radio - NoatunNoatun (audio)Noatun is a media player of KDE. It supports various formats, including Vorbis and WAV.Noatun is available as free software under the terms of a BSD style license.The Noatun player is very modular and uses aRts as backend....
- PandoraPandora (music service)Pandora Radio is an automated music recommendation service and custodian of the Music Genome Project available only in the United States. The service plays musical selections similar to song suggestions entered by a user...
- Pithos
- Pocket Player (a music player for Pocket PC and Smartphone devices running the Windows mobile operating system)
- RhapsodyRhapsody (online music service)Rhapsody is an online music store subscription service, launched in December 2001, and available in the United States only. On April 6, 2010, Rhapsody officially declared its independence from RealNetworks. Downloaded files come with restrictions on their use, enforced by Helix, Rhapsody's version...
- RhythmboxRhythmboxRhythmbox is an audio player that plays and helps organize digital music. Originally inspired by Apple's iTunes, it is free software, designed to work well under the GNOME Desktop using the GStreamer media framework. However, Rhythmbox functions on desktop environments other than GNOME.-Music...
- (plugin installed by default) - SlackerSlacker (music service)Slacker Radio is an interactive Internet radio service available in the US and Canada. Listeners can access the service on the web, through mobile apps on multiple smartphones as well as on Slacker Personal Radio Players and other devices. It allows users to create and share customized music stations...
- Quintessential PlayerQuintessential PlayerQuintessential Player is a freeware, multi-format media player developed by Paul Quinn.Quintessential Player began life in 1997 as a CD-only player for Windows, when it was known as Quintessential CD Player...
/QCD - Quod LibetQuod Libet (software)Quod Libet is a cross-platform free and open source music player, tag editor and library organizer. The main design philosophy is that the user knows how they want to organize their music best and is built to be fully customizable and extensible using regular expressions. Quod Libet is a...
- RealPlayerRealPlayerRealPlayer is a cross-platform media player by RealNetworks that plays a number of multimedia formats including MP3, MPEG-4, QuickTime, Windows Media, and multiple versions of proprietary RealAudio and RealVideo formats.-History:...
(unofficial plugin) - SlimServerSlimServerLogitech Media Server is a streaming audio server supported by Logitech , developed in particular to support their Squeezebox range of digital audio receivers....
- SongbirdSongbird (software)Songbird is a free and open source software audio player and web browser, with a stated mission "to incubate Songbird, the first Web player, to catalyze and champion a diverse, open Media Web."...
- TurbaTurba' literally means crowd in Latin. It may refer more specifically to any text in the biblical Passion of Jesus which is spoken by any group of people, including the disciples, the Jews, or the soldiers...
- WinampWinampWinamp is a media player for Windows-based PCs and Android devices, written by Nullsoft, now a subsidiary of AOL. It is proprietary freeware/shareware, multi-format, extensible with plug-ins and skins, and is noted for its graphical sound visualization, playlist, and media library features.Winamp...
- Windows Media PlayerWindows Media PlayerWindows Media Player is a media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile-based devices...
(32-bit & 64-bit) - XMMSXMMSThe X Multimedia System is a free audio player for Unix-like systems.-History:XMMS was originally written as X11Amp by Peter and Mikael Alm in November 1997. The player was made to resemble Winamp, which was first released in May that year. As such, XMMS has supported Winamp 2 "classic" skins...
- XMMS2XMMS2XMMS2 is a new generation of the XMMS audio player. It is a new design, written from scratch, separate from the XMMS codebase...
- XMPlay
- Yahoo Music Engine
Supported audio players (hardware)
There is some support for portable audio playerPortable audio player
A portable audio player is a personal mobile device that allows the user to listen to recorded audio while mobile. Sometimes a distinction is made between a portable player, battery-powered and with one or more small loudspeakers, and a personal player, listened to with earphones.-History:Portable...
s. Since most of these are offline (which breaks the Last.fm concept), track info has to be batch scrobbled.
Players for which batch upload software is available:
- iPodIPodiPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
: The most recent version of the Last.fm software for Windows and Mac (introduced in May 2008) features iPod scrobbling. Although this was introduced in a previous version of Last.fm many users had complained that such features had ceased to function in recent updates. - iPod TouchIPod TouchThe iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPod Touch adds the multi-touch graphical user interface to the iPod line...
and iPhoneIPhoneThe iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
: With iPod touch and iPhone's firmware version 2.0, Last.fm has created an official client for streaming its music. Alternatively, through the process of Jailbreaking your iPod Touch/iPhone, MobileScrobbler can both stream radio and scrobble tracks via Wi-FiWi-FiWi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...
or an EDGEEnhanced Data Rates for GSM EvolutionEnhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution is a digital mobile phone technology that allows improved data transmission rates as a backward-compatible extension of GSM...
/3G3G3G or 3rd generation mobile telecommunications is a generation of standards for mobile phones and mobile telecommunication services fulfilling the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 specifications by the International Telecommunication Union...
mobile connection. Track plays are counted using iTunes's system of registering a play if the last 5 seconds of a track are listened to, as opposed to Last.fm's conventional method which scrobbles a play once 50% of a track has elapsed. When the iPod syncs with iTunes, play count data is transferred, which is then extracted by the Last.fm software. iScrobble is a realtime Scrobbler that doesn't require a jailbreak and supports non-realtime and realtime background Scrobbling direct from iDevices. iScrob is a realtime backgrounding Scrobbler that doesn't require a jailbreak. - RhythmboxRhythmboxRhythmbox is an audio player that plays and helps organize digital music. Originally inspired by Apple's iTunes, it is free software, designed to work well under the GNOME Desktop using the GStreamer media framework. However, Rhythmbox functions on desktop environments other than GNOME.-Music...
's plugin supports iPod scrobbling - Smartphones running Google's Android operating system using the Last.fm app which is free from the Android Market.
- Microsoft ZuneZuneZune is a digital media brand owned by Microsoft which includes a line of portable media players, a digital media player software for Windows machines, a music subscription service known as a 'Zune Music Pass', music and video streaming for the Xbox 360 via the Zune Software, music, TV and movie...
via Zuse - Nokia N900Nokia N900The Nokia N900 is a smartphone made by Nokia. It supersedes the Nokia N810. Its default operating system, Maemo 5, is a Linux-based OS originally developed for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. It is the first Nokia device based upon the Texas Instruments OMAP3 microprocessor with the ARM Cortex-A8...
(mafw-lastfm plugin for MaemoMaemoMaemo is a software platform developed by the Maemo community for smartphones and Internet tablets. It is based on the Debian Linux distribution, but has no relation to it...
5 devices like the Nokia N900) - Mobbler for Symbian smartphones. With Mobbler, songs played through the phone's music player can either be scrobbled live through an internet connection, or cached and scrobbled later. It also has last.fm radio functionality, along with various other features.
- Aspy Player for SymbianSymbianSymbian is a mobile operating system and computing platform designed for smartphones and currently maintained by Accenture. The Symbian platform is the successor to Symbian OS and Nokia Series 60; unlike Symbian OS, which needed an additional user interface system, Symbian includes a user...
smartphones, e.g. Samsung i8510 where Mobbler doesn't work. - PlayStation PortablePlayStation PortableThe is a handheld game console manufactured and marketed by Sony Corporation Development of the console was announced during E3 2003, and it was unveiled on , 2004, at a Sony press conference before E3 2004...
with third party software LightMP3 - RockboxRockboxRockbox is a replacement for the standard firmware in various forms of digital audio players . It offers an alternative to the player's operating system, in many cases without removing the original firmware, which provides a plug-in architecture for adding various enhancements and functions...
replacement firmware - Various other players: supported with the RockboxRockboxRockbox is a replacement for the standard firmware in various forms of digital audio players . It offers an alternative to the player's operating system, in many cases without removing the original firmware, which provides a plug-in architecture for adding various enhancements and functions...
firmware - logs made by these players can be uploaded to Last.fm using third party software. Such software includes the web based dap-scrob, and the GUI based Qt4 program QTScrobbler - Zenses is an open source utility programUtility softwareUtility software is system software designed to help analyze, configure, optimize or maintain a computer. A single piece of utility software is usually called a utility or tool....
for MTPMedia Transfer ProtocolThe Media Transfer Protocol is a devised set of custom extensions to the Picture Transfer Protocol . Whereas PTP was designed for downloading photographs from digital cameras, Media Transfer Protocol supports the transfer of music files on digital audio players and media files on portable media...
compatible devices such as iriver clix, Toshiba's Gigabeat line, SanDisk's Sansa series, Samsung's YP series, Microsoft Zune, & Creative's Zen players. It lets you submit play counts from the player to Last.fm, view charts on what you've played and create recently added playlists. Zenses was designed and developed for use with Creative's Zen Vision:MCreative ZenThe Creative ZEN is a range of digital audio players and portable media players made by Creative Technology. The players evolved from the now-defunct NOMAD brand through the NOMAD Jukebox series...
media player; however it should also work with most other MTPMedia Transfer ProtocolThe Media Transfer Protocol is a devised set of custom extensions to the Picture Transfer Protocol . Whereas PTP was designed for downloading photographs from digital cameras, Media Transfer Protocol supports the transfer of music files on digital audio players and media files on portable media...
compatible devices. A new version of the application is currently in development by Adam Livesley. - TrekStor VibezTrekstor VibezThe TrekStor Vibez is a microdrive digital audio player released on November 15, 2006. It is currently available in 8 GB and 12 GB capacities....
with scrobbler It'sGotTheVibez - foobar2000Foobar2000foobar2000 is a freeware audio player for Windows developed by Peter Pawlowski, a former freelance contractor for Nullsoft. It is known for its highly modular design and extensive SDK which allows third-party developers to do such things as completely replace the interface...
(Windows) Plugins foo_dop and foo_audioscrobbler combined. - Frontier Silicon-based connected audio devices.
- INQ1INQ1The INQ1 is the first product of the Hutchinson Whampoa subsidiary, INQ. The INQ1 was released in December 2008 as a social-networking phone. Retailing at a cheaper price than competitors such as the iPhone, Blackberry Storm, G1 and Nokia 5800, it also contains slightly fewer features than other 3G...
mobile phone supports scrobbling from its native media player - SonosSonosSonos is a consumer electronics company based in Santa Barbara, California. It was founded in 2002 by John MacFarlane, who previously founded Software.com. The company’s main product is the Sonos Multi-Room Music System.-History:...
Wireless HiFi Multi-Room Music System supports scrobbling and streaming Last.fm radio - Squeezebox (network music player) supports scrobbling and streaming Last.fm radio
Supported applications
Build Last.fmAs of March 2008, the website has added a section titled "Build" where third party applications can be submitted for review, and then posted to the page.
SXSW Band-Aid
Last.fm partnered up with the SXSW festival by creating an application embedded in the corresponding group page that filters the various artists at the festival by a user's listening statistics, and then uses Last.fm's recommendation service to also suggest other performing artists that said user hasn't listened to.
Other applications
- iScrob is a full realtime backgrounding Scrobbler for iPhone and iPod touch
- iScrobble is a Last.fm Live Scrobbler with Full Realtime Background Scrobbling and non-realtime scrobbling for when the app isn't running and is available for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad and will be coming to the Mac soon
- Pocket Scrobbler for Windows Mobile enables scrobbling from supported media players as well as streaming radio from Last.fm
- LastFmLib.net (LGPL) for using the Last.fm web services in VB.Net/C#
- Last.fm Java bindings (BSD) for using the Last.fm web services in Java
- Last.fm recent tracks widget for Mac OS X displays a user's most recently played tracks.
- Last.fm widget for OperaOpera (web browser)Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by Opera Software with over 200 million users worldwide. The browser handles common Internet-related tasks such as displaying web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting on IRC, downloading files via BitTorrent,...
also displays a user's most recently played tracks, but works on all platforms Opera runs on. - Last.fm dashboard widget for Mac OS X displays a user's last messages in his/her shoutbox.
- last.tweet widget for Mac OS X displays the cover artCover artCover art is the illustration or photograph on the outside of a published product such as a book , magazine, comic book, video game , DVD, CD, videotape, or music album. The art has a primarily commercial function, i.e...
of the recently played track, with TwitterTwitterTwitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
integration. - FoxyTunes Firefox extension places Last.fm player controls and current song information on the browser status barStatus barA status bar, similar to a status line, is an information area typically found at the bottom of windows in a graphical user interface.A status bar is sometimes divided into sections, each of which shows different information. Its job is primarily to display information about the current state of...
. - 4u2Stream can play Last.fm content on UPnP equipped players.
- ExitAhead finds music on eBayEBayeBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
matching a Last.fm profile. - Last-Stats shows a user's stats and creates dynamic profile/chart images based on a user's Last.fm profile.
- The Hype MachineThe Hype Machine-History:The Hype Machine was created in 2005 by Anthony Volodkin, a sophomore computer science major at Hunter College. The site was born out of Volodkin's frustration with music magazines and radio stations. He said, "I discovered MP3 blogs like Stereogum and Music for Robots...
can scrobble songs the user is listening to on the Hype Machine web-site. - SongStory is an App for the iPhoneIPhoneThe iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
, which shows useful information about the currently playing track. - Tastebuds.fmTastebuds.fmTastebuds.fm is a free dating and social networking website which matches people based on their tastes in music.-Overview:Tastebuds.fm is entirely free to use, and the site does not place any restrictions on messaging or searching....
is a free music-oriented dating site that imports a user's profile from Last.fm.
Similar services
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See also
External links
- Audioscrobbler development site
- The Old Last.fm
- Free Last.fm Music Streamer Plugin for Chrome
- Tiny webcaster Last.fm causes major online splash, Rockbites, 22 July 2003
- Last.fm: Music to Listeners' Ears, Wired, 7 July 2003
- The Musical Myware, Audio presentation by CEO Felix Miller, IT Conversations, 7 March 2006
- Guardian Unlimited Interview, Guardian UnlimitedGuardian Unlimitedguardian.co.uk, formerly known as Guardian Unlimited, is a British website owned by the Guardian Media Group. Georgina Henry is the editor...
Interview with Last.fm co-founder, Martin Stiksel, 4 November 2006 - The Celestial Jukebox, New Statesman on the story of Last.fm, June 2009
- Last.fm music charts widget