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Last.fm dumps streaming, focuses on recommendation
Last.fm just made a huge change to its offerings, deciding to let partner services handle on-demand music streaming, while Last.fm focuses on the recommendation and discovery side of its business. It's a big loss for users in the US, UK and Germany, who have been able to listen to plenty of full tracks via Last.fm for the past two years.
So, why the switch?
Last.fm says it's because of the way people actually use the service: mostly, they get their tracks elsewhere and use Last to find out what to listen to next. Recommendation and discovery are the things Last.fm does best, so they've decided to leave the playing to the players, which will include MOG, Spotify, The Hype Machine, We7 and VEVO.
Reading between the lines a little bit, it sounds like Last.fm wasn't getting a big return on the bandwidth costs it was putting out for streaming, especially in an increasingly competitive music app market. At this point, it's probably a smart business move to devote more resources to becoming the best damn music discovery resource on the planet, instead of yet another streaming music provider. And of course, this means that anything you play on these partner sites will "scrobble" to Last.fm and count in your listener data.
[via Mashable]
Comments
10
Subscribe to commentsJonnyApr 12th 2010 4:27PM
Well there goes any usefulness for last.fm - I wonder what this means for their xbox app, now that there's no radio. Plus what about the saps who pay $3 a month to use it? is all they are playing for is recommendations? why would you pay for that? lol
QuinionApr 12th 2010 4:35PM
They will still have the xbl app, it doesnt actually go through Last.FM but just picks songs from other streaming sources, which is how its always worked
Sam JApr 12th 2010 4:58PM
this is an important update from Last.fm - don't ditch their service yet:
Update: To clarify, today’s changes don’t affect Last.fm radio stations at all, just single-track playback on the website. Radio is one of our flagship music discovery features and has long been the most popular way to stream music on Last.fm; we’ll keep improving it in future. Play on!
Tyler MillsApr 12th 2010 6:13PM
You can still stream on their site. It's just not the primary thing now.
JonOApr 12th 2010 10:39PM
Yes, you can still stream. Sharing has been demolished however. Unless you feel that the first 30 seconds of a song is enough to judge it. I think one of the best features was the ability to suggest tracks to friends, allowing them to sit down at their convenience and really listen to a track...get turned on to a band, maybe even buy the album. But instead we will now be redirected to another service under whatever terms they deem fit. I'm sorry, I don't want to pay $5/month to MOG to be able to stream songs on demand. Then of course you have the more obscure and smaller labels/bands that used last.fm as their platform to get their music out there...which these other streaming providers don't have in their databases. Sad changes...
codeman38Apr 13th 2010 12:53AM
I guess this also affects the free MP3 downloads that were hosted through last.fm? That's a shame; it was a great way to discover some interesting indie stuff that had very little exposure otherwise.
PatrickApr 13th 2010 9:57AM
Past 2 years? i've been on last.fm for at least 4 years.
KaraApr 13th 2010 12:05PM
I dont like the radio streaming on Last.fm as much as other streaming services. Their full track option was the absolute ONLY reason I ever went to the site. This sucks but there's other options out there... it was good knowing you Last.fm, before you sucked.
OneiroiApr 13th 2010 7:09PM
If this is the case, please please please make a deal with Pandora. It would be nice to listen to have Pandora scrobble automatically, instead of using pandora-fm http://pandorafm.real-ity.com/login.php
dosmilApr 14th 2010 1:50AM
Plenty of other good services with other offerings, Pandora, Slacker, Sky.fm, yes.fm,rockola,etc... I put Last.fm at the end of the list of radiostations, nothing to see there.