Last.fm Launches New Online Radio Player: Adds Combo Stations and Slideshows
Last.fm, the popular online music discovery service, just launched its new Personalized Visual Music player today, which, at least from a visual perspective, takes online radio to a new level. The new player automatically plays a slideshow with related images uploaded by the Last.fm community, which looks surprisingly good. More importantly, though, Last.fm now allows users to create combo stations, where a user can create a station with up to three artists or tags.
Combo Stations
With this new emphasis on stations, Last.fm also redesigned the 'recent stations' section in order to allow users to see far more of their recently created stations. Users can now also easily delete stations from this same dialog.
While the new visual features are a welcome change to Last.fm's online radio, the real game-changer here are the multi-artist and tag stations. These allow users to create more interesting and diverse stations, while still exercising a large amount of control over the content of these stations.
Sponsors
It is also important to note that the radio player now features visual branding from Last.fm sponsors (Budweiser seems to be the current sponsor). In its press release, Last.fm stresses that this new layout will give advertisers and sponsors the ability to create a more immersive experience than standard audio advertising.
Privacy Mode
The new player also features a private listening mode, where scrobbling is turned off so that you can listen to your favorite Jonas Brothers songs in total privacy.
iPhone App Still Lagging Behind
Hopefully, Last.fm will also soon update its already excellent iPhone application to include these new features as well. Although, today's announcement did not mention the company's mobile applications at all.
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Impressed, not just by the new application, but also by their business model, that at least seems to really work. Interesting "privacy mode" feature.
I love the changes. I just logged in this morning to listen and there was the totally new look, which I automatically liked, but didn't realize the capabilities with the combo stations until reading this. Should be a great addition.
Too bad only some privileged user from some privileged countries, have all this new shiny service for free. Taking this service on a monthly fee? It's ok for me. Discriminating some users? That's plain stupid, IMO. So I don't give a damn about their new shiny radio image mashup crap!
Never liked Last.fm, I just love imeem. And I'm not even from USA
Hate the fact that there is an auto-slideshow of photos from the band currently playing, rather than just displaying the album cover that the song is from: There should be an option to switch between the two
The new changes to Last FM Radio are terrible. It has become far too commercialized as evidenced by the appalling number of sponsors ceating an eyesore on the right side of the page. Also with the new and improved slideshow and complexity of the player, it takes longer to load. The tracks load and play for 5 seconds or so and then stop and buffer while all of the additional crap on the page loads and then plays. It is all so unnecessary and a deterrent to my listening patronage in future.
Interesting new feature. As a musician, Last.fm 'd be an important component in my Social Media uiuverse. Comming back to last.fm soon ;)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but is there any way to utilize the "privacy mode" from your iTunes play counts? What if you could go back & "edit" your plays? I imagine some Chili Peppers fans wouldn't want everybody seeing the Jonas Brothers in their Top 5 ("but it was my sister!") haha
I'm from Canada, and pay the 3 bucks a month. It's great with out sponsors and ads! The site is so clean, I'm really happy paying a few dollars to get a much better experience. I think the new slide show feature is really cool, but I'd like to see a way to revert to a minimal player as well.