Last.fm is not handling the feedback well, IMHO

My suggestions to improve the site and make it more functional/useable:

An option to collapse or hide the flash player for people that never use it. This setting should be global (i.e. if collapsed on your profile it should show as collapsed on every profile you visit).

An option to collapse/hide the activity tracker. This setting should also be global.

Chart settings selected on one's profile (time frame/number shown) should be global for consistency and ease of use.

A text-only/no pictures setting for the library. Ideally the library would be displayed as an extended chart showing rankings if this setting is selected. Again, a global setting.

Bring top neighbors back to the profile page in a sidebar.
(...)

Bring the weekly snapshot chart back to the profile page (...)

Add inbox notification back to the header, visible on every page.

Change recent tracks listing to single line entries (artist - song title - when listened). This would help reduce the clutter and also be easier to read. Also add a no-pictures/no-quilt option.

I agree with these. And I still hate the looks. Perhaps Last.fm doesn't know my taste better than me after all?

Oh, I quoting from the previous page is still broken...

I know. But I think now they could fix it at last. It would be one of the very few few nice changes ;)

I see that reply tracker is back. Cool. But why do I have to click two times to see it? I think the old version was more functional.

NocnikStargazer, I guess you know that, like any other page, the reply tracker can be bookmarked; once the bookmark is in your bookmark toolbar... just a click, not two clicks!

I don't like nor do I hate the new Last.fm. Once out of the time out sessions, the site is quite decent, but, then again, so was the old Last.fm... Just that people, of course, feel better towards the "good ol'" Last.fm theme than towards the new looks. I feel that both of them were and are targeted towards a broad audience, being made, of course, with a practical intent, not an artistical one. I haven't seen many people complaining about the fact that the site only had TWO themes (Simply Red and Paint it Black) - partially because of the possibility of seeing a slightly different color scheme thanks to stuff like Greasemonkey and users like C26000 that try all their best to improve Last.fm's theme.

The situation is virtually identic here, just that it will take a while for CSS theme creators to put up better themes that are complaint with the new design. I have to admit though that I wouldn't have tried to do CSS editing if it wasn't for this situation... Not big deal CSS editing, but still getting used to seeing all those codes and having to handle carefully all those color codes and such... Really, I have no reason to complain, and stuff like the library or the new hearts option are some real improvements... Hard to think up many better improvements for such an already great site!

P.S. I really like the fact that I don't have to scroll anymore when writing a post in the forum post box!

I didn't read all the comments, I'll probably do it later.

I support the new design. The old sucked. Never liked it, it was also quite slow. I felt like it was hard moving to pages other than my profile. This one is much more easier. The recommendation system is YEARS AHEAD of the old one. It's much more useful to me. Aside from that, the old one felt quite outdated. The library feature was great. Don't give me crap "Too many pictures!". Also, no "I have no scroll down" stuff. I mean, is it SO hard to scroll down? I had to scroll down more in the old one


Oh, what you guys do is whining, because it's only a site and you're getting really butt-hurt over it. Don't get me wrong, I love this site and it's probably my most-visited one, I'm just getting a little sick of the whining.

Darsa said:
I didn't read all the comments, I'll probably do it later.

I support the new design. The old sucked. Never liked it, it was also quite slow. I felt like it was hard moving to pages other than my profile. This one is much more easier. The recommendation system is YEARS AHEAD of the old one. It's much more useful to me. Aside from that, the old one felt quite outdated. The library feature was great. Don't give me crap "Too many pictures!". Also, no "I have no scroll down" stuff. I mean, is it SO hard to scroll down? I had to scroll down more in the old one


Oh, what you guys do is whining, because it's only a site and you're getting really butt-hurt over it. Don't get me wrong, I love this site and it's probably my most-visited one, I'm just getting a little sick of the whining.
and i'm getting a little sick of "i haven't read the comments but here's what i think of your posts which i haven't read: you're all whiners".
i've read "whines" better phrased than your comment.
and mind you, i'm not attacking your support for the new style, feel free to disagree, i'm just annoyed at you being "rude".

True. The new grapevine doesn't show which posts have replies, as the old version did. Now that the reply tracker's back, I don't really care as I prefer to use that, but this is definitely a loss of functionality. In short, the latest grapevine does not indicate posts that have been replied to.

This new version will not last long... http://www.last.fm/group/Bring+back+the+old+Last.fm has gathered 11,000 member in a week! It really seems that they're not handling the feedback at all. It also seems that the group search tries to hide the "bring back the old fm" group into the last page of the search or then doesn't show it at all. Like they tried to hide the main channel of the negative feedback so that people couldn't join it.

This new version sucks. Bring back the old or a better one!

littlekasino said:
Babs_05 said:
Leave the moderators alone. They have been absolutely brilliant since go live. Staff didn't (couldn't?) stick around for the backlash but all the moderators stayed. They took a hell of a lot of abuse from a whole bunch of irate brats. Time and again, their words were twisted and thrown back at them.That's not entirely fair, I've seen at least one moderator - no need to make names and make this become personal - behave in a very cocky and arrogant manner, writing half-arsed replies and all in all not behaving at all as a moderator but exactly at the same level of the "irate brats". And I've seen people voice their discontent in a decent and moderate way as well, so don't make the mistake of behaving like that moderator yourself.


P.S. i don't know if it was by lucky chance that the forum this time didn't break in the transition from one thread page to the other, but if it wasn't luck that did it and you guys actually fixed the bug, then kudos.


I think I know who you're talking about and what they said. But there's a bigger picture. Where have staff been since go live? They haven't had much of a presence have they? They've popped in occasionally with little bits of information but otherwise, they've left it all to the mods - who are unpaid volunteers.

My point was no human being should be subjected to a week's worth of solid abuse. I've been around all this time and I've found it hard to bear, and I'm a regular user like everybody else. Everyone's getting irritated with each other for all sorts of reasons and everyone's calling each other for this or that.

I wanted to recognise that without the mods, we would not have had any support whatsoever in the last 8 days. I disagree with Last.fm's decision, obviously from senior management again!, to pull staff presence. I don't think it is good enough. It's diabolical that first they make public something that was nowhere near ready and then disappeared!

I know some companies don't even encourage feedback so this is better than nothing, but we have a better relationship with Last.fm. I'm disappointed. And, ok there has been the odd blip (human error) but I take my hat off to the mods for a job well done.

Dear WorldFusionRadio_com,

Do us a favor and take a week's break from the forum.

Have any of the mods and staff actually started sifting through all the threads at the BBTOLFM group?

I wonder how many of those 11,000 squawkers on that group have actually given any useful constructive criticism?

I think it's pretty interesting to suggest "people who claim to like the new site have been noticeably more abusive", as far as I know no one pro-new-site has made a video saying "fuck last.fm" ;)

But there has been offensiveness from both camps, it's expected on a contentious issue, but it's nice to see people are generally being civil.

WorldFusionRadio_com said:
I praised Last.fm for not censoring comments and criticism - then one of the moderators censored that comment (beyond ironic). Other than that Last.fm have allowed people to have their say and I praise them for that. But the lack of meaningful response from Last.fm Staff has been disappointing. Not just little response in the forums but in not fixing the bug reports or implementing any suggestions.

I think it's unfair to claim nothing has been done. We've been doing our best keep up to date on the forums, whilst still fixing bugs and implementing suggestions.

Please bear in mind we are few and the number of bugs/suggestions/complaints is many. If we spent all day on the forums responding to threads there wouldn't be time to actually do anything.

WorldFusionRadio_com said:
Two moderators have been childish jerks off-and-on since the new design rolled out. But then so have several others defending the new design. It has been a curious side effect that the people who claim to like the new site have been noticeably more abusive than those who dislike it.

Your famous praised group comments (not from you but from the anti-group):

"Jester-NL is a huge douche bag"

I" will bitch and whine at you every time you say this.
Unless you are by far the most retarded, numb-minded and imbecile team of coders on the planet, you have a back-up of the greatest site on earth"

"whoever is willing to resubscribe is either brain-dead or has incredibly bad taste"

"The Staff have done this whole thing from an Ivory Tower, no criticism of the Beta was even allowed during testing. We would just get used to it. We are just too unsophisticated to see the Emperor's New Clothes. Honestly, it would be time for the whole Staff there to take some Progressive Management courses,"

Pro-site more abusive as non? I could have linked hundreds of quotes from that group which basicly show the immaturity of some of the members.

praised Last.fm for not censoring comments and criticism - then one of the moderators censored that comment (beyond ironic). Other than that Last.fm have allowed people to have their say and I praise them for that. But the lack of meaningful response from Last.fm Staff has been disappointing. Not just little response in the forums but in not fixing the bug reports or implementing any suggestions. After many promises of "we are listening, we are fixing" what has actually been done? Yes, the forum reply window problem has been fixed (probably because Russ hated it :p).

You're still complaining that moderators are following the rules which last.fm asked them to do. Yeah something a harsh post erupts and i don't blame any of them. The amount of abuse they get from you guys is unbelievable.

I said this in a group:

"Problem though is that being anonumous on the internet at times means: i couldn't care less what i say because nobody will know who i am anyway."

Which of course goes for both sides.

I know a lot of people have had a wait-and-see attitude about Last.fm's response, me included. They decided to give it a week or two and see how Last.fm responds to the customer feedback (including over 11,000 members in Bring Back the Old Last.fm). Can anyone say that those people who were willing to give Last.fm a chance have been rewarded for their patience?

Let me tell you this. Yes you have an 11k group. Now remove all those new accounts expecially made to troll on these forums and to add a voilume in that group. Then remove all those who couldn't care less and are just there so they can flame away. After that you should have a group of people who can serious talk about the new last.fm. That group will never make an impression to anyone. People just have to read those forums and know it's just a big troll/flamefest.

Besides that lies are being spread around on these forums about last.fm to discredit last.fm and boast your group's ego:

Okay, with all due respect to Last.fm they do not have seven million users. Is that what they claim? Friend of mine in the marketing business says all corporations exaggerate their Web traffic by about ten times (print newspapers and magazines do it too). Let's say Last.fm has more like a million users total, which sounds about right given their stats. But a user count is all registered users and only a percentage of any site's users are regular visitors.Last.fm is unusual in that a percentage of users scrobble but don't often visit the Web site. I know more than a few people who check in once a week at most, they only use Last.fm for the scrobble stats. So how do you push advertising to users who scrobble but don't visit the site......?

Which someone responded with (link :http://www.last.fm/forum/21713/_/436296/2

Excellent job pulling facts out of nowhere. In terms of traffic, Alexa ranks Last.fm as 114 in the UK, 225 in the USA. Any way you cut it, that's a lot of traffic. (and by the way, it's 15 million active users)

Also, as far as all the money going to the founders, you have to understand that the founders probably gave up quite a large percentage of the company to venture capitalists (Fidelity Ventures, Index Ventures, Joi Ito) before the purchase so that they would have the necessary resources to run the site, etc. The founders didn't walk away with nearly as much as I think you presume.

If you're going to criticize and make insinuations, at least do some research first.

Of course you never answered that back. If you guys want to really have impact, stop playing around like little kids and start getting serious.