The popular social music service Last.fm features an API that lets anyone build their own programs using Last.fm data, whether those programs are on the web, on the desktop, or on a mobile phone. In the past, we've listed some of the best mashups built using this API from MusicPortl to LastGraph to Yahoo Pipes and more, but now we're anxiously awaiting the arrival of a whole new crop of applications. Why's that? Because Last.fm has just launched a new version of their public API. Yes, there's now a Last.fm API 2.0.
The new version of the Last.fm API will now allow any application or device deep integration with the Last.fm platform. According to their blog post about the launch, their goal is to offer "the most comprehensive social music API on the web."
To do so, the API offers a new user authentication protocol that will let developers build apps that create "user sessions," which will allow apps to utilize both read and write services - meaning, the apps aren't limited to just pulling information from Last.fm, they can send info back to the service as well. While this is big news because it means Last.fm's API now offers write support, some people aren't happy that they chose to go with their own authentication protocol instead of using a more mainstream one like OpenID or OAuth instead.
Also included in the new version is a new tagging API now available which lets developers pull and apply tags to Last.fm's music content from any application on any platform. This should lead to some interesting batch tag editor apps built with the API. In addition, new search, playlist, events, and geo APIs have been rolled out and even more will arrive in the coming weeks.
For help with all the new features of the API as well as to provide feedback and suggestions, there's the Last.fm web services group for developers.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/4325
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all Read/WriteWeb posts
They seem to have ignored any requirements that lifestreaming sites would have. In fact there is now no way to get user's profile or their loved tracks.
Posted by: Richard Cunningham | June 30, 2008 10:22 AM
That's great to see the Last.fm API expanding under the rule of CBS as opposed to other properties splintering and fading into the background. With apture using Imeem's music platform to offer publishers more ways to create multimedia conversations on their sites, it's great to see yet another music application come to play.
Grooveshark is going to be releasing their own API soon, which will give users access to all of the long-tail content full of unicode support for all of those Asian, African, and Europeaners out there not getting the love from the US/UK-centric sites.
Posted by: Andrew Wise | June 30, 2008 10:32 AM
What is an api? I always hear people talking about it but i dont know what it is?
Posted by: cohnsey | July 1, 2008 1:08 AM
seems like album info no longer features a track listing -- don't see any way to get track listing for an album now...
Posted by: me | July 12, 2008 1:46 PM