The Cabbage Patch

Web Service Spotlight - Last.fm

Posted by Dave

Hello World.

Occasionally here on The Cabbage Patch, I feature a “Web 2.0” website and provide a sort of review in a feature I call “Web Service Spotlight”. These may include new services that are better than their competitors, sites that are unique and do things differently, or simply sites that stand out as being useful.

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This edition of Web Service Spotlight takes a look at Last.fm.

I have mentioned Last.fm before on Da Patch, but today I shall be going into a more in-depth look at my favourite social/music website.  Recently, Last.fm has released a major re-design of the website and the software that accompanies it, and it has become the ultimate music sharing and discovery site.

Last.fm is a merging of two concepts into one service.  On one hand, it is a music charting/cataloging service which collects the data of all the music all of its users listen to, and compiles it into hundreds of charts and lists, detailing the listening habits of any group/user/genre/etc.  This may seem fairly mundane, however even on its own this feature is a good way to see what music is popular amongst various groups or within certain genres of music.

However it is the second function of Last.fm which makes it a truly worthwhile service.  After you have built up a decent “profile” - by listening to some songs and submitting the data to the website - Last.fm will automatically begin to link you to other users and music.  After a short while, you will have access (on a free account) to two streaming radio stations - “neighbor radio” and “recommendation radio”.

Neighbor radio is a stream made up of music that is selected from the profiles of your “Neighbors”, and recommendation radio is a stream of music made up from the recommendations the system offers you.  I will go into detail on both of these later.

The Software:

With the recent site update came a fantastic new element of the Last.fm system - the Last.fm software.

 

This new software is the backbone of the Last.fm system.  Previously, each user was required to install at least two separate pieces of software to get the most out of Last.fm, but this new software handles all elements of the process, plus a little more.

The Last.fm software connects to the media player of your choice and automatically submits any song you play to your Last.fm profile (songs are submitted either when they have played 240 seconds or half-way, whichever comes first).  This automated process means that it is easy to build a profile simply by listening to music at your computer as you normally would.

The software also acts as a media player for the Last.fm stations.  From the player, you can search for a station by tag (user-assigned labels, usually related to the genre or style of the artist) or by artist, but it will also play any of the other hundreds of stations found on the website.

From this software you can also assign tags to tracks, add tracks and artists to your “loved radio” or ban the track from being played again.  These tools allow you to shape the various radio streams to your particular liking.

Profiles, Neighbors and Recommendations:

As mentioned earlier, a large part of the Last.fm system revolves around user profiles.  These profiles are generated by listening to music and having it submitted to the system using the Last.fm software.  You may also choose to add the tracks you listen to on the Last.fm streams to your profile.

Once a profile has been established, it will automatically generate charts and lists of your top artists, tracks and albums over any given time frame.  You can see my profile page here for an idea of the scale of information available.

It will also begin to link you to your musical “neighbors”.  This has nothing to do with physical proximity - it is instead a system to link you to people with similar musical taste as your own.  You may then view the profiles of these neighbors and possibly find bands or songs that you have not heard of before.  These neighbors are also used as the basis for the Neighbor Radio stream.  Music is selected from the profiles of those with the closest musical taste as you and put together into an endless stream of music for you to listen to for free.

Using a combination of the user profiles and musical neighbors, the system also generates a Recommendation Radio stream for each user.  You may customise this stream so that it plays more popular music or more obscure songs, but on almost any setting you will most likely hear something you have never heard before.

Other Features:

Last.fm has many other features, including Groups, Overall Charts, Artist/Album Pages, and many more.  I will not detail these however, because this is already becoming too long, but I definitely recommend you signing up and trying out the service - after all, it’s free.

Tags: Web Service Spotlight, Web Sites

2 Comments to Web Service Spotlight - Last.fm

1. 

   There’s no such thing as a ’social website’ . . . You Know it and I know it.
TomHB on August 15th, 2006
2. 

   [...] There are various types of “social sites” available on the Internet, ranging from general purpose meeting places (like MySpace) to special interest or focused communities.  I have featured Last.fm on Da Patch before - it is a social site based around the very specific topic of music.  In this multi-part feature I’m going to discuss some of the other networks that I have begun to get involved in and my thoughts on what they are about. [...]
The Cabbage Patch Blog » With a Little Help From My e-Friends - Part One on October 1st, 2006

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