
Last.fm Radio to be killed off in most countries next month - revorad
http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/12/13/last-fm-to-kill-its-radio-feature-in-many-countries-next-month-making-it-a-paid-feature-in-the-us-uk-and-germany/
======
quarterto
Last.fm seems to be slowly buckling under pressure from record labels. At some
point recently at the behest of the labels, they started limiting the number
of skips you were allowed on each station, to something absurdly low like 5.
Not even subscribers are allowed more. It's a shame to see CBS's legal team
put its concerns ahead of Last.fm and its users.

~~~
lucisferre
Last.fm was great before CBS, I used to use it all the time. It had one of the
better algorithms out there for suggesting music and it introduced me to a lot
of great bands after I'd been out of listening to music for a while. Then, for
whatever reasons I just stopped using it.

~~~
ninetax
I still think it's by far the best "here's a band, give me more like it" music
suggester. Some how it understands the essence of the band I love and finds
lots of bands that are just as good. And many of those bands are so obscure I
don't know how I would have found them otherwise.

~~~
lucisferre
I'd hate to see that technology lost given how poor the alternatives for this
are right now. Genius, as a comparison is just terrible. Musicbrainz is pretty
much impossible to use (and terrible).

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rickmb
I abandoned Last.fm when shortly after the CBS takeover they did a 180 and
became the mouthpiece of the record labels instead of a disruptive force.

I didn't mind so much that they had to compromise, but the classic recording
industry PR-speak they used to justify it was just offensive. Shortly
afterwards they pretty much stopped communicating and innovating altogether.

A shame, because for discovery I still haven't found anything better than
Last.fm's combination of "scrobbling" and community.

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unemployed
The only reason I use last.fm is the scrobbling, I'd love it if they'd focus
on music analytics more than radio. The moody pdf report in their playground
is amazing.

~~~
hammock
<http://playground.last.fm/>

Same. I switched to spotify (and spotify radio, which is free) a while ago.
But I still scrobble everything and it's cool to look back! Not to mention you
can do a lot with the data.

~~~
polynomial
> But I still scrobble everything and it's cool to look back!

Unclear what you mean. They both scrobble, do you aggregate them together
someplace?

~~~
unemployed
I do the same. You can fill in your last.fm username in Spotify. Spotify also
has an last.fm app. The music you listen to scrobbles to facebook as well as
last.fm. Edit: Oh I think he meant, scrobble in the sense of keeping track of
what you listen to. You don't have to keep using the last.fm desktop client.

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xbryanx
Is anyone else worried about their listening data? I've got music play
tracking in there back to 2006. Does anyone else do what they do with
tracking, and does tracking alone give last.fm a viable business model?

~~~
rm999
I've been worried about the same thing. A few months ago I scraped all my
scrobble data from last.fm with a python script I found online:
<http://encukou.github.com/lastscrape-gui/>

You can even move all your data to libre.fm. I didn't do this because a few of
my music programs (ahem spotify) only support last.fm.

~~~
pavel_lishin
You should see this comment about changing your hosts file:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4917367>

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agscala
I hope there will be a way to export my listening data if they ever decide to
stop offering their scrobbling service.

~~~
rm999
As I mentioned in another comment, I've used this script and it worked well.
You can also migrate your data to libre.fm.

<http://encukou.github.com/lastscrape-gui/>

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circa
I've been using Last.fm since 2005 and the radio was always great because its
been logging almost everything (aside from an occasional CD) I've ever
listened to since then.

I have recently moved to Rdio and its great but I am sad to see this end.

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runarb
Last.fm used to be one of my favorite website, but after the CBS acquired they
somehow stagnated, and I drifter away...

Stagnation like this seems to happen a lot when a fat and happy industry
leader buys a young an innovative startup.

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dewey
I'm more interested in the stats/scrobble part than the radio but it's too bad
they are not adding new features (More stats/graphs/...). It kind of feels
like a dead project.

If there would be a site tracking your listening stats and giving decent
recommendations based on your previous listening habits (Maybe even add
last.fm import) i'd consider paying for it. This could work like trakt.tv
where everyone is able to use the site but there are still some bonus features
for paying members.

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dexcs
This makes me sad. Last.fm was for years my favorite online radio service but
somehow they missed to invent apps like spotify...

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shared4you
So, both last.fm and Pandora are unavailable in Europe (for zero price, I
mean). Anybody knows alternatives ?

~~~
buster
Did you try spotify?

Also tehre are some other good radios/stations:

    
    
      https://ex.fm/
      http://www.earmilk.com/
      http://u2.fm/ (not sure why it's down atm?)
      http://grooveshark.com/

~~~
graue
> <http://u2.fm/> (not sure why it's down atm?)

You might be thinking of <http://2u.fm>.

~~~
buster
oh damn.. i thought i first tried 2u.fm and it didn't work for me either..
anyway.. oops

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Nux
Hardly ever used the thing; still sorry to see it go.

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ilcavero
good to know, was breaking my head to figure out why the auto-dj feature from
musicBee was not working (it shuffles your mp3s and adds some recommended
streams from last.fm). it will be hard to replace, I know spotify does
something similar but not as well.

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89a
No shock really, they seem to have been completely stagnant for years now

