April 12th site update

Hello!

We've just released some new features for you. Here's what's new:

• Pause: Our Radio is awesome when it's playing. But sometimes, it's awesome when it's not playing – when the phone rings, or nature calls, or zombies swarm into your garden. For whatever reason, you need to step out of earshot. Today we're introducing a revolutionary new feature we're calling 'pause'. When you click the pause button, the music stops playing. When you click it again, it starts again! Like magic! It's available to everyone now on the web player, and will be in the iPhone & Android applications shortly. You can read more about it on our blog soon.

• Why's that playing?: Last.fm Radio's supposed to feel a bit magic – a radio station that knows you better than you know yourself. Traditionally, magicians never reveal their secrets. But sometimes it's more enjoyable when you know how it's done. As of today, when you listen to one of your personal stations (eg. recommendations radio, mix radio, or friends radio) you'll be able to see why the radio picked the track. Again, more details on the blog soon.

• Scrobbling improvements: Rounding off our trio of web radio improvements, we've updated the Visual Radio to use our Scrobbling 2.0 API. Like most backend improvements, if we've done this properly you won't notice the difference – but it'll work better. In particular, it fixes a bug where the web radio would stop scrobbling if, say, you opened iTunes at home. It also means we're using the same code that our third-party developer friends use, so everyone wins.

• Bugfixes: We've solved the usual mixture of small niggles and troubles by staring intently at the code, focusing the mind, and watching it burst into flames.


You can check out all the radio improvements on the radio page, and keep an eye on our blog (or Twitter) for news when our mobile players are updated too. We'll see you back here soon with more updates.


— Team Last.fm.

Loving the revolutionary new "Pause" button. Why didn't i think of it before? ;)

"Why's that playing?" works great for me. Loving my Neighbourhood Radio where it tells me now from which users libraries the actual track is playing. Cool new social stuff that is!!! :)

Sounds like some very cool additions. Unfortunately, until these features are included in the client, they won't be much use to me.

Nice update. Good to see y'all headed in the right direction. Keep 'em coming.

By the way, if I have a client that uses the Radio API and possibly has an "unused" Pause button, does that mean I'm now free to use it per an updated TOS?

Friends Radio = Social Radio now: because of "Why's that playing?" i can see from which friends libraries i'm playing the Friends Radio tracks, and so i can leave my friends a shout about their tunes or just can say "Thank you"... :)

dankine said:
Why's that playing? should be awesome. thanks folks

(edit: is it intended to work right now?)It's working for me in 3 of the 4 stations. It works in Recommended, Friends, and Neighbourhood Radios, but not my Mix Radio. (I'm expecting it to work when Mix plays an artist not already in my library.)

Why's that playing? is a great feature and I expect to get good use of it once it works with Mix Radio and the Client.

Pause will also be a good feature when added to the Client. I can't change stations without pausing first, though (latest Chrome & Windows 7). I don't know if that's by design or not.

rwitte said:
I too would like to see these features are included in the client.+1
Staff -is that likely?

Wooooot! :)

Edit: And thank you for all your hard work! You know what you guys deserve? An all-inclusive trip to play with the sea otters with special musical guests Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers! Sugar cookies and churros on deck!

Sound all very promising.

I've noticed that when clicking on an button/link that a new tab opens again like it did in the past, but not recently. First I thought it was my upgrade to Opera 11.1 this evening but now I guess it's a obnoxious bug that got squashed. I think many will like that as much as the new pause feature.

I hope that now also when I stop a track at a second or two before the end that it still gets registered as listened to. (webplayer)

Yeah, for those asking we have a new client in the works which will feature pause and context

E-Clect-Eddy said:
I've noticed that when clicking on an button/link that a new tab opens again like it did in the past, but not recently. First I thought it was my upgrade to Opera 11.1 this evening but now I guess it's a obnoxious bug that got squashed.
Right on the money, E-Clect-Eddy. Good catch.

THANK you for the pause button! Is there such a thing as a "loved" tracks radio? if not, could there be?

Sorry, you've just missed it. Just gone squish, pining for the fjords. Need a clairvoyant to QSO with that one now.