Last.fm is not handling the feedback well, IMHO

acreature said:
One thing that's not immediately apparent from Russ' image above is that the green highlight means that more people said "I like it" than "I hate it" or "I'm not sure". That's right - there was more positive than negative feedback for almost all of the new pages.

How large was the closed beta using the subscribers as your data set compared to the overall number of subscribers and non-subscriber members?

The closed beta with the paying users may have won out by a slight margin, but I find it interesting the last.fm staff never pursued the idea of then opening up the beta to the rest of the user base in an open beta format before going fully live with the project.

and you did that:
facebook+myspace+last.fm = lastfacebook.fm

i hate facebook and now you did last.fm like facebook... this sucks, really

and how about the 500 artist overall chart? CBS are only interested on the first 200 artists? ;)

nobody ask me anything:S I don't want new lastfm

Wow. We're haters now. Like the new format is a ragin' MC.

DON'T BE HATIN'!

Eloquent.

Thank you for your response. I sympathize with how you must feel about having your work trashed, please understand that this is not personal. There have been some jerks who have said nasty things on both sides, but I hope you will ignore them but still deal seriously with the constructive criticism from your serious customers.

That said, with all due respect your response is just a longer version of "It's change" and "people always complain" and "you will get used to it in time" To which I will say again: Not a convincing argument much less a constructive response.

Russ, I don't know you and I do not presume to judge you and I do not wish to dismiss you. I do ask though that you give me something more with which to deal with other than "It's change" and "people always complain" and "you will get used to it in time." We are past that point in the conversation and I invite you to please join that.

I have been a regular member of Last.fm since 2005 (see my profile) and I do remember the change in 2006 (as do many others) and there was not even a tenth of the complaining that there is for this one. You are really missing the boat if you insist this is nothing more than a "get used to change" situation.

The bottom line, Russ, is that there are people out here who use Last.fm for very serious purposes. I am in the music business myself and I and many other artists use Last.fm to make connections and learn about our audience and each other. If that functionality is gone (I notice you didn't address that issue in your post) then why would we continue to use Last.fm? If the situation remains unchanged we won't be renewing our subscriptions and we will be taking our traffic elsewhere. I do believe Last.fm is in the business of making money yes? Driving away your most dedicated customers is not good for making money.

Now, I don't care if it is you, CBS, or Cthulu who thinks this new design is a good idea. The point is that thousands of people are threatening to leave because you did, in their well-considered opinions, ruin the Web site. Last.fm's response has been poor, I don't think there is much question about that. We hear from the Beta testers that their input was ignored. That seems very credible to me based on what I have seen and heard and given how the Beta was handled. Your response, I regret to say, enforces that.

If all you, CBS, or whoever is running the show really want nothing more than a MySpace/Facebook clone then that is your right. It is your company. But ultimately, every company is run by its customers, or lack thereof. If you want to be another MySpace/Facebook clone then that is all you will be and you will have no one for customers beyond the caliber of that and of course only a fraction of those leftover from MySpace and Facebook. As I said before, because I believe it is true, this will be the death of Last.fm if that is the choice your company makes. Again, that is up to you.

I made two analogies earlier in this thread - the Google one, and the Coca-Cola one both of which I hope you take seriously. If Coke could change, so can you. No one will think less of you for listening to your customers.

Respectfully,
Douglas

naugrim said:
How large was the closed beta using the subscribers as your data set compared to the overall number of subscribers and non-subscriber members?

The closed beta with the paying users may have won out by a slight margin, but I find it interesting the last.fm staff never pursued the idea of then opening up the beta to the rest of the user base in an open beta format before going fully live with the project.


The closed beta elicited over 10,000 individual pieces of feedback from our most dedicated users (i.e. subscribers). The beta had been open (and advertised on every last.fm page) since Monday this week. We know that's probably not long enough, but unfortunately other pressures dictated this being released on Thursday :/.

electro_sound said:
and you did that:
facebook+myspace+last.fm = lastfacebook.fm

i hate facebook and now you did last.fm like facebook... this sucks, really

and how about the 500 artist overall chart? CBS are only interested on the first 200 artists? ;)


Your 500 artists should be back very soon ;). Till then you can use the library to view all artists in your profile.

I would like to point out that I will eventually get used to the new site. I just want to know that we still have a chance to change things that we don't like. According to the response that was given now, it seems that we do still have a chance to change things.

As I said, I really don't mind the visual design and graphics. What I mind the most is the fact that everything is out of reach. Clicking and scrolling is not something that people like if there is a possibility for everything to be easily visible. Obviously, as presented on the old site, most of the things were easily visible. I could scan someone's page in less than a minute, and now I have to spend 5-10 minutes clicking various links in order to see simple things like weekly charts and neighbours (not to mention the way I have to scroll in order to see the journals or the shoutbox; and yes, I know I can only click the link to reach the shoutbox, but right now, apparently I have a bug and when I click the link for the shoutbox, it just tosses me to the end of the page ._.). I liked the old site because it made navigation easy. I was trying to get used to beta for two weeks now. When I made my account, it took me about 5 days to get used to everything. Here, after two weeks, I still have problems. That's why I don't like it. Because it doesn't seem functual.

I, of course, hope things will be changed still, but this 'going live' somehow gave me the feeling that this is final and that only smaller bugs will be fixed in the future and that's it. I am not that big of an optimist to expect you to put the neighbours on the main page and not a click away, or to put the shoutbox somewhere closer, or to completely change the recently played box because it's too big and takes too much unnecessary place and so on. Those are all big changes, so I believe there won't be such drastic changes.

I am not an old member and do not recall the previous changes, but why should I? I understand that we will all get used to this, but is that the only way to deal with it? If we have a chance to change things, we will fight and moan and whine. Because they gave us the option to do it. So until they say "We won't change anything else from now on", we will point out the things we want changed :) Getting used to the site is the easiest way to deal with things; just accept your fate and deal with it. But, they gave us the option to participate in changing. So, please stop telling people to get used to it, because it was clearly said that the site will still be changed.

I appreciate the work that was put into all this, but just consider the fact that not everything is better than it was. Wasn't the point of changing to make last.fm better? Well, I believe that clicking and scrolling is not really better. So, I would like to see some changes done about this matter. It was just fine before, all information clearly visible. As if for design, I don't really mind anything except the fact that it somehow managed to look so plain and chaotic in the same time o_O All that white space, but yet, in the same time, everything seems to be in complete chaos.

I look forward to see what will eventually come out of this and I honestly hope that we will all love last.fm once more and that all this mindless quarrels will be long forgotten.

b1ackroses said:
how many people are using last.fm and not saying anything negative at all?Well to be fair, you could use that argument either way. How many people are using last.fm, not liking the new look, and are just not saying anything.

We'll never know.

It is nice to see at least some people getting beyond the "you ruined my page" vs. "shut up you whiner" dialogue :)

Sad to see some still being childish.

@acreature: Yes, that's weird. But it's a common problem with beta testing. You can't tell what the majority of the website likes or dislikes until you launch it. It's still far too early to say what the community wants. It's difficult to rely on beta testing only.
The opposition is growing fast, the group has acquired nearly 5000 members in two days and is still going strong - with all due respect, the votes can't be that representative.

@Russ: I have to disagree with you. It was a different thing in 2006. There was opposition, yes - and a lot of skepticism. But the movement didn't grow nearly as fast and didn't voice their opinion as loud as the current one. Last.fm back then wasn't the great music portal it is today. I remember you from the very beginning and I don't need to tell you just how much this site grew, both content and quality. Between then and now, the team introduced a lot of great changes, most of which I embraced. The redesign is something the site didn't need, at least in my opinion.

I'm a musician, too. I know how big of an opportunity Last.fm is for people like me. This opportuniy won't disappear just because of a new layout. I am thankful for that.
And I know how frustrating it can be if something you have been working on for a long time gets poor reception. You put a lot of effort into it and that didn't pay off quite as well as you had imagined. That's an awful feeling, something you wouldn't trade with anything in the world.

But still, why change it in the first place? The design was well received. This discussion proves just how popular it was. You could still introduce the new features without presenting in it a new look. And it's not only a new look, it's a new feel. Browsing the site feels differently now, it's a new experience. Most of the users (including me) liked the old experience a lot better. Why not keep it?

Comments like "I'm going to stop using the service!" or "I'm gonna delete my account!" are totally over-the-top, if you ask me. Still I think that you made a bad decision here. A decision I'm able to live with, but many other users may not.

WorldFusionRadio_com said:
It is nice to see at least some people getting beyond the "you ruined my page" vs. "shut up you whiner" dialogue :)

I totally agree :)

Wait. You could vote on the beta pages? Was that functionality always there from beta launch or was it added later? I used the beta and posted my thoughts on the beta forums but totally missed the whole voting thing.

The most important thing now is to introduce some colour choice as in the past (Paint in black etc.). I like the new layout and I will get used to it quickly, but this white is killing my eyes. You HAVE to do something with that.