Last.fm

Last.fm is an Internet radio based on social software, which was developed in order to recommend users because of their listening habits new music, people with similar taste in music and concerts in their environment. Record companies and musicians are encouraged to grant licenses Last.fm to play their music. Last.fm currently has available a directory of over 80 million individual pieces of it and seven million for his Internet radio for streaming and 150,000 free MP3 downloads.

Last.fm merged on 9 August 2005 with Audioscrobbler and thus took over its functions. These store all played on the PC music pieces in a database, generate individual or global charts and connect users with musical neighbors. In musical neighbors are people who have a similar taste in music. From the database intersection of the interpreters of the songs are calculated within the registered persons. Voices many artists with another person in line is, these are known as musical neighbor.

Listen to a user of a song Last.fm, its name ( title and artist) is transferred to Last.fm and stored in the user profile and otherwise analyzed statistically. This transfer process referred Last.fm as " scrobbling " (to scrobble ).

Last.fm streams can be accessed in mp3 at 128 kbit / s at a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz.

• 2.1 Last.fm site 2.1.1 Flash player

• 2.3.1 Free Programs
• 2.3.2 Proprietary Programs

History

Last.fm originated from the two sides last.fm and audioscrobbler.com.

Audioscrobbler began as a computer science project by Richard " RJ " Jones at the University of Southampton in England. Jones developed the first plugins, and opened the application programming interface ( API ) for the development community, after many music players were supported on different operating system platforms. Audioscrobbler was limited to, logging played on a registered computer music, which allowed Charts and collaborative filtering.

Last.fm was founded by Austrians and Germans Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel, Michael and Thomas Breidenbrücker Willomitzer as an internet radio station and music community site in 2002 and went out of Netlabel " Insine " out. The music profiles of different users are compared and used the thus determined similarities to generate dynamic playlists. So the musical taste of the listener should be taken as closely as possible. The "Love " - and " Ban " buttons allow users to customize their profiles during playback. Last.fm won the Prix Euro 2002 and was nominated for the Prix Ars Electronica in 2003.

The teams of Audioscrobbler and Last.fm began to work closely, both teams moved into the same offices in Whitechapel, London, and in 2003, Last.fm was fully integrated into the Audioscrobbler profiles. Inputs could come through an Audioscrobbler plugin or a Last.fm music station. The two sites also shared many community forums. On 9 August 2005, the Audioscrobbler site was fully integrated on audioscrobbler.com in the Last.fm website. Audioscrobbler.net was launched on 5 September 2005 as a development- oriented website.

On 14 July 2006, a revised version of Last.fm was published. The playing Last.fm radio streams and the " scrobbling ", ie the transmission of titles that can be played with other programs such as iTunes, Winamp and Amarok were first united under one user interface. Other new features include the improvement of the friends system and the simplification of bidirectional friendships and the Last.fm Dashboard, where users can see on one page all of their profile data. This includes, but recent journal entries, music recommendations and answers on the forum messages as well as advanced options for music purchases on the internet.

On 15 July 2006, a Japanese version of the website was launched.

Since 19 December 2006, the page is also available in a German version. A German browser is generally headed straight to the German side.

On 10 May 2007 a ​​revised version was published by "Playlists". With this you can create a playlist of at least 15 songs together, which are then played back as music pieces in full length in the random mode. Also new is a section called Widgets has been introduced. In addition to a player widget for playlists it contains widgets for digital charts ( with 30 -second playback function ), a radio player widget, as well as the already known " Quilts " (widgets that display a configurable list of the most common items). The widgets can be used in other communities such as MySpace, etc. Virb.com insert.

On May 17, 2007 Music Videos have been introduced, but no music video channels.

On 30 May 2007 it was announced that Last.fm was sold for $ 280 million to the American company CBS Corporation.

Spiegel Online implemented on 14 June 2007, first temporarily Last.fm in its web, which was the first major collaboration of this kind by Last.fm. Due to deficiencies in the protection of minors filter the publisher initially took the offer back out. After an improvement in the filter, the offer was resumed.

2007 Last.fm, even music that was played on iPods began to consider and assign the user account. However, this support is still experimental and not yet work reliably.

On 17 July 2008 the design of the offer after several months of beta testing has been fundamentally changed. Among other things, color scheme and a modified structure, the new design with new features waiting for, while others were dropped.

As of April 22, 2009 cost the radio function for users outside the United States, Britain and Germany 3 Euro / British Pound / U.S. dollar a month.

Since January 15, 2013 the following changes have been implemented:

• In the U.S., the UK and Germany Radio in the desktop client is now a paid subscription feature, as everywhere
• In Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Brazil, there are no significant changes
• In all other countries, Last.fm offers from this date no radio service more

Name

The name " last.fm " is composed of "last ", the English word for " of / / the last " and "FM", which stands for frequency modulation. So he should signal that Last.fm was the only ( and last ) radio station you need.

Terms and playback

Last.fm site

The website of Last.fm offers numerous data feeds in multiple formats (currently own XML formats, RSS, plain text and XSPF ). In this way it is for developers of applications and websites very easy to access the information by Last.fm. For ease of use of the Last.fm services there's also the Audioscrobbler Web Services API. The Web Services from Last.fm, if not otherwise indicated, are taken under the Creative Commons license by-nc -sa to complete.

Flash Player

The website itself offers to play the Last.fm radio streams on both a built-in flash player and playback via external applications through its own URL protocol ( lastfm :/ / ).

Last.fm player

The Last.fm player is a client program for the services of Last.fm and serves as a reference implementation of the available interfaces. A graphical interface allows convenient use of radio streams and numerous services of the website, without the need for the web browser must be open.

Since the player is programmed in C and uses the Qt framework, it is available for many operating systems.

Player programs with Last.fm integration

In the open source community, a trend towards the integration of Last.fm has been shown in multimedia programs in the recent past. Several notable projects already use extensively the services of Last.fm or intend such integration in the near future.

Free programs

• Amarok: With version 2.0 is the integration of Last.fm part of the software. The still based on Qt 3 version 1.4 could be extended by a Last.fm plugin.
• aTunes: Provides transmission to mock plays and shows additional information for Last.fm song title, album and artists.
• Banshee: Provides a comprehensive integration of the functions of Last.fm. Support for the radio streams since version 0.13.2 is implemented as a plugin.
• Bmpx: Provides a very comprehensive integration of functions and supports radio streams.
• Clementine, Audio Player, Qt 4 fork of Amarok 1.4
• Exaile
• Herrie: command line player
• MediaPortal: Media Center application with Last.fm support.
• MusicBee: media player with extensive integration of last.fm and other radio streams
• Pana audio player fork of Amarok 1.4.10
• Rhythmbox
• Songbird
• Tomahawk
• Jaangle Submitted performed pieces and refers artist information including images of Last.fm
• Squeezecenter: Transfers performed pieces of personal last fm account and allows playing Last.fm radio streams via plugin.
• Vagalume: An originally developed for the Maemo platform for mobile devices Last.fm player, which is being developed for GNOME.
• XBMC
• Even the official playing program, the Last.fm player, is free software in terms of the GPL.
• Mobbler player for mobile phones based on Symbian S60
• VLC media player ( since version 0.9.0 an integral part of the player )

Proprietary programs

• Album Player: Supported radio streams, recommendations and communicating played pieces.
• MP3Toys: Supported radio streams, recommendations and communicating played pieces.
• TrillyTunes: Media Player plug-in for the Trillian Instant Messenger that supports radio streams, recommendations and communicating played pieces.
• Song Story: program for the iPhone. Provides song, album and artist information.
• Simfy music streaming service, scrobble played pieces to the personal Last.fm account.
• Spotify: Scrobbling ( transmitted) performed pieces to the personal Last.fm account.

Plugins

It are available for almost all popular player programs Last.fm plugin with more or less feature-rich. The radio stream is currently only supported by very few plugins.

Some player programs are available for the plugins:

• AIMP (supports Winamp plugin )
• Audacious
• Cmus
• Foobar2000
• ITunes (as well as iPod and iPhone )
• JetAudio
• MediaMonkey
• MusikCube
• Noatun
• Rhythmbox
• Songbird
• Spotify
• QCD
• Quod Libet
• Winamp
• Windows Media Player
• XMMS and XMMS2
• XMPlay

Scrobbling of unsupported devices

By means of identification of acoustic fingerprints can also be transmitted by not directly supported devices on Last.fm music. This also allows tracks from records or from the radio at Last.fm to send.

• Life Scrobble: A non- publicly available proof of concept that uses Echo Nest Music fingerprinting.
• Scrobblr: An application for Android-powered phones to record the music using the integrated microphone and Gracenote used as identification service.

Proxy programs

There are several programs that convert the Last.fm radio stream. These in turn act as an HTTP streaming server, and thus enable the play Last.fm radio with nearly any compatible streaming player. These include, among other things MyLastFM or LastFMProxy.

Recording

This was, for example, with the free programs TheLastRipper and LastSharp possible for the original play program Vagalume exist patches, so this is possible. The so-called ribs is not approved for a particular application in terms of use last.fm, but does not constitute a criminal offense within the meaning of copyright dar. After a change in the Last.fm API programs, however, do not work for call recording.

Subscriptions

There is also the possibility the Last.fm service fee to subscribe. In return, the subscriber will receive an ad-free surface, prioritized radio streams and various other personalized radio. Currently (as of June 2012) does this service cost 3 EUR / USD / GBP per month.

On 24 March 2009 it was announced the radio functions outside of the U.S., UK and Germany to provide only for subscribers. This scheme was on 30 March 2009 for the time being postponed, but finally officially introduced on 22 April 2009.

Since January 15, 2013, is (including Germany ) to listen only as a subscriber to listen to music through the desktop client from Last.fm in most parts of the world.

Funding and staff

Last.fm is financed through advertising on the website, the sale of music (CDs, downloads ) and concert tickets, and donations from users and the contributions of the subscribers. In 2005, Last.fm was the first business angel financing, led by Stefan Glänzer, who also took over the shares of Michael Breidenbrücker. 2006, the European Index Ventures got in, its general partner Neil Rimer and Danny Rimer the board of directors, consisting of Felix Miller, Martin and Stefan Stiksel Glänzer (Chair) joined. Currently, about 80 employees work at Last.fm in East London. In June 2009, the founding trio Miller / Stiksel / Jones announced that they will leave Last.fm over the course of the year.

Controversy regarding privacy

On 22 February 2009, the Internet magazine TechCrunch published on his blog an article in which it was accused of Last.fm, the RIAA in tracking down people who violate copyright, to be helpful. TechCrunch on the basis that an informant, which at CBS - would work - the owner of Last.fm. This would have testified that the RIAA would get handed users, the IP addresses that the at that time available only as an illegal copy album No Line on the Horizon for the band U2 " scrobbled " - and there have therefore procured illegally. Last.fm denied the allegation vehemently; The co-founder Richard Jones described the accusations as rumors and defaming TechCrunch in his blog with the words " Techcrunch are full of shit " TechCrunch after and published put another article in which re- statements of new informants were listed, the disclosure of personal data by CBS confirmed. There was a renewed, but diplomatic written denial of the allegations from Last.fm staff Russ Garrett. TechCrunch responded with a third article in which alleged inconsistencies in Garrett's statements are listed.

In June 2012, suddenly some passwords of Last.fm users were found on the internet. It was then advised all users of the portal to choose a new password.

Event System

Since October 2006 there is an event system. It creates the user with an automatic list of concerts based on the music user's profile. In addition, the user can easily add your own events. The interaction between users should thus be strengthened, because you can see what other users have attended the same concert and want to visit.

In March 2007, the event system has been developed to make larger cities directly via the link accessible.

Video channels

On May 17, 2007 Music Videos were introduced on the English side, and now (2008) they are also available in the German version. Now music labels and bands to upload music videos in the system. The restriction on labels and groups is so not like Last.fm YouTube is coated with copyright lawsuits. The videos are at a bit rate of 128 kbit / s encoding (current default YouTube: 64 kbit / s). There is now also a tab for music videos on the band and track pages. The aim is to offer analogous to Last.fm radio Last.fm video channels. The user personalized music video streams are thus shown.

Fingerprinting

The system of Last.fm allows you to " scrobble " tracks unknown artist by the fact that they are newly created, if required. Due to the manual tagging of songs created for so many artists, albums and songs different spellings, which can often be inadequately compensated by the Last.fm software and thus, among other things distort statistics.

Last.fm now prevents the front with the so-called fingerprinting; this is a technique that determined independently of the metadata a unique ID of a track to scrobble tracks correctly. This allows Last.fm to assign correct spellings and to clean up the catalog data ( so, for example, "Simon and Garfunkel " and " Simon & Garfunkel ", both a notation assigned ).

The desktop application reads the fingerprint of a title and transmits it. For new unknown songs, the software must determine this first, and then transmits it. The source of the title is not transmitted, and a change of, for example, MP3 files will not take place.

Known Issues

Last.fm the system is not able to distinguish the same artist; their interpreters pages are bound together.

Obstacles

After a certain time without any interaction on the page breaks for the undeclared users regularly from the music sequence. A panel prompts you to log in to Last.fm. Then the user needs to log in or, if he does not want to, new dial. The duration at normal users an hour, while subscribers may listen to the Last.fm page radio six hours without any interaction. This restriction only applies to the Flash Player, which can be used. When using the client or other software, this restriction shall not enter into force.