Archive for the 'Music' Category

And last.fm just won

Published
by
richard
1 year, 3 months ago
in Music
. 0 Comments

The two biggest players in the social music world, Last.FM and Pandora, have been fighting for the love of music lovers worldwide for about two years. While both approaches to the same issue, listening to music online based on the music you already like, were always implemented differently (Pandora via the Music Genome Project, Last.FM via user’s recommendations and data pooling), the basic concept was the same: help people discover new music online and give them the ability to listen to it online.

In my eyes, Last.FM had always been the better service, not least due to their extensive efforts in embracing the whole of the music lover’s world in one big social network (”neighbours” based on taste in music, recommendations - both automatic and manual, discussion groups, event calendar, etc.). Pandora on the other hand really did do a good job when it came to quickly creating so-called “stations” with music you liked, mainly because there was no need to upload information about the music you listen to on your computer beforehand.

Well, the rivalry has now come to an end. Why? Because Pandora is forced to shut out everyone of the listeners who don’t reside in the US. While this was actually part of their TOS when they started, it was enforced only by having to sign up with a valid US ZIP code. But today they announced that due to license complications with all the countries other than the US, filtering out users from outside the US based on their IP will be enforced. They sent out emails to users about the crackdown today (TechCrunch article here), and I actually do believe their sentiment that they are indeed very sorry. Not only because they will deprive their users of the joy that is their excellent implementation of the Music Genome Project, but also because they have just been hit by one of the tentacles of old economy lashing out at their younger and hipper offspring, the new one (you know, economy), effectively destroying their service.

Last.FM, which seems to somehow be able to provide their service without getting entangled in all the license restrictions (or maybe they just don’t care yet), will be the victor emerging from this dirty, dirty episode besmearing the history of the global revolution the social web was actually set out to be (and I need some surgery to remove that sick part of my brain that comes up with these analogies).

Money, uh, Music makes the world go ’round

Published
by
richard
1 year, 5 months ago
in Music
. 1 Comment

It’s time for some more reviews. Focus: music related services (the more acute among you may have gathered that from my rather ingenious headline).

mediamaster logo Media Master

Let’s jump right in and look at the first one: MediaMaster. While the name may be on the boring side, the service itself is rather interesting. What is it? It’s an online music player! So last year? Well, here’s the twist: you can upload your own music collection, and as far as I have seen, you can upload as much as you want! And then, whenever you are using a computer with a nice enough broadband connection, you can let them stream the music back to you. They also offer a widget, so you can proudly display your music on your blog.

Uploading is easy, especially since they use Java to do so, making the whole venture cross-platform, which is of course music in the ears of a Linux advocate like me (yes, pun intended).

The player looks and is basic, but that’s alright when all you want to do is have some player play your music, don’t you think?

For the more visually inclined among you, a screenshot (click for the full-sized one):

mediamaster

mystrands logoMyStrands

Service number two is MyStrands, which is similar to Last.FM, as it uploads information about the music you listen to, and then weaves connections between your collection and other users’ collections. Desired outcome: good recommendations of new music and a bunch of like-minded friends.

Yesterday they issued a plugin for Amarok, my favourite music player in KDE, which does exactly what needs to be done to use the service: send information about my listening habits to my profile. That’s a great move, because hey, they now have me as a user.

Right now I can’t say too much about their ability to actually provide good recommendations or that wonderful new friend who listens to the exact same things I do. They do have a nice design, even though it seems a bit more cluttered and ad-filled than Last.FM’s. Maybe they should consider expanding the design to make use of the screen real estate most people have nowadays. Having a service provide that many features on a fixed-size design is really not too practical.

Finally, a screenshot:
my strands

Last.fm redesign

Published
by
richard
2 years, 1 month ago
in Music and Social Networks
. 2 Comments

Last.fm, a website that lets you upload information about your listening habits, and then helps you find new music and connect with like-tasted people, has just undergone a face-lift.

The design comes in two colours, one of them is their tried and tested red and white design, the other one, which you can switch to simply by hitting a switch in the upper right corner of the site, is black and white.

last fm red

As you can see in above screenshots, they also added a dashboard view, which is a concise collection of last.fm’s features, including but not limited to activity among your friends (of which I have one…I really need to get a handle on that being social stuff), recommended music, news bulletins, etc. With the number of features last.fm boasts, this really was a logical and necessary step.

But the redesign was not merely cosmetic. They also totally redid the way information is sent, how music is tagged and how you can stream music from their website (which they call “last.fm radio”). The good news is that it’s all bundled up in one application now.

last fm shoutThe bad news is that it’s all in app now which is only available for Windows and Mac. Now, I know that Linux is not widely used, and in order for a company to move beyond the early adopter crowd, they need to focus on the mass market. But, and this I think is more crucial, it locks out developers of third party apps. Amarok for example, my audio player of choice on Linux, had integrated Audioscrobbler support. Audiscrobbler was the script that uploaded the information to last.fm and effectively turned last.fm into the powerful tool that it is today. By limiting the options of uploading this information to their service, they cut into their own flesh.

As the shoutbox, a feature that lets you add comments to any page on last.fm, shows, I’m not the only one who’s dissatisfied with this move.

Audioscrobbler plugins for various apps are still available, but they point out that they are now unsupported, and by the look of my recently played tracks on last.fm, the plugin has ceased working a while ago.

Only recently I toyed with the idea of upgrading my account to a paid service, but I’m glad I didn’t, or else I’d now feel a lot like the person who left the first comment on the shoutbox displayed on the left.

With Pandora, a service offering a very similar service, last.fm is definitely not the only player in the field. If they start alienating their users, I’m sure some could seriously consider switching to a service that doesn’t suddenly deprive them of essential features. Especially if services like Pandora keep extending their feature-list, instead of crippling it.

Update: Seems like the Audioscrobbler plugin inside Amarok is still working. I must have overlooked my recent tracks in last.fm.

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