Last.fm is not handling the feedback well, IMHO

Kerensky97: Your point would be much more valid if subscribers hadn't had access to this thing for months already. Just as much complaining was going on in the Beta group as there is going on here... and what did Last.fm do about it? They changed the top banner.

http://www.last.fm/group/Bring+back+the+old+Last.fm is growing at a rate of over 100 new members an hour.

Hideyori: You are proving his point. Calm down.

Will you lot stop being so selfish, it's all about you lot isn't. There's 21 Million active users, how do you know everyone hates this new design?

I personally like it, and think that most of you are just overreacting, Last.fm HASN'T (move aside the "paint it black" which we have been told it's coming back") removed anything from it's site, it's still last.fm with a brand new look.

very well written. thank you.

i vote with my dollars and last.fm won't be seeing them again until things improve.

Well, if they don't change back, I suspect they will lose a very large chunk of their subscriber base. I suppose that is part of the calculation of the empty suits and they hope they will recoup the loses over time. But it is the wrong decision. Someone else posted on a different thread that the new site is an attempt to push an insidious new ad technique - http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4350427.ece. If true, that is really disturbing.

Also it's baffling to me that anyone thinks the real time updates are an improvement. Part of the fun of the site was coming back to see your charts updated weekly :P ridiculous

I think you're right, the corporates want to turn last.fm into a MySpace competitor. If someone made a clone right now and focussed on the base function they could probably steal a lot of users. But I'd prefer if last.fm stayed focused.

Communications are certainly up the spout. I'm trying to think who did it well...? I think Firefox did with their latest release. I knew about Firefox 3 last summer, although I didn't beta test it. I knew about all the various stages until release day - which the whole world knew about. That was fantastic communications.

If I stick with the comparison - Firefox were in beta for a fair time. It was not made public until it was ready. So the only people trying it out were the beta testers. I don't know how many.

What's happened with Last.fm is they've made the new version public whilst still in beta. They're still building the site. That's something we the public are not used to.

I have to say, I've found the feedback process disheartening, but then again, maybe I'm sulking because none of my ideas seemed to have been taken up. Or maybe they have and they're still working on them, who knows?

I joined Last.fm in Nov 2005. I just missed the old AudioScrobbler I think. I didn't get involved in any other upgrades, but they were all versions of the same so they didn't bother me. The growth was organic as they added more features.

This time, this release is a huge, drastic departure. It looks like a whole new direction. But I can't see the final vision and Last.fm haven't shared it with us, so we're all speculating. They didn't (couldn't?) tell us very much, which is why we're all upset.

.... and thank goodness my new mouse has a magnifier - this tiny script with tight kerning is killer!

HighOnSunday51 said:
DFA1979 said:
I also want to repeat that I'm not speaking officially for last.fm, just expressing my opinions - my main opinion on the matter being that most people are over-reacting

Uh, really? Once again, baffling.. Overreacting how, exactly? People have been using this site for years. people have loved it for what it was. Simple, fun, classic, nothing like it. The site is completely different now, and clearly changed to suit the coming myspace/facebook crowd. The functionality of the site is the same- playing tracks, scrobbling- but the site itself is completely changed. Most people complaining (if not all) wouldn't have even signed up for this piece of crap site if it was like this originally. It's pretty astounding that you'd say people are overreacting, really.
To me, it seems a huge over-reaction. Sites change, it still does (almost) everything it did before, and whilst it has lost some features it's also gained others. Sites change, that's the way it is. Making repeated posts that "I'll close my account if you don't change it back" isn't going to help anybody. It's those comments which I'm aiming at when I talk about over-reaction btw, the "I'll leave if you don't put it back", or "new last.fm sux", etc., posts - not constructive and well-thought-out posts like this thread contains, I have no problems with that and have engaged in some (mostly in the beta forum) myself.

DFA1979 said:
But I can't agree with people who are complaining about the functionality of the website (except in the case of lowering the chart-length to 200), most of the navigation is exactly the same as the old site, except one menu's been moved from a tab-bar along the top to a menu down the left-hand side.

You're clearly missing the point. Functionality is part of it but the site itself is a complete overhaul. It's ridiculous.
I'm not missing the point, I'm explaining that this particular criticism is one I don't understand. People can criticise whatever aspects of the site they like, but I don't know why functionality is one that gets picked by so many when I find it so easy to use. Just because the functionality is fine doesn't mean people can't complain about it being such a big change, but it does mean they shouldn't complain about the functionality (maybe other people genuinely find it confusing, in which case that's fair enough, but to me it's a very functional design).

DFA1979 said:
but when I see people saying things like "last.fm's new design makes that difficult and gives us instead inflated graphics", I'm astounded. The old site was far more graphics intensive. Everywhere you looked on the old site it was full of icons and gradients, if anything the new site has too little going on.

Um, really? Were we using the same site? Full of icons and gradients..? Do you mean those little artist quilts on the pages? Well the entire quilt was about half the size of one of those obnoxiously large library artist faces. Coudl you mean those little ads on the pages? I dunno, those never slowed down my computer. most sites have ads. I'd take twenty more than this update. You saying this site has too little going on is the astounding comment here :P

When I talk about the old site being graphics intensive, I don't mean in terms of file size or slowing down my computer - I just mean the amount of space taken up by stuff other than text, "blankspace" (i.e. whitespace, but it was grey rather than white) and artist images. The main thing I'm talking about is the way every 'module' in the side of your profile had it's own box surrounding it, with a big thick border and click-box iconss to minimise/show list form. (The same applies, obviously, to the 'similar artist', 'events', etc., sections of artist profiles and such).

While it's not a lot of graphics in terms of file size, being complicated, or slowing your computer, it always made the pages look a bit busy. With the new one there's none of that - your profile sections are separated by a 1/2px line rather than a box which has a different background colour to the main profile and a bar along the top in a different colour again, we don't have a 'glass' effect over everything, it's generally just a much 'cleaner' layout.

And I wouldn't actually claim that there is too little going on on this one, but it's closer (imo) to too little than it is to too much. It's not flashy, but it doesn't need to be.

DURR HURR I FEAR CHANGE INTERNET IS SERIOUS BUSINESS

I'm not sure of the numbers and how many it took for Last.FM to begin this change. I don't know what percent of the users who dislike the current layout is, but I know I'm part of them. I don't know if Last.FM finds subscribers' opinions weight more, than the ones of regular users. One thing is sure though, I was considering joining as a subscriber when I hit one-year of being registered, but have now changed my mind.

I don't think Last.FM is being very smart in allowing it's moderators to make statements on a personal-basis. It's giving the company a bad image, and moderators very little credibility.

If you are so proud of following the bandwagon by completely messing up your website, that's fine; just make a clear statement about it, expect some other website on the net to pop up and fulfill people's expectations. Sadly there's no website to replace what Last.FM used to be (yet). I guess that's a reason why our feedback has not been taken with a degree of seriousness we'd appreciate, because until there's competition, you can let your moderators act smug and our requests go unacknowledged. (Edit I would like to point out that there are a bunch of feedback comments that do not deserve to be given the time of day...)


In all honesty, I don't care if you wish to have this as your new layout (it's tacky, it takes too long to load...) but at least give us an option to go back to the old version.

A moderator above mentioned that this page is less busy than the past, which is to be taken with a grain of salt. I'm assuming this moderator is not familiar with web-design, or lacks appreciation for art/design. Though I agree this website is too blank (my eyes are hurting from just staring at this little text-box and the vast whiteness around it), this is what happens when you 'clean up' all those icons/gradients and stuff them into slow-loading widgets.

I seriously think Last.FM has lost it's way, and has become so lost amongst other money-making social sites, that they don't realize what they're turning the site into. It's not more functional, and it certainly isn't prettier.

I'm going to finish with two last points. 1) Competition: Look at how many social-sites are out there. People realized there were sites not catering to their users needs and created new sites that did. If Last.FM decides to continue this path without giving it's users an option, then it's probable that competition will rise. The idea that 'our site has more features than theirs, come to ours' is outdated, because people get so overwhelmed with all the extra, they can't do what they came here to do. I came here to meet other people and find new artists, but that's become increasingly difficult.

2) When progressing, look at the companies that have successfully frightened their competition, like Google. Look at Gmail, or Yahoo! Mail., both sites that have maintained a growing status. They offer their email users a new flashy and interactive layout, but they also allow them to revert to faster-loading, original-based layouts.


As DJ Profusion said in his first statement, (and I might be taking this out of context, or putting words in their mouth) business 101: keep your customers happy. Brushing off our suggestions, and expressing annoyance because people are being so vocal about their preferences, are not smart business tactics. Look here, you've just lost me as a potential customer : )


Give me an option, and I might reconsider.

The OP was well-written, but I don't really care much either way. I use Last.fm for 3 things:
1) Keep track of music statistics (I love that stuff)
2) Listen to some music of an artist I've heard about
and recently, 3) Listen to tag radio (because I'm at work, haven't set up a music server yet, and Pandora only has so many songs)

So then, I see that 1 and 2 are perfectly fine, and the only thing that bothers me about 3 is that they moved the comments to the bottom, so I can't see both comments and the song title/artist at the same time.

The new layout isn't particularly pretty, but neither was the old one.

Really, the only thing I care about right now is the fixing of automatic romanization of names, since I have a decent number of Japanese artists and I can't read kanji, but still like to be able to tell my artists apart.

As a side note, I did notice in the brief time I looked into the beta that most people complained about the facebook-like look, and that wasn't changed at all. Don't complain to the mods though; they're not developers.

EDIT: Oh, and a few random points:
* I'm not a subscriber, nor do I really plan on being one.
* I don't care what they do with advertising, as I always have adblock-plus with a blacklist updater (yes, I know, sites hate it when we say that)
* Firefox3 has lots and lots of beta testers near the end because *buntu put FF3b as the standard firefox package in the repos with the release of Hardy. There was quite some hell over that.