May 20 Site Update

flaneur said:
* Full-length track playback now happens primarily on track pages. This means that to play a specific track or preview on-demand, you should head over to that track's page.

* Coming soon… We have a lot going on in the labs that should find its way to the site in the next little while. Stuff like: making it easier to spot free downloads from artists; album info when listening to the radio; improvements to track pages; better ways to keep up with what the artists in your library and your Last.fm friends are up to; and more. Stay tuned.



How about forgo those "coming soon" features in exchange for undoing today's update? Y'know, stop paying coders to do unnecessary cosmetic features so we can retain useability of the site? Maybe spending money on these silly upgrades and expanding your bandwidth usage and all that is a bit shortsighted when you keep losing features and cutting off services to users at the same time.

No, they have to transform Last.FM in a stage for top hit artists. If one listen only to top ten artist (and if tenth artist go eleventh place he/she cease to listen to him... gopt the kind of people I'm talking about? yes, the human parrots) it will be a paradise, like Bebo, iLike and all that majors mega-ads shaped vaguely like "social networks", but they are the internet incarnation of MTV model: hammer people head with crap until they get used and buy it.

flaneur - good to know you're listening, but what's the point? Will you change your minds and put players back on album and artist pages just because we've complained? Doubt it.

I get the feeling Last.fm suits are worried you're up against Spotify but seriously, in practice, it doesn't work like that. In practice, once I'm logged in, I'm far too lazy to fire up Spotify and start looking in there (even though I've got every greasemonkey going). If that's true for me, it's true for many. I notice more and more albums are auto-advance here and I prefer to try things here before trying elsewhere. It's just less effort. That article I cited from Billboard backs me up big-time. Even when albums are not auto-advance, if I'm here at the PC, I will choose you. If I'm away from here and just want background, I'll choose Spotify, because then I don't notice the adverts so much.

There are two questions going round in my mind: 1) where did this decision come from when it goes against everything, and 2) why didn't you talk to us?

This decision doesn't make you a one-stop shop anymore. It makes you a pit-stop. I know one of the next-stage search engines will point to you when it's launched this autumn (irepli - see my sig). They chose you because you have been the best on the web so far. What are you now? Spotify's big brother?

Please put the music back.

Babs_05 said:
What are you now? Spotify's big brother?


If they proceed like this May update, they will be Spotify's little sister some day... ;-)

How was last.fm so profitable and feature rich before the CBS sellout, and immediately afterward, suddenly couldn't afford jack, and had to disable features, and then start forcing various countries to pay to listen?

Instead of working on ways to increase page view, which results in pissed off people, how about instead looking for ways to make people want to subscribe? That doesn't mean moving once-free features to subscriber-only. That's how you managed to make me stop scrobbling and cancel my subscription.

Good, you brought back multi tag/artist audio, in a dumbed down state. That's a good start. Bring it back to its original state. How about adding "taste graphs" in the player for subscribers that show their tastes in music as compared to other listeners of the track? Perhaps add pause and the ability to skip to a certain part of the currently playing track for subscribers? Sell the music directly, instead of going through iTunes and Amazon. Make it so you can buy music for other members. How about a pay-only API feature where the user can look up "relational distance" between two tracks, artists, tags, etc? I'm sure if you'd quit ignoring the users, you'd find plenty of ways to make Last.fm the most profitable division of CBS. We're here, you just need to listen.

What I'm seeing here is an attempt to increase revenue while putting absolutely nothing in. "We added multi tag radio! See, that's worth subscribing for. Just ignore the fact we removed it a couple years ago because Time Warner was being anti-competitive, just like with Red Box."

And do you really think spotify and last.fm are not in the same lobby? They have to deal with same Big Brother: the majors.

And not only: there are hundred of nations in the world, see hopw many are served by spotify.

It's all work in progress, but to take money from people. They are not the Red Cross, you are talking about multinational companies.

Did you noticed iLike goin into facebook, facebook cooperating with reverbnation and so on... do you want Hi5 into iLike, or into Facebook?

Boys, they're fucking us while we discuss about the color of the gland. It's purple, as usual, with a hole at the edge. And it pints at our back.

lizvelrene said:
Y'know, stop paying coders to do unnecessary cosmetic features so we can retain useability of the site? Maybe spending money on these silly upgrades and expanding your bandwidth usage and all that is a bit shortsighted when you keep losing features and cutting off services to users at the same time.

Yep.
People come here first and foremost to listen to music. Pages are getting too bogged down with videos, images and assorted junk. The site's about a customizable background away from Myspace territory. Tone it down! We don't need so much flashy bullshit, especially if Last FM is experiencing financial trouble.

@buzz-in
I'd apply, but they require this pesky thing called a degree. Apparently, experience means less than a sheet of paper these days. And even if they didn't require a degree, I'd be fired in a week tops for insubordination because I call it like I see it.

mjreynolds is spot on right.

We've put up with a bust reply tracker for how long? one year? two years? I see the text "never miss a message again" and I think "are you kidding??" Even when mine does work, it doesn't show all replies.

This week, I had about 25 visitors one day. That's abysmal. Considering before the site 'upgrade' last year I was easily clearing a 1,000 a week, that's appalling. I'm not an artist but how does that translate to those who are?

I keep saying this, you've never listened, but where is 'groups now active'? That brought the site to life. All groups are dead right now and the absence of this feature isn't helping. Alongside this was the page of brand new journals just published by users. It used to be a page on its own, on the way to viewing groups. That was a superb feature.

Then there's the day-to-day. How long is it taking right now to leave a shout? send a PM? view any of our pages? post in forums? The amount of time you're asking of us is unacceptable. I've stopped sharing because that feature doesn't work. I don't leave a shout unless I really must. It just takes too long.

There's less and less to enjoy. If you're pleasing your suits, great, but you're not pleasing me.

Today's news has made me really cross.

mjreynolds said:
@buzz-in
I'd apply, but they require this pesky thing called a degree. Apparently, experience means less than a sheet of paper these days. And even if they didn't require a degree, I'd be fired in a week tops for insubordination because I call it like I see it.I've got degree(s) but they'd never have me either! ;-)

I don't understand, really.
If Last.fm was a kingdom and some dictator stated that things would be that way, there was nothing people could do (apart from rebellion) but this isn't. There are alternative sites which can do all Last.fm did before for free.
So, pissing people off won't give them anything back, subscribers will cancel their subscriptions, independent artists will look somewhere else to publish their works and the surely many people will delete their accounts.

tl;dr dumb strategy at all. This site is optional, we don't need to stand all your poor arguments and keep living the same way. Only Last.fm will lose.

Ezeldav said:
So, pissing people off won't give them anything back, subscribers will cancel their subscriptions, independent artists will look somewhere else to publish their works and the surely many people will delete their accounts.
I took out a years subscription last September and it's been pretty much downhill since then. I feel as if I've been conned

What is this? The artist pages are worthless now. I'll find my music previews somewhere else then, thank you.

Who thought a list of videos was more useful than track previews? I hope heads roll over this one.