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Last.fm
File:Last.fm logo (crimson).png
Last.fm main page
Type of site
Statistics & Community
Available inmultilingual (~10)
OwnerCBS
Created byCommunal
URLhttp://www.last.fm/
CommercialYes
RegistrationFree, or subscribe for £1.50 per month ($3 USD)

Last.fm is a UK-based internet radio and music community website, first founded in 2002. It is one of the world's largest social music platforms with 20 million active users based in more than 232 countries. On May 30th, 2007, CBS Corporation acquired Last.fm for US$280m (£140m), the largest UK Web 2.0 purchase to date.

Using a unique music recommendation system known as "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of all the songs the user listens to, either on the streamed radio stations or on the user's own computer or iPod. This information is transferred to Last.fm's database ("Scrobbled") via a plugin installed into the users' music player. The profile data is displayed on a personal web page. The site offers numerous social networking features and can recommend and play artists similar to the user's favourites.

Users can create custom radio stations from any of the audio tracks in Last.fm's music library, but are not able to listen to individual tracks on demand, or to download tracks unless the rightsholder has previously authorised it. Registration is required to acquire a profile but is not necessary to view any part of the site or to listen to radio stations.

History

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 science project by Richard Jones while he attended the University of Southampton 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 from Austria and Germany, as an internet radio station and music community site, using similar music profiles to generate dynamic playlists. The 'love' and 'ban' buttons allowed users to gradually customize their profiles. Last.fm won the Europrix 2002 and was nominated for the Prix Ars Electronica in 2003.[1]

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.

On August 9 2005, the old Audioscrobbler site at the audioscrobbler.com domain name was wholly merged into the new Last.fm site. On September 5, 2005, audioscrobbler.net was launched as a separate development-oriented site.

On July 14, 2006, an update to the site was made. This update included a new software application for playing Last.fm radio streams and for logging of tracks played with other media players. Other changes included: 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 color scheme).

Within the community reactions to the new visual design were mixed. Opinions were also divided between those who welcomed the introduction of more social features and those who argued that technical issues (such as an incompatibility with Internet Explorer 7 and other known bugs) should have priority. With over 10 million tracks "scrobbled" each day, the popularity of the site at peak times often causes the databases to overload, with consequent delays in updating personal charts and other data.

On July 15, 2006, a Japanese version of the site was launched. Currently, the site is available in various other languages, including German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Korean and Simplified Chinese.

As of December 2006, Last.fm teamed up with EMI on Tuneglue-Audiomap.[2]

In October 2006, the site won Best Community Music Site at the BT Digital Music Awards, and in January 2007 it was nominated for Best Website in the NME Awards.

At the end of April 2007, rumours of negotiations between Viacom and Last.fm emerged, suggesting that Viacom intends to purchase Last.fm for about $450 million USD.[3]

In May 2007 it was announced that Channel 4 Radio is to broadcast a weekly show called Worldwide Chart that reflects what Last.fm users around the world are listening to. There are also plans to add a video section, enabling users to create their own personalised video channels.

On 30th May 2007 it was announced that last.fm has been bought by CBS for £140m with last.fm's current management team staying in place[4].

Funding and staff

Last.fm Ltd is funded from the sale of online advertising space, monthly user subscriptions and donations. In 2005 the company received the first round of angel money, led by Stefan Glaenzer (joined by Joi Ito and Reid Hoffman), who bought in to 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).[5]

There are currently 50 staff members, all of which are currently based in East London.

Features

User accounts

The free User account 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.

  • Profile: A Last.fm User can build up 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 radio 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 charts and musical recommendations are calculated. They call this automatic track logging 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 customised with additional information or photographs if desired but the overall layout cannot be changed. There is also a Shoutbox for instant messages. Profile pages are visible to all, together with a list of top artists and tracks, and the 10 most recently played tracks. Each Users' 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 customisable playlist may be also added, with samples of music that the user wishes to share or promote. Other features include the ability to remove songs listened to within a 2 week timeframe, navigation to linked profiles (such as friends and musical neighbors) and a list of individual users' favorite albums.
A customisable display of Recently Played tracks, is now available via web services, allowing users to add them to blogs, Myspace or as forum signatures.
  • Recommendations: The most recent expanded service on Last.fm is a revamped 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 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.
  • Groups: Perhaps the most-used community feature within Last.fm is the formation of user groups between users with something in common (for example, fans of an artist,a genre of music, 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.
  • 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.

Artist pages

File:Ihackedlastfm.png
A screenshot of an artist page which was fabricated by manipulation of ID3 tags; a demonstration of a shortcoming of the system.

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. If the artist has music available for streaming or download an embedded flash player is also included with samples of the most popular tracks.

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.

At present there is no way of differentiating between bands or artists with the same name and all data is aggregated, often causing serious anomalies when the artists concerned are from completely different genres.

Music catalogue

Last.fm's music library contains hundreds of thousands of individual audio tracks and past and present albums from artists on all the major commercial 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 fourth-largest music company, announced that it had signed a deal to allow its entire catalogue to be played on Last.fm.[6] Warner's music will shortly be made available over Last.fm's service in the U.S. and Europe. The site's co-founder, Martin Stiksel, said they were also in talks with the other three major labels and content holders.

Independent artists and record labels

Independent record labels and unsigned artists 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.

Previews and free downloads

30-second previews of any of the streamable tracks are available on demand, from anywhere in the site, by clicking on the blue arrow next to the name of the track or artist. Some tracks are also available to preview in full if the label or artist has specifically authorized it; these are indicated by gold arrows. (All tracks are played in full when users listen to appropriate stations).

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 100,000 songs are currently downloadable, [7] and there is a separate free download chart, updated weekly, showing the 200 most popular tracks.

Tags

With the August 2005 relaunch, Last.fm supports user-end tagging 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 ("garage rock"), mood ("chill"), artist characteristic ("baritone"), or any other form of user-defined classification ("seen live").

Subscribers are 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)) can be played by anybody, including non-subscribers

Subscriber accounts

Last.fm offers paid accounts, costing $3, €2.50, £1.50 or ¥350 per month. Some of the extra features that paid users receive are:

  • No advertisements
  • More radio options (custom radio stations for a user and loved tracks radio)
  • The ability to view recent visitors to one's own profile page
  • Beta testing at beta.last.fm
  • User icon changes color from black to blue, and states "Subscriber"

Charts

One of the most popular features 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 plays 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 MP3 tagging information 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 does attempt to translate some different artist tags to a single artist profile, but does not attempt to harmonize 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 Last.fm artist charts currently do not take track length into consideration. For example, an album with 22 short tracks will boost that artist's popularity for a particular user's rankings much more than an album with only 5 long tracks, even though the user spent the same amount of time listening to each. The impact of this problem is limited to personal charts. All other charts are calculated using reach, that is, the number of users who play a certain artist or track, rather than the total number of plays. This is also a defense against users who in the early days of Audioscrobbler submitted spam data in order to boost the rankings of a particular artist or song or their own ranking as a fan.

Global charts

File:Lastfmcharts globaltrackcharts september2006 2006-09-03.png
Global Track Chart showing the top 10 tracks for the week ending September 3, 2006

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 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.

The main reason behind the differences is that the charts reflect the musical taste of the particular demographic of the service's users, not that of the general public. Last.fm users generally have an Internet connection, may be more computer-literate than average, and may have wide collections of music from which to choose, due to the ability to download MP3 files from the internet.

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.

Last.fm radio

Last.fm offers customized "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, the user's "musical neighbours", or the tracks that the user has marked as loved when listening to any station. 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 based on a list of artists, and each artist page allows selection of a "similar artists" or "artist fan" radio station.

Under the terms of the station's radio licence, 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. As of December 2006, it is no longer possible to create a multiple artist station (a station based on more than one artist). It is only possible to create a station based on one artist. Last.fm have cited copyright restrictions as the reason for this change [5].

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.

As part of a recent programme of improvements in February 2007, registered users are also able to export the Last.fm flash player to embed into blogs, personal websites or MySpace pages. [6]

Last.fm client

Last.fm Player
Developer(s)Last.fm
Stable release
1.1.3.0
Operating systemMac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Unix-like
Typemedia player
LicenseGNU General Public License
Websitehttp://www.last.fm/

As an "in-page" Flash player is now provided automatically for all listeners, it is no longer necessary to download additional software in order to listen to any of the music available from the Last.fm music library. It is necessary, however, to download 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. 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 playlist; 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.[8]


Other players

  • LastFMProxy: a Python script written by Vidar Madsen, allows users to use their own music player again, by connecting to Last.fm and relaying its stream to the user's player of choice.
  • Online Last.fm Player: an open source PHP application made for listening to Last.fm radio streams on a webpage. It allows users who can't run or install any applications on their PC to listen to radio streams.
  • Rhythmbox: is able to play last.fm streams through its last.fm plugin as of version 0.9.7. It also supports submitting the track information of other tracks to the last.fm profile.
  • Amarok: has had the ability to play Last.fm streams integrated into the application as of version 1.4.1, and continues to support submitting information. Users of previous versions can play the streams using the LastamaroK script (homepage), which is based on LastFMProxy.
  • MyLastFM: an open source desktop client for the Windows platform which can play Last.fm streams or relay the streams to other music players (similar to LastFMProxy). It requires Microsoft .NET version 1.1 Framework.
  • Last Exit: an open source GTK+-based client similar to the official player. There are official deb packages for Debian [7] and Ubuntu [8] and there is also an unofficial package that let you save the song [9] Ubuntu forums thread about the save song patch.
  • Shell.FM: an open source console based player for Linux.
  • Amua: a small, open source client for Mac OS X that resides as a menu item.
  • PandoraFM: lets you listen to your customized Last.fm radio stations built by tagging within Pandora and the Last.fm web site. A web based, online Last.fm player.
  • BMPx: Supports native song reporting as well as Last.fm radio playback since version 0.3x

Since Last.fm consists of a Shoutcast mp3 stream it is possible to listen on Last.fm using the player of your choice.[9]

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 song after either half the song or the first four minutes have played, whichever comes first. When seek controls are used, the track is shorter than 30 seconds (31 seconds in iTunes), or the track lacks metadata (ID3, CDDB, etc), the track is not submitted. This feature is available to dial-up users, as data is cached and submitted to Last.fm when an internet connection is established.

List of supported media players

Following applications have native support for sending song information:

Plugins are available for the following applications: [10]

Supported audio players (hardware)

There is some support for portable audio players. Since these are offline (which breaks the last.fm concept), track info has to be batch scrobbled. Players for which batch upload software is available:

All Audioscrobbler plugins are open source, and the listening data it collects were historically released under a Creative Commons License. Recently, however, due to Last.fm's financial interest in the data, it seems unlikely that further releases of data will be made. Indeed, no data is currently available from Last.fm's website, and the last public data were dated May 6, 2005.[11]

Other third party applications

Easter eggs

The Last.fm website has several easter eggs concealed within, relying on in-jokes:

  • A fake user page for David Hasselhoff, presented as if he were a member of the Last.fm development team, here (Hasselhoff's favorite track is the Knight Rider theme).
  • A fake artist page for Matthew Ogle, the real primary web developer for Last.fm, here. Ogle has a fake album page, From Alberta to the Albert, Live from the Hot Grapefruit Lounge, and even a fake fan club. The latter reports that a new album, made in collaboration with Hasselhoff, is about to be released. Ogle's fake songs are regularly scrobbled by users and staff members. Matt Ogle was captured on film performing a live rendition of Silent Night with his accordion in the Last.fm offices in December of 2006. The most popular tag for his music is "nu-post-awesomecore".
  • A fake artist page for Norman Casagrande, the chief music research honcho for Last.fm, here. Casagrande has a fake fan club devoted to him, and even a fake event page in which he appears to be performing alongside Ogle and Hasselhoff in the office's local pub. Norman's "hit" track is titled "Norman in da Casa Grande", which is a pun based on his name.
  • The site team page often features comedy photos and job descriptions for staff members. A notable example is Julian Stahnke's photo.
  • In listing the various services provided by signing up, the site used to state that you receive a free pony. In reality, "Pony" was the codename for the site's recommendation system.
  • The office microwave has its own artist page under the moniker "The Singing Microwave". The page features a biography and a recording of the song "Bacon & Mushroom Tagliatelle".
  • At the very bottom of each page is an Audioscrobbler "slogan", which changes each time the page is refreshed. They are all 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 site members.

See also

References

  1. ^ "EUROPRIX Student Award Winners 2002". EUROPRIX. Retrieved 2006-09-03.
  2. ^ [1]
  3. ^ [2]
  4. ^ [3]
  5. ^ [4]
  6. ^ Warner Music announces Last.fm content dealRetrieved February 13, 2007.
  7. ^ Last.fm October '06 Update. Retrieved on 2007-01-04.
  8. ^ Jälevik, Erik (2006-04-03). "Last.fm forum: Read this to get started (old beta!)". Retrieved 2006-09-03.
  9. ^ Play last.fm streams without the player
  10. ^ audioPod is now lastPod - last.fm Forums
  11. ^ Data. Retrieved on 2006-12-06.

Further reading

Press

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