May 20 Site Update

Russ said:
, and 2) why didn't you talk to us?

Because it wouldn't have made any difference. On-demand listening is expensive, so we have to try and reconcile it with our advertising. We really don't enjoy doing it.

We want to try and bring free listening back as much as possible, but our focus is in cutting costs soon, in line with the fall in advertising. Once that's sorted, we can concentrate on making things better.

The other problem is that we have to face is how things look to the brand new user. We could have kept players on album pages where we weren't paying as much in royalties, but that would have made the site even more inconsistent and confusing to new users. And without new users, last.fm will die.

If your old users are confused and angry, how will you get new users? Alienating your current fanbase to appeal to hypothetical new fans doesn't work for tv shows, it doesn't work for music and it's not going to work for you.

You guys HAVE to get better at communicating. How do you expect us to react when you're pulling features with no advance warning and with no real explanation? Don't you think that if you laid out the situation for us we would understand? When so many of us are facing cost-cutting in our own workplaces right now? Good grief.

If there's a good and real explanation for changes, how about laying it out for us. Rather than a quick "BTW we're pulling this feature in the service you already paid for but don't worry LOOK OVER THERE OOH SHINY"

buzz-in said:
Russ said:
The other problem is that we have to face is how things look to the brand new user. We could have kept players on album pages where we weren't paying as much in royalties, but that would have made the site even more inconsistent and confusing to new users. And without new users, last.fm will die.
Without current users using your site, or subscribing last.fm will die.
How about cleaning up pages by removing all the video links, getting rid of the news on the side and recent activity.

Because people do actually use these features, and I guarantee that if we remove them people will moan at least as loud as they're moaning now. Also, videos and news cost us nothing to run compared to streaming.

All of these changes we're making are a calculated risk. Sometimes they're at the expense of our registered users and sometimes they're at the expense of brand new users. (Our registered users tend to moan on the forums more, so we have to try and balance between the two...)

Unfortunately I can't tell you how well these changes actually worked, except to say that we're honestly, really trying to piss you off as little as possible.

mjreynolds said:
@Russ, is on-demand radio more than $10/mo expensive? Giganews has had unlimited downloads for 25/mo for years, and truth be told, I've once peaked above 100 gigs in one month. They still manage to make a profit. So does Supernews. So does Rapidshare and Megaupload. So, why can't last.fm offer on demand music for a price and turn a profit? Serve up the compressed audio on mirror clusters, protected by lighttpd's download token system, and use a couple central servers to tell the player the next track URL to download. Peer with more ISPs to reduce transit cost. Having all the stream servers in London is expensive. Put a few in cheaper countries, like the US, Canada, and Scandinavian countries.

Neither Giganews, nor Rapidshare, nor Megaupload pay licensing fees for their music.They are illegal music providers (and they're doing damn well as such). They are protected in many cases by legal "safe-harbour" clauses.

Our bandwidth costs are absolutely negligible - we have some immensely good deals in London which we've been unable to match anywhere else in the world.

The vast majority of our streaming costs are paid to music copyright holders in licensing fees.

flaneur said:
Yup, this was certainly a factor in this change. To be clear: every time we stream content we need to pay royalties to artists + content owners, and more pageviews make it easier for us to do that in an economically sustainable way.I assume you're referring to advertisements. What about for subscribers, who don't get advertisements?

Oh wait, we do:



I know for a fact that a lot of these tracks are not available on iTunes, so these are nothing more than advertisements trying to get me to use iTunes. Subscribers shouldn't see these unless the artist or label has actually specified that their content should have a link to iTunes.

VGoRiLLaZ said:
What about "Use this photo on my profile" feature? Is it going to available any time soon?

Btw. Kudos for the new changes.


I second this! "Use this photo on my profile" would be great! And also, pleaseee bring the contact importer back! :)

Russ, is it really that confusing for new users to have a player on album pages? It is actually *way* more confusing for them to *hunt* for the albums vs. the player being right there in the corner. You just made it more difficult for *everyone*, your 'old' users in particular. If you can't afford it, then fine, but stop trying to justify the change by this 'makes it easier for new users' doublespeak when it does precisely the opposite.

What good are new users anyway when you alienate a large percentage of what *were* loyal users, those who came every single day and gave you lots of page views? You're not attracting enough new users to counteract the loss - know how I know this? Because I'm an artist and my listens have *plummeted* - no, not dropped off, not shown a modest decline, but *plummeted*. If you would have left well enough alone, you may have been able to weather this economic/advertising storm, but you insist on tweaking every little thing and almost *all* of the changes have been highly unpopular amongst both users and artists. Are you doing any market research at all before implementing proposed changes? I can't imagine you are when the changes are universally condemned by nearly everyone, and the ones who don't make their opinions known on the forum speak with their pageviews and listens...which have *plummeted*. If you want to be a social networking music site, why don't you be *social* and check with the community, get a consensus, maybe even brainstorm: how can we keep this site vital and relevant? What features, within reason, do you want to see on the site? And when changes do occur, instead of insulting our intelligence with this PR fluff that attempts to disguise loss of site functionality as *new* functionality, give it to us straight-up. Adding dishonesty to the mix only causes further discontentment and goodwill. This site is already a shadow of its former self...now you've attacked the music and see what you get. Noone wants a MySpace Light or a FaceBook II. We just want our Last.fm.

I think UnmadeBed said it best: Please add the following features to last.fm:
-CAPTCHAs to song pages
- 3 minutes sound commercial before the 30 śecond previews

Wait...you realise that was sarcasm, right? Maybe I shouldn't have said anything..."Ladies and Gentlemen, Last.fm is PLEASED to announce, our newest UPGRADE, to make it EASIER for YOU, our WONDERFUL Listeners and Artists, to listen to music by providing a FULL THREE MINUTE FREE MOVIE before EVERY DELICIOUS 30 SECOND SONG!!! That's right! I said ABSOLUTELY FREE movies starring products you already have IN YOUR HOME! AND THAT's NOT ALL!! Providing you with a BRAND NEW GAME - CAPTCHA! NOW, you won't just get PLAIN OLD MUSIC when you click on a track, you get...hold on to your seats...A FREE GAME, a FREE 3-MINUTE MOVIE, PLUS your song! You're WELCOME! Another innovation, straight to you from your FAVOURITE Social Networking Web 3.0 Friendster YourSpace NOT a music site, LAST DOT EFFIN EM! YEEAAAAHHH!!

Love,
ArabHorse

Hrm. My edit got eaten. Easiest way to keep pissed people to a minimum and also increase subscriptions is 4-fold:

• Stop removing features. This is the biggie.
• Communicate better. A blog is not an acceptable place to put news.
• Stop changing the layout. It's a pain in the ass to have to relearn where things are. This works in stores because it increases impulse shopping. Doesn't work so well on a website.
• When creating expensive new features, consider how much people would like it. If you think a ton of users would love it, make it subscriber only right out of the gate. That way, nobody feels like they were shat on, and you get the bonus of new subscribers.

--Stop removing features is indeed the biggie. Especially basic, fundamental features which are intrinsic to the site's identity and absolutely essential for the independent artists who make this site tick by uploading their creative works and adding more musical flavours to the site...which adds up to more pageviews due to more unique content. Web surfers can get their Britney Spears and Lady GaGa anywhere; there are better sites than Last.fm to get our mainstream music and video fixes. We don't need another feed to YouTube videos--we can just go there ourselves.

Again, the features you're pulling are what made Last.fm unique and distinguished it from other sites. It's what made me subscribe quite a few times and also upload my music here. Now i'm going to check out this Spotify, which I had no reason to do before. Nice one.

Could you not have just said,
"Right, the economy is shite right now and the royalty fees are taking the piss.
We need to get rid of the music from the artists' pages for now, but hopefully they'll be back once the economy is back on it's feet"?

But I guess concealing it beneath layers of "Oh no, I promise it's less confusing and better and easier. I promise. I do." is much easier, yes?

I actually like the update, the artist pages look better this way, just my opinion. And you still have a box with the streamable tracks on the upper right corner.

Also, please don't remove the player from the profile pages of users like people are asking. You can have an option for each user to remove it, but don't remove them all by default. I like my player on my profile, and I want it to stay there!

RiotGrrrlCS said:
And you still have a box with the streamable tracks on the upper right corner.

Actually, no you don't. That's the problem.

Sign here for the petition guys
http://www.last.fm/user/buzz-in/journal/2009/05/20/2qm3zj_change_the_artist_audio_players_back

mjreynolds said:
When creating expensive new features, consider how much people would like it.
We think about this every single day. Around 35 million people use the site every month, which gives us a ton of information about what features, pages, and areas get the most / least use, and how that is affected by every change we make. We pour over graphs, stats, and dashboards daily, across countries, user types (pro vs new vs anonymous), etc.

Besides this high-level view, we also spend time with individuals, from people in the office to friends to people on the street (or sometimes even in cafes!) And yes, that includes these very forums.

We listen to new users and existing users; nothing we do happens in a vacuum. I understand it takes a certain level of trust to accept this, and every change certainly WON'T please everyone (nor should we pretend it does), but hopefully this gives a bit of insight into the many inputs that influence our decisions.

@arabhorse, don't worry! At least they'll be making more money!