Here's how I view my relationship with last.fm: it's give and take.
I provide valuable data about my listening habits to last.fm to do with what they will - and believe me, scrobbling is equally if not more useful to last.fm and their "business partners" than it is to individual users. To us, it provides the passing curiosity of confirming which bands we probably knew intuitively that we liked the most - why else would we own their music? Overall charts are interesting to look at, but you don't need to be a user to do so. Last.fm, on the other hand, likely has multiple business arrangements with the major record labels to provide listening data at a premium rate. As you can see from these excerpts from the privacy policy:
"- Certain third parties may have access to your data ... via our API and webservices or arrangements with our business partners. These people may use this information for their own purposes, which may be either commercial or non-commercial in nature and may include targeted advertising or direct marketing.
...
- Your pseudonymous listening habit data will be available ... to third parties via our API for their own commercial and/or non-commercial purposes. This statistical information is used to help third parties understand the likes and dislikes of music fans on Last.fm."
So while I'm sure many users predominantly use scrobbling and charts and find them to be great icebreakers for social networking, we shouldn't understate that from a business perspective these are merely items of up-to-the-minute consumer feedback (basically an online version of the product feedback surveys I'm sure many of you have encountered).
I've been willing to put up with providing this data in exchange for last.fm providing me with easy and accurate methods of expanding my musical horizons. When feeling the need to find cool new music I could always have a variety of options to me (streaming radio for a particular group, artist, user, genre, mood, etc). So when that is taken away, what am I left with as a user?
There are still multiple ways I can find new music: I could use the personalized Recommendations page, the various charts for a particular genre, the related artists lists for musicians I like, etc. But in all of these cases, I would have at best a couple 30 second song previews and maybe a free track or two, and I would often have to deal with some awkward site navigation in the process. You could say that last.fm has been able to sustain their economic growth by quashing the musical growth of many of its users.
As for other features that could keep me here, groups are all well and good but if I'm not able to listen to the music which binds us together they seem to be rather useless for anything other than the usual forum games which I rarely find interesting. Similar situation with neighbours or friends. There really isn't any particular incentive for me to stay and subscribe rather than switch to a free alternative. Maybe there is something wonderful I'm missing - if so please enlighten me.
Even if I were living in one of the three unaffected countries I would be disturbed with the way things appear to be heading. As someone who appreciates a diverse ranges of musical and cultural styles, it would seem that this move will have the effect of biasing the site even more towards the rock-alternative-indie paradigm which dominates it at the moment (and be honest, this music is super easy to find elsewhere). I suspect that much of the less popular music - including music from countries like Japan, Canada, Poland, Brazil, Jamaica, Italy, France, Nigeria, Kenya, etc. will suffer since the users from those areas will not have much incentive to build up the connections and links which provide the foundation of last.fm's recommendation system.
I'm still undecided about if I should continue bothering to use this site, but I will say the prospects are somewhat bleak.
Comments are welcome. Flame on!
I provide valuable data about my listening habits to last.fm to do with what they will - and believe me, scrobbling is equally if not more useful to last.fm and their "business partners" than it is to individual users. To us, it provides the passing curiosity of confirming which bands we probably knew intuitively that we liked the most - why else would we own their music? Overall charts are interesting to look at, but you don't need to be a user to do so. Last.fm, on the other hand, likely has multiple business arrangements with the major record labels to provide listening data at a premium rate. As you can see from these excerpts from the privacy policy:
"- Certain third parties may have access to your data ... via our API and webservices or arrangements with our business partners. These people may use this information for their own purposes, which may be either commercial or non-commercial in nature and may include targeted advertising or direct marketing.
...
- Your pseudonymous listening habit data will be available ... to third parties via our API for their own commercial and/or non-commercial purposes. This statistical information is used to help third parties understand the likes and dislikes of music fans on Last.fm."
So while I'm sure many users predominantly use scrobbling and charts and find them to be great icebreakers for social networking, we shouldn't understate that from a business perspective these are merely items of up-to-the-minute consumer feedback (basically an online version of the product feedback surveys I'm sure many of you have encountered).
I've been willing to put up with providing this data in exchange for last.fm providing me with easy and accurate methods of expanding my musical horizons. When feeling the need to find cool new music I could always have a variety of options to me (streaming radio for a particular group, artist, user, genre, mood, etc). So when that is taken away, what am I left with as a user?
There are still multiple ways I can find new music: I could use the personalized Recommendations page, the various charts for a particular genre, the related artists lists for musicians I like, etc. But in all of these cases, I would have at best a couple 30 second song previews and maybe a free track or two, and I would often have to deal with some awkward site navigation in the process. You could say that last.fm has been able to sustain their economic growth by quashing the musical growth of many of its users.
As for other features that could keep me here, groups are all well and good but if I'm not able to listen to the music which binds us together they seem to be rather useless for anything other than the usual forum games which I rarely find interesting. Similar situation with neighbours or friends. There really isn't any particular incentive for me to stay and subscribe rather than switch to a free alternative. Maybe there is something wonderful I'm missing - if so please enlighten me.
Even if I were living in one of the three unaffected countries I would be disturbed with the way things appear to be heading. As someone who appreciates a diverse ranges of musical and cultural styles, it would seem that this move will have the effect of biasing the site even more towards the rock-alternative-indie paradigm which dominates it at the moment (and be honest, this music is super easy to find elsewhere). I suspect that much of the less popular music - including music from countries like Japan, Canada, Poland, Brazil, Jamaica, Italy, France, Nigeria, Kenya, etc. will suffer since the users from those areas will not have much incentive to build up the connections and links which provide the foundation of last.fm's recommendation system.
I'm still undecided about if I should continue bothering to use this site, but I will say the prospects are somewhat bleak.
Comments are welcome. Flame on!
