Contrary to popular belief Last.fm never really died (and I hope it never will), however it lost years ago its most valuable thing: *its own streaming service*.
It was just perfect at everything, was it finding new releases, discovery obscure gems, or play your favorite things all over. It was so magical that you could hardly believe it was computer generated.
Also, it was a wonderful "sane" social network where music and only music was at its heart: no vanity metrics (eg: counting likes) / vanity egos (eg: influencers) or purely material interests (eg: make money from this or that).
Anyway, it's sad it lost the streaming war pretty soon. Maybe it was just too genuine to compete with services driven by dark patterns, suspicious agendas, and mostly, greed.
Wait, is this a metaphor of the old internet versus the present state of digital affairs? Or am I just getting nostalgic here?
I don't know. Long live Last.fm!
111,920 Scrobbles from 9,137 Artists since Jul 2006.
There is a place for both: Streaming services and DB/SN sites. they don't have to be the same.
I even hope for more segmentation (and interoperability) in the future: Companies that only provide the raw music. Others that build the UI/UX (players...) and still others that provides additional services (Social networking, Data related...)
Last.fm lost not because it is too genuine (CBS is one of the largest media conglomerates) but because it got lazy and failed to leverage its data to create more value. The truth is people are just as Lazy when it comes to music (organize, discover…), _so I wonder how much you can really grow in this space.
I have some Spotify suggestions for you, if you don't know them already.
> all the album by this label
label:[label name] is helpful. There are better options. this one comes to mind https://www.lbl.fm/
> all the songs produced by X
If you open the credits of a track, you will find that some writers (no producers) are hyperlinked to a page where you can listen to all their songs as a playlist.
> all the songs where in Y plays drums. All the albums recorded at some studio in the year
A Hint: try you luck with a search for a known label, producer or even drummer, or studio, and you will be surprised by how people are creative/meticulous with their public playlist’s choices (the human pool is just getting way too large, 400 millions and counting)
Also, you can take a look at https://spicetify.app/. It is a marketplace for extending the desktop app (some data related add-ins in there). it is still very young and hacky but IMO it is the right direction.
thank you, i thought i had lost my damn mind. i was like wtf are people talking about 20 years old. it shut down and i lost all my stuff , years and years ago. i dont know what it is anymore but its like last.fm in name only
It was just perfect at everything, was it finding new releases, discovery obscure gems, or play your favorite things all over. It was so magical that you could hardly believe it was computer generated.
Also, it was a wonderful "sane" social network where music and only music was at its heart: no vanity metrics (eg: counting likes) / vanity egos (eg: influencers) or purely material interests (eg: make money from this or that).
Anyway, it's sad it lost the streaming war pretty soon. Maybe it was just too genuine to compete with services driven by dark patterns, suspicious agendas, and mostly, greed.
Wait, is this a metaphor of the old internet versus the present state of digital affairs? Or am I just getting nostalgic here?
I don't know. Long live Last.fm!
111,920 Scrobbles from 9,137 Artists since Jul 2006.