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Last.fm is a music website founded in the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...
in 2002. Using a music
recommender system A recommender system, or a recommendation system (sometimes replacing 'system' with a synonym such as platform or engine), is a subclass of information filtering system that provide suggestions for items that are most pertinent to a particular ...
called "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of the
track Track or Tracks may refer to: Routes or imprints * Ancient trackway, any track or trail whose origin is lost in antiquity * Animal track, imprints left on surfaces that an animal walks across * Desire path, a line worn by people taking the shorte ...
s the user listens to, either from
Internet radio Online radio (also web radio, net radio, streaming radio, e-radio, IP radio, Internet radio) is a digital audio service transmitted via the Internet. Broadcasting on the Internet is usually referred to as webcasting since it is not transmitted ...
stations, or the user's computer or many portable music devices. This information is transferred ("scrobbled") to Last.fm's database either via the music player (including, among others,
Spotify Spotify (; ) is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 456 million monthly active use ...
, Deezer, Tidal, MusicBee,
SoundCloud SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform and music sharing website that enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio. Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud is one of the largest music streaming se ...
, and Anghami) or via a plug-in installed into the user's music player. The data is then displayed on the user's profile page and compiled to create reference pages for individual artists. On 30 May 2007, it was acquired by
CBS Corporation The second incarnation of CBS Corporation (the first being a short-lived rename of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation) was an American multinational media conglomerate with interests primarily in commercial broadcasting, publishing, an ...
via its streaming division
CBS Interactive Paramount Streaming (formerly CBS Digital Media Group, CBS Interactive, ViacomCBS Streaming), a division of Paramount Global, oversees the company’s streaming technology and offers direct-to-consumer services, free, premium and pay. These incl ...
, today a part of
Paramount Global Paramount Global ( doing business as Paramount) is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate owned and operated by National Amusements (79.4%) and headquartered at One Astor Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, New York. ...
, for £140 million (US$280 million). The site formerly offered a radio streaming service, which was discontinued on 28 April 2014. The ability to access the large catalogue of music stored on the site was later removed entirely, replaced by links to
YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
and Spotify where available.


History

The current Last.fm website was developed from two separate sources, ''Last.fm'' and ''Audioscrobbler'', which were merged in 2005. Audioscrobbler began as a
computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...
project of Richard Jones when he attended the University of Southampton School of Electronics and Computer Science in the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...
, with the term ''scrobbling'' defined as the finding, processing, and distribution of information involving people, music, and other data. Jones developed the first plugins, and then opened an API to the community, after which many music players on different
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...
platforms were supported. Audioscrobbler was limited to keeping track of which songs its users played on a registered computer, which allowed for charting and collaborative filtering.


Audioscrobbler and Last.fm (2002–2006)

Last.fm was founded in 2002 by Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel, Michael Breidenbruecker and Thomas Willomitzer, all of them from
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...
or
Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
, as an Internet radio station and music community site, using similar music profiles to generate dynamic playlists. The site name takes advantage of a domain hack using .fm, the top level domain of
Micronesia Micronesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, consisting of about 2,000 small islands in the western Pacific Ocean. It has a close shared cultural history with three other island regions: the Philippines to the west, Polynesia to the east, ...
, popular with
FM radio FM broadcasting is a method of radio broadcasting using frequency modulation (FM). Invented in 1933 by American engineer Edwin Armstrong, wide-band FM is used worldwide to provide high fidelity sound over broadcast radio. FM broadcasting is cap ...
related sites. The "love" and "ban" buttons allowed users to gradually customise their profiles. Last.fm won the Europrix 2002 and was nominated for the
Prix Ars Electronica The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the best known and longest running yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music. It has been awarded since 1987 by Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria). ...
in 2003. The Audioscrobbler and Last.fm teams began to work closely together, both teams moving into the same offices in
Whitechapel Whitechapel is a district in East London and the future administrative centre of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is a part of the East End of London, east of Charing Cross. Part of the historic county of Middlesex, the area formed ...
,
London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, 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. The old Audioscrobbler site at the audioscrobbler.com
domain name A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...
was wholly merged into the new Last.fm site on 9 August 2005. Audioscrobbler.net was launched as a separate development-oriented site on 5 September 2005. However, at the very bottom of each of the Last.fm pages there was an Audioscrobbler "
slogan A slogan is a memorable motto or phrase used in a clan, political slogan, political, Advertising slogan, commercial, religious, and other context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose, with the goal of persuading members of the publi ...
", which changes each time the page is refreshed. Based on well-known sayings or advertisements, these originally appeared at the top of the Audioscrobbler website pages and were all created and contributed by the original site members. An update to the site was made on 14 July 2006, which included a new
software application Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
for playing Last.fm radio streams and for logging of tracks played with other media players. Other changes included the 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
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and a new visual design for the web site (including an optional black colour scheme). The site began expanding its language base on 15 July 2006, with a Japanese version. Currently, the site is available in
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
, Spanish,
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, Russian, Turkish and
Simplified Chinese Simplification, Simplify, or Simplified may refer to: Mathematics Simplification is the process of replacing a mathematical expression by an equivalent one, that is simpler (usually shorter), for example * Simplification of algebraic expressions ...
. In late 2006, the site won Best Community Music Site at the BT Digital Music Awards in October. Last.fm also teamed with EMI on Tuneglue-Audiomap. In January 2007 it was nominated for Best Website at the NME Awards.


CBS Acquisition and redesign (2007–2009)

At the end of April 2007, rumours of negotiations between CBS and Last.fm emerged, suggesting that CBS intended to purchase Last.fm for about £225 million ($449 million). In May 2007 it was announced that Channel 4 Radio was to broadcast a weekly show called Worldwide Chart reflecting what Last.fm users around the world were listening to. On 30 May 2007, it was announced that Last.fm had been bought by CBS for £140 million with Last.fm's current
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staying in place. In July 2008, the "new generation" Last.fm was launched featuring a completely new layout, color scheme, and several new features, as well as some old ones removed. This was, however, met with dissatisfaction amongst some users, who complained about the "ugly and non-user-friendly layout", bugs, and slowness. Still, a month after the redesign a CBS press release credited the redesign with generating a 20% growth in the site's traffic. On 22 February 2009,
Techcrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper An online newspaper (or electronic news or electronic news publication) is the online version of a newspaper, either as a stand-alone publication or as the online version of a printed periodical. Goi ...
claimed that " he
RIAA The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/ ...
asked social music service Last.fm for data about its users' listening habits to find people with unreleased tracks on their computers. And Last.fm, which is owned by CBS, allegedly handed the data over to the RIAA." This led to several public postings from both Last.fm and
Techcrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper An online newspaper (or electronic news or electronic news publication) is the online version of a newspaper, either as a stand-alone publication or as the online version of a printed periodical. Goi ...
, with Last.fm denying passing any personal data to RIAA. The request was purportedly prompted by the leak of U2's then-unreleased album '' No Line On The Horizon'', and its subsequent widespread distribution via
peer-to-peer file sharing Peer-to-peer file sharing is the distribution and sharing of digital media using peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology. P2P file sharing allows users to access media files such as books, music, movies, and games using a P2P software program t ...
services such as BitTorrent. Three months later, on 22 May 2009, Techcrunch claimed that it was CBS, the parent company of Last.fm, that handed over the data. Last.fm again denied that this was the case, saying that CBS could not have handed over the data without Last.fm's knowledge.


Changes to streaming and access on other platforms (2009–2011)

On 24 March 2009, Last.fm announced a change in free stream listening policy. According to the
blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...
post " ..In the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, nothing will change. In all other countries, listening to Last.fm Radio will soon require a subscription of €3.00 per month." The change went into effect on 22 April 2009. The announcement led to a wave of disappointment among users, resulting in users stopping submission of their data, refusing to change signatures/avatars and even deleting their accounts. On 11 September 2009,
CBS Radio CBS Radio was a radio broadcasting company and radio network operator owned by CBS Corporation and founded in 1928, with consolidated radio station groups owned by CBS and Westinghouse Broadcasting/Group W since the 1920s, and Infinity Broad ...
announced that Last.fm programming would be available in four major market FM stations for the first time on their
HD Radio HD Radio (HDR) is a trademark for an in-band on-channel (IBOC) digital radio broadcast technology. It generally simulcasts an existing analog radio station in digital format with less noise and with additional text information. HD Radio is used ...
multicasts. This includes KCBS-HD2 in
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; KITS-HD3 in
San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...
; WWFS-HD2 in
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; and WXRT-HD3 in
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...
. The programming, which consisted mostly of music aggregated by Last.fm's user-generated weekly music charts as well as live performances and interviews from the Last.fm studios in New York City, debuted on 5 October. On 12 April 2010, Last.fm announced that they would be removing the option to preview entire tracks, instead redirecting to sites such as the free
Hype Machine Hype Machine is a music blog aggregator created by Anthony Volodkin. History Hype Machine was originally a music database created in 2005 by Anthony Volodkin, then a sophomore computer science major at Hunter College.Heilemann, JohCapturing the ...
and pay-to-listen MOG for this purpose. This provoked a large negative reaction from some in the Last.fm user community who perceived the removal as hindering the ability of lesser-known and unsigned artists to gain exposure for their music and general enjoyment of the site. A new "Play direct from artist" feature was introduced soon after, which allowed artists to select individual tracks for users to be able to stream in full. The ability to listen to custom radio stations ("personal tag radio", "loved tracks radio") was withdrawn on 17 November 2010. This change provoked an angry response among users. Last.fm stated that the move was for licensing reasons. The change meant that a tag radio stream would include all music tagged as such, not just that tagged by each individual user, effectively widening the number of tracks that might be streamed under any one tag set.


Website and desktop application redesigns (2012–2013)

In March 2012, Last.fm was breached by hackers and more than 43 million user accounts were compromised. The full extent of the hack, and its connection to similar attacks against
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,
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and Myspace in the same time frame, were not confirmed until August 2016. The passwords were encrypted using an outdated, unsalted MD5
hash Hash, hashes, hash mark, or hashing may refer to: Substances * Hash (food), a coarse mixture of ingredients * Hash, a nickname for hashish, a cannabis product Hash mark *Hash mark (sports), a marking on hockey rinks and gridiron football fiel ...
. Last.fm made users aware of the attack in June 2012. On 14 February 2012, Last.fm announced that a new beta desktop client had been launched for public testing. The new scrobbler was released for all users on 15 January 2013. On 12 July 2012, Last.fm announced a new website redesign was also open to public beta and would rely on feedback from testing users. The site redesign went live for all users on 2 August 2012. While well received by technology websites, some of the site's users reacted negatively to the changes on the website's forum. On 19 June 2012, Last.fm launched Last.fm Originals, a new website featuring exclusive performances and interviews from various musical artists. On 13 December 2012, it was announced that Last.fm would discontinue radio service after January 2013 to subscribers in all countries except the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Brazil. Additionally, radio in the desktop client would require a subscription in the US, UK and Germany, although the website radio would remain free in those countries.


End of radio streaming and redesign (2014–present)

In January 2014, the website announced on-demand integration with
Spotify Spotify (; ) is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 456 million monthly active use ...
and a new
YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
-powered radio player. Upon the introduction of the YouTube player, the standard radio service became a subscriber-only feature. On 26 March 2014, Last.fm announced they would be discontinuing their streaming radio service on 28 April 2014. In a statement, the site said the decision was made in order to "focus on improving scrobbling and recommendations". On 15 April 2015, Last.fm released a subscriber-exclusive beta of a new website redesign.
Digital Spy Digital Spy (DS) is a British-based entertainment, television and film website and brand and is the largest digital property at Hearst UK. Since its launch in 1999, Digital Spy has focused on entertainment news related to television programmes, ...
described user reactions on the site's forums during the week of the redesign as "universally negative". In 2016, Music Manager was discontinued and music uploaded to the site by musicians and record labels became inaccessible; post-Spotify integration they could still be played and downloaded where the option was given, but following the change artists themselves were unable to access their songs in the Last.fm catalogue. The website experienced a slight revival during the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
beginning in 2020, tied to its popularity within music communities on the communication platform Discord. Last.fm celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 2022. Third-party developers have built programs that integrate users' listening statistical data with Discord, including a popular bot from the Netherlands which has over 400,000 total users.


Funding and staff

Last.fm Ltd is funded from the sale of online advertising space and monthly user subscriptions.


Funding prior to acquisition

In 2004, the company received the first round of angel money, from Peter Gardner, an investment banker who was introduced to the founders as early as 2002. A second round was led by Stefan Glaenzer (joined by Joi Ito and
Reid Hoffman Reid Garrett Hoffman (born August 5, 1967) is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman was the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily for prof ...
), who bought into Michael Breidenbruecker's shares as well. In 2006 the company received the first round of
venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which h ...
funding from European investors
Index Ventures Index Ventures is a European venture capital firm with dual headquarters in San Francisco and London, investing in technology-enabled companies with a focus on e-commerce, fintech, mobility, gaming, infrastructure/ AI, and security. Since ...
, whose General Partners Neil Rimer and Danny Rimer also joined Last.fm's
board of directors A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit orga ...
, consisting of Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel and Stefan Glaenzer (chair). Original founders Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel and Richard Jones left the company in summer 2009.


Features


User accounts

The free user account includes access to all the main features listed below. Registered Users are also able to send and receive private messages. The newly launched last fm pro user account adds additional features to the free tier, most notable being the ability to change username and early access to new features.


Profile

A Last.fm user can build 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 Online radio (also web radio, net radio, streaming radio, e-radio, IP radio, Internet radio) is a digital audio service transmitted via the Internet. Broadcasting on the Internet is usually referred to as webcasting since it is not transmitted ...
service, either with the Last.fm client, or with the embedded player. All songs played are added to a log from which personal top artist/track bar charts and musical recommendations are calculated. This automatic track logging is called 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 the total number of tracks played. There is also a Shoutbox for public messages. Profile pages are visible to all, together with a list of top artists and tracks, and the 10 most recently played tracks (can be expanded). Each user's profile has a 'Taste-o-Meter' which gives a rating of how compatible the user's music taste is.


Recommendations

Last.fm features a personal recommendations page that is only visible to the user concerned and lists suggested new music and events, all tailored to the user's own preferences. Recommendations are calculated using a collaborative filtering
algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...
so users can browse and hear previews of a list of artists not listed on their own profiles but which appear on those of others with similar musical tastes.


Artist pages

Once an artist has had a track or tracks "scrobbled" by at least one user, Last.fm automatically generates a main artist page. 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, 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. Official music videos and other videos imported from
YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
may also be viewed on the relevant artist and track pages. 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
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. A photograph of the artist may also be added. If more than one is submitted, the most popular one is chosen by public vote. User submitted content is licensed for use under the
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Attribution Share-Alike License and
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. Last.fm currently cannot disambiguate artists with the same name; a single artist profile is shared between valid artists with the same name. Also Last.fm and its users currently do not differentiate between the Composer and the Artist of music which serves for confusion in classical music genres.


Charts

One particular feature of Last.fm is the semi-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. Each of these charts is based on the actual number of people listening to the track, album or artist 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 tagging information of the audio file is available). Artist profiles also keep track of a
short list A short list or shortlist is a list of candidates for a job, prize, award, political position, etc., that has been reduced from a longer list of candidates (sometimes via intermediate lists known as "long lists"). The length of short lists varie ...
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 users' 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 attempts to translate some different artist tags to a single artist profile, and has recently attempted to harmonise track names.


Global charts

Last.fm generates weekly "global" charts of the top 400 artists and tracks listened to by all Last.fm users. The result is notably different from traditional commercial music charts provided by the UK Top 40, ''
Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large adverti ...
'', 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 The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...
have consistently been a top-five band at Last.fm, reflecting the continued popularity of the band's music irrespective of current album sales. Significant events, such as the release of a highly anticipated album or the death of an artist can have a large impact on the charts. 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.


Radio stations

Last.fm previously offered customized virtual "radio stations" consisting of uninterrupted audio streams of individual tracks selected from the music files in the music library. This service was discontinued 28 April 2014. Stations can be based on the user's personal profile, the user's "musical neighbours", or the user's "friends". Tags also have radio stations if enough music has the same tag. Radio stations can also be created on the fly, and each artist page allows selection of a "similar artists" or "artist fan" radio station. As of May 2009, Last.fm introduced Visual Radio, an improved version of Last.fm radio. This brought features such as an artist slideshow and combo stations, which allows for listening to stations consisting of common similar artists of up to either 3 artists or 3 tags. Under the terms of the station's "radio" license, 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. 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. On 24 March 2009, Last.fm announced that Last.fm Radio would require a subscription of €3.00 per month for users living outside the US, the UK, and Germany. This change was to take effect on 30 March, but was postponed until 22 April. The decision resulted in over 1,000 comments, most of them negative, on the Last.fm blog. Streaming and radio services were discontinued by Last.fm on 28 April 2014, in order to "focus on its core product, the scrobbling experience". However, the website continues to generate recommendations based on a user's existing library.


Player

An "in-page" player is provided automatically for all listeners with HTML5-enabled browser or
Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Flash ...
installed on their computers. However, it is necessary to download and install 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 A stream is a continuous body of surface water flowing within the bed and banks of a channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a stream may be referred to by a variety of local or regional names. Long large streams ...
that could be played in the user's music player of choice, with a
browser-based A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serve ...
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 on desktop computers. 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
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licensed under the
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and available for
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
,
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and
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
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 An album cover (also referred to as album art) is the front packaging art of a commercially released studio album or other audio recordings. The term can refer to either the printed paperboard covers typically used to package sets of and 78-r ...
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'' list; 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. In the latest version of the Last.fm Player application, the user can select to use an external player. When this is done, the Last.fm Player provides the user with a local URL, through which the Last.fm music stream is proxied. Users can then open the URL in their preferred media player. A new version of the desktop client, which had been in beta since early 2012, was released on 15 January 2013. This version disabled the radio function for free users. To access that feature, a paid subscription is necessary. Last.fm has also developed client software for mobile phones running the iPhone OS, BlackBerry OS and the Android OS. Last.fm has only released these apps in the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, claiming for four years that they are negotiating licenses for making the streaming available in other countries. Last.fm remained out of service for more than 22 hours on 10 June 2014. It was amongst the longest outages the company has faced. The company, however, remained in contact with visitors using a status page.


Scrobbling

In addition to Last.fm automatically tracking music played via Last.fm's radio, users can also contribute (scrobble) listening data to their Last.fm profile from other streaming sites or by tracking music played locally on their own personal devices. Scrobbling is possible with music stored and played locally via software on devices such as PCs, mobile phones, tablets, and standalone (hardware) media players. Indeed, these were the only methods of scrobbling listening data both before and after the existence of the Last.fm radio service. Certain sites and media players have the ability to upload (scrobble) listening data built-in, for others users must download and install a plugin for their music player, which will automatically submit the artist and title of the
song A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetiti ...
after either
half One half ( : halves) is the irreducible fraction resulting from dividing one by two or the fraction resulting from dividing any number by its double. Multiplication by one half is equivalent to division by two, or "halving"; conversely, ...
the song or the first four minutes have played, whichever comes first. When the track is shorter than 30 seconds (31 seconds in
iTunes iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mu ...
) or the track lacks
metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...
( ID3, CDDB, etc.), the track is not submitted. To accommodate dial-up users or those listening to music while offline, caching of the data and submitting it in bulk is also possible.


List of supported media players and streaming sites

The following services support sending service-specific recently played track feeds: *Rhobbler for Rhapsody (beta)


Other third party applications


Supported applications

;Build Last.fm As of March 2008, the website has added a section titled "Build" where third-party applications can be submitted for review, and then posted to the page. ;SXSW Band-Aid Last.fm partnered up with the
SXSW South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, ...
festival by creating an application embedded in the corresponding group page that filters the various artists at the festival by a user's listening statistics, and then uses Last.fm's recommendation service to also suggest other performing artists that said user has not listened to.


Other applications

*QuietScrob is a background scrobbler for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad *iScrob is a full realtime backgrounding Scrobbler for iPhone and iPod Touch *Pocket Scrobbler for Windows Mobile enables scrobbling from supported media players as well as streaming radio from Last.fm *LastFmLib.net (LGPL) for using the Last.fm web services in VB.Net/C# *Last.fm Java bindings (BSD) for using the Last.fm web services in Java *Last.fm recent tracks widget for Mac OS X displays a user's most recently played tracks. *Last.fm widget for
Opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...
also displays a user's most recently played tracks, but works on all platforms Opera runs on. *Last.fm dashboard widget for Mac OS X displays a user's last messages in his/her shoutbox. *last.tweet widget for Mac OS X displays the
cover art Cover art is a type of artwork presented as an illustration or photograph on the outside of a published product such as a book (often on a dust jacket), magazine, newspaper (tabloid), comic book, video game ( box art), music album ( album ...
of the recently played track, with
Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
integration. *FoxyTunes Firefox extension places Last.fm player controls and current song information on the browser status bar. *4u2Stream can play Last.fm content on UPnP equipped players. *ExitAhead finds music on
eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became ...
matching a Last.fm profile. *Last-Stats shows a user's stats and creates dynamic profile/chart images based on a user's Last.fm profile. * The Hype Machine can scrobble songs the user is listening to on the Hype Machine web-site. *SongStory is an App for the iPhone, which shows useful information about the currently playing track.SongStory
* Tastebuds.fm is a free music-oriented dating site that imports a user's profile from Last.fm. *Web Scrobbler is a browser plugin with wide community support that offers scrobbling for many web based player applications, including the ability to favorite tracks and edit scrobble information.


See also

* List of Internet radio stations *
List of online music databases Below is a table of online music databases that are largely free of charge. Note that many of the sites provide a specialized service or focus on a particular music genre. Some of these operate as an online music store or purchase referral se ...


References


External links

* * – official site
Audioscrobbler development siteThe Old Last.fmFree Last.fm Music Streamer Plugin for Chrome


Rockbites, 22 July 2003

Wired, 7 July 2003
The Musical Myware
Audio presentation by CEO Felix Miller, IT Conversations, 7 March 2006

Guardian Unlimited TheGuardian.com, formerly known as Guardian.co.uk and ''Guardian Unlimited'', is a British news and media website owned by the Guardian Media Group. It contains nearly all of the content of the newspapers ''The Guardian'' and ''The Observer'', ...
Interview with Last.fm co-founder, Martin Stiksel, 4 November 2006
The Celestial Jukebox
New Statesman on the story of Last.fm, June 2009
Last.fm music charts widgetLast.fm for PC alternative downloadLast.fm Down-Time Monitoring Tool
{{Online social networking 2002 establishments in the United Kingdom Android (operating system) software BlackBerry software CBS Interactive websites Domain hacks Online music stores of the United Kingdom Internet properties established in 2002 Internet radio in the United Kingdom IOS software Online music and lyrics databases Recommender systems Social cataloging applications Software that uses Qt Windows Phone software 2007 mergers and acquisitions