Last.fm Launches New Features - Including Flash Player, Events and Free MP3s
Last.fm, one of my favorite online music recommendation and
listening services, today announced a website relaunch. The London-based company has
added four new features: Events system (e.g. concerts), Free MP3s, Flash player
radio, and a Taste-o-meter. Last.fm hopes these new features, plus the
re-design, will make it easier to find and share music - as well as being turned on to
the latest live music in your area.
The Last.fm team sent me some quick stats about the site:
- 15 million unique active users per month
- 350 million times a month people tell Last.fm what tracks they listen to - in other words, Last.fm users submit 12 million daily track submissions
- 65 million different tracks in the music database
- 7 million different artists
- Over 200 countries are represented in the community with US, UK, Germany, Canada leading the pack
- Last.fm has around 150,000 artist wikis and there are around 350,000 different music tags (genres, moods of music).
- Unlike many online music networks, Last.fm connects to 30+ MP3 players – not just iTunes and iPod
About Last.fm
Last.fm connects to a lot of things in the online music ecosystem, which is part of its strategy to support "the iPod economy." According to the press release:
"Built as an open source platform, Last.fm is designed for support on all media players including iTunes, Windows Media Player, Winamp, xBox, TiVo, mobile phones, Slim devices, Launchcast, Yahoo Music Engine and even Pandora. Listeners can link their media players to Last.fm to share songs, statistics and playlists with the Last.fm community. Last.fm’s scrobbling function pays attention to what users are listening to—not just what is listed in their library—and suggests artists, people, and concerts based on their musical preferences. You can even post charts and listening habits to your blog or MySpace and have Last.fm update them automatically. Select a chart from a variety of user-submitted styles or customize your own."
The new features
A little about the new features. The Flash player radio is significant, because it means no download is necessary to use Last.fm. When I first started using Last.fm a year or two ago, I had to download a desktop app. But because Flash is all but ubiquitous on the Web, new users can start using Last.fm straight away. This will surely drive usage up for Last.fm and also an online media application is one of the best ways to utilize Flash. (note: the player wasn't working when I tested it)
Last.fm, if you haven't come across it before, works in a similar way to Pandora. It has predictive software, which pays attention to what you like and dislike and plays new songs based on your selections. You can also recommend tracks to friends, add tags, tell the system you don't like a song, or simply skip ahead to the next track.
The free MP3s is also a compelling new feature. Last.fm says it has hundreds of thousands of free MP3s and they can be easily downloaded to iTunes or any mp3 player.
The events feature is a nice tie-in to 'the real world' - a theme we're seeing more and more of as mobile Web hits the mainstream. Last.fm suggests concerts based on where you live and what you and your friends listen to. You can then get tickets by following a link to one of Last.fm’s ticket reseller partners. Updates are also posted directly to your user page.
As for the Taste-o-meter,
Last.fm is marketing this as a way to "find your musical soulmate." Essentially it lets
users find compatible people with similar music tastes. It does this by assigning users a
"musical compatibility score". This has the potential to work well for young single
people and is a nice complement to the events feature.
Summary
All these new features are great and make Last.fm one of the most compelling online music products on the Web right now. It looks like they're ramping up the social aspects (events, Taste-o-meter), which plays to their overall goal of being one of the top social music communities. The online music space, or iPod economy to use their phrase, is growing nearly as rapidly as the online video scene. So Last.fm is well positioned to gain more young users in particular with this re-design.
If there is one downside to Last.fm currently, it's that I sometimes have trouble connecting to the service. Indeed while I was testing out the new features this afternoon, I couldn't connect to the radio. So performance issues must be addressed (obviously). Apart from that though, I really like last.fm and will continue to use it along with Pandora. I use both because there really isn't a lot of difference for me, although I expect these upgrades by Last.fm to appeal in particular to the younger MySpace-using demographic
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Hey Richard, any word on whether or not you can embed the Last.fm player into your MySpace page? I tried testing out the site (I'm thrilled they're using Flash) but got the same performance problems you had, and it's 9:30 in the evening here on the West Coast. Poor rollout for them - I was excited to try out the new features.
Posted by: Ryan Stewart | October 31, 2006 9:33 PM
Hi Ryan, not sure about embedding the player in your MySpace page - but great idea!
Yes, shame they're having rollout issues.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | October 31, 2006 9:55 PM
Richard et al,
I'm a heavy last.fm user/listener and also use their web services for applications. The service outages for the October rollout was directly related to the Flash server issues. There were no problems with Last.fm radio if you accessed the radio streams via the proxy (or other web services).
I think last.fm will be a good indicator of whether Flash will truly scale for bandwidth intensive applications. The difference between last.fm and YouTube for Flash delivery is that last.fm radio is a "continous stream" with a user base that listens to the stream for *hours* at a time. YouTube's movies are limited to a few minutes per session (the duration of the movie) before the stream is re-initiated at the start of a new movie.
As an example, last.fm delivered over 6 million tracks (songs) via the radio last week (Oct. 22-29). The overall radio stats are published for anyone who has been authorized to upload music as a "label" (authorized rights holder or representative of the music to be uploaded); labels also receive individualized stats for their artists. However, last.fm radio stats are no big secret, just politely ask one of the last.fm staff :).
Posted by: old school developer | October 31, 2006 11:06 PM
FYI: I'm doing some freelance work for MyStrands every now and then but this is a personal comment.
I have been a last.fm user and fan since 2004. I always liked the idea, the functionalities and especially the community. I stopped using it one year ago ago due the the numerous problems with Audioscrobler and problems to connect to the site, just now again I could not login!
During a project research I discovered MyStrands.com (formerly musicstrands.com) and use it since then, it always works :-) I'm not technical so I cannot judge on that but it appears to me that MyStrands' technology is a lot more solid and robust then last.fm's.
MyStrands has probably a less well developed community and catalogue then last.fm (not sure about last one though) but what I like is they're making their system mobile easily accessible. I don't understand why so many web 2.0 guys haven't make the link to mobile yet?
Once flat fees will become mainstream, it's on the mobile people will going to listen to my mp3's and podcasts, that's what I'm doing now already actually. Having a recommendation system in place accessible from the mobile phone, able to discover, connect and recommend other music and connect to people will makes things more fun of course.
Ever checked mobile.mystrands.com?
Posted by: Rudy De Waele | November 1, 2006 12:18 AM
Rudy,
Since you're not technical, I'll provide some quick answers for you. One of the major intercontinental/trans-atlantic telecommunications providers is having major connectivity (peering) issues. Not only can I not connect to the last.fm services, I also cannot connect to the BBC's web site or services.
Both Last.fm and the BBC share the same telecommunications provider for transcontinental connectivity.
I can connect to other web sites and services in the UK (London) that are routed via another telecommunications providers. This particular telecommunications provider has been problematic for quite some time. All the more shame, because it's a very major telco peering service, and alternatives for small vendors like Last.fm will be *very* costly.
The BBC has many, many more alternatives, and can switch telco peering with impunity execpt for the contractual hassle, and may even be able to re-negotiate with reduced cost.
Posted by: old school developer | November 1, 2006 1:01 AM
osd, thanks for the update re Last.fm's technical problems. They must be incredibly frustrated at the telecoms company.
Re: "The service outages for the October rollout was directly related to the Flash server issues."
I take it you're talking about an earlier outage, not related to the telecoms?? Just want to check I have the facts right...
Rudy, thanks for the info re MyStrands, I will check them out!
Posted by: Richard MacManus | November 1, 2006 1:07 AM
Richard,
Yes. Last.fm has had an ongoing telco problem (as have other vendors) it's a problem "below the web"; most interwebs(s) users (and sadly developers) these days are completely unaware of how the network actually functions, so they just say -- "I can't get to XYZ site", or the developers say "I need to upgrade my web hosting package". To be honest, most of the time it's just lousy code/implementation.
However, when your site is delivering high-volumes of "digital/streaming media" on a large scale, the actual underpinnings of the (Inter)network are extremely important. It's a much more complex issue than "web hosting", you'll want guanteed peering between telcos, with a prescribed "quality of service" (QoS), etc. I could go on forever, but I won't :).
This is a major crux of the 'Net neutrality debate. The telcos aren't always exaggerating when they say they might require infrastructure upgrades. There's plenty of high-speed cable/fiber/whatever, but the junction points can be iffy.
The other issues for Last.fm are specific to Flash streaming. The Last.fm development team is super technically, so it shouldn't take long to resolve.
Posted by: old school developer | November 1, 2006 1:44 AM
Richard,
I forgot to say, both Last.fm and the BBC are online now. They came back online about 20 minutes ago.
Posted by: old school developer | November 1, 2006 1:48 AM
Richard,
Flash radio player on last.fm is working; I'm listening now. The developers are still resolving issues though.
Posted by: old school developer | November 1, 2006 2:28 AM
Thanks osd, I'm listening to it now too. The Flash version is excellent! Means I can stay in my browser instead of jumping back and forth between the desktop app and browser - as I used to do with last.fm.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | November 1, 2006 3:33 AM
I'm really glad they put some new features, the old site is incredible but it's so hard to use..
Posted by: Rusty | November 1, 2006 5:16 AM
"The Flash player radio is significant, because it means no download is necessary to use Last.fm. When I first started using Last.fm a year or two ago, I had to download a desktop app. But because Flash is all but ubiquitous on the Web, new users can start using Last.fm straight away. This will surely drive usage up for Last.fm and also an online media application is one of the best ways to utilize Flash. (note: the player wasn't working when I tested it)"
Hi Richard, when you say "Flash", what do you mean? Is it a SWF interface running in the Adobe Flash Player, possibly with some Adobe server technology, or something else?
(btw, I agree that many of the current "network neutrality" discussions are actually a subset of the existing peerage issues, and the whole conversation takes a right-hand twist when you examine mobile use of network connectivity.)
jd/adobe
Posted by: John Dowdell | November 1, 2006 8:17 AM
jd/adobe,
AFAIK, Last.fm is running the full Flash streaming delivery platform. One of the lead developers/tech ninjas is here: http://www.last.fm/user/Russ/
Russ & Co. are *highly* skilled, and super responsive (nice guys too).
Posted by: old school developer | November 1, 2006 11:13 AM
If you Like Last.fm - check out www.Mercora.com, they have a desktop application, a web version and a brand new mobile version for Windows Mobile 5.0 compatilne devices that is currently free. Today, I can listen to what I want, when I want, where I want, without the use of an ipod.
Posted by: Bob | November 1, 2006 2:25 PM
Mercora is MS windows *only*. Some of us exist in a MS free environment :)
From the Mercora.com FAQ:
What systems do you support?
Posted by: old school developer | November 1, 2006 3:28 PM
last.fm is well good!!!! love it eventhough Swiss community is still in its childhood!
I especially like the event function!!!!
dan
Posted by: dan | November 2, 2006 12:38 AM
I just recently started using iLike (www.iLike.com), and as a long-time last.fm usser, I have to say I like it quite a bit. You have to download an iTunes sidebar for it to be fully functionally, and that may make or break it for some. I suggest you give it a try!
Posted by: Jacob | November 3, 2006 11:54 AM