Last.fm: The Social Music Revolution

Posted on February 20, 2008 by C Johnson
Culture

Here at Tuesday, we’re an iPod wearing, mash up mixing, CD-swapping army of music enthusiasts who take our tunes as seriously as we take our work. Internet radio is a collective favorite, so it shouldn’t raise an eyebrow that I’m dedicating this post to the web radio space—in particular the (arguably) biggest player in the Internet radio universe.

If you are new to the Last FM/Audioscrobbling set, it’s an Internet radio service that fuses both individualism and community by allowing you to customize your own personal radio channels according to your own personal tastes and then share those tastes with an entire worldwide network.

Tuesday Associate Producer Chy Lin is a fan.

“Last FM is great,” says Lin. “It helps to open up new music and suggests artists that you would never have been able to hear about otherwise.”

Audioscobbler is Last FM’s music recommendation system that works as your own music scout, continually updating your preferences by recording details of the tracks you listen to either on streamed radio, your computer, your iPod and the like: your profile is fashioned by the tracks you listen to most.

But the system is not without flaws.

Says Lin: “My biggest complaint at first, was that I hated all of the suggested music. But it’s a matter of patience, and when you spend enough time using the service, you really start finding some great stuff.”

There’s a reason for that, as it turns out. Before Audioscrobble can recommend an artist or track, it has to rise out of the Last FM slush pile, which means that a relative degree of popularity is required for a song to be recognized. Contrast this with Pandora, Last FM’s nemesis, which compares only the character of a song to your preferences. (There are Pandora Purists and Last FM Loyalists—both of which have lists of reasons why their station du choix is better than the other.)

“I love the exposure to new artists and also the way it works like a Wikipedia of music, full of discographies and track listings. It opens up a lot of opportunity for independent bands as well. Bands can look at their stats online and see which tracks are most listened to. That’s a big help when they’re trying to figure out what songs the audience does or doesn’t like.”

Last FM’s option to purchase the tracks you like is of course a plus, but for the iPod generation perhaps it would be more convenient to have the ability to purchase tracks from iTunes.

“I wish they had a deal with the iTunes store,” says Lin. “At the moment you can only purchase from Amazon… Ugh!”

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