Last.fm Relaunches with New Features

November 1st, 2006 at 2:20 pm

Last.fm is another great collective intelligence app. Most new Web Apps that allow user the share their web experience will become and have become successful.

November 1st, 2006 at 2:36 pm

Hey, your link to the site is incorrect. The correct URL is: http://www.last.fm/

November 1st, 2006 at 2:40 pm

Actually, the linke should be http://www.last.fm

November 1st, 2006 at 3:13 pm

You have to define what an “indie band” is before you make broad statements such as “the sheer majority of so called “indie bands” just aren’t very good.”

Is an indie band one that has only self-released a CD-R? Or is it a band that’s signed by an indie oriented label not affiliated with the RIAA? Or maybe it’s a band signed to a non-RIAA label that has major distribution? Or maybe it’s a band signed to a indie-like label that is owned by a major label?

My definition of “indie band” is one that is typically signed to a label that does not hold membership with the RIAA. Based upon that definition, there are innumerable bands and labels that are making significant contributions to the art that is music. You might not hear them on ROCK 97, but it’s not because “they aren’t very good.”

But regardless of how you define indie, it’s inappropriate to refer to music as being “good” or “not good” based whether the band is indie or not. It’s like saying that startup without funding from Kleiner, Sequioa, Benchmark or Greylock isn’t very good because they’re not affiliated with a major VC.

“Emphasis on indie bands is motivated primarily by economic necessity.” If you’re referring to the “economic necessity” of the artists, then you’re simply wrong with your assessment. It’s quite the opposite actually. Indie bands are all the rage — it’s precisely why the major labels, like traditional late stage VCs, are going in earlier with less money.

November 1st, 2006 at 3:15 pm

On Last..fm, I typed in the band “Poison” and Last.fm started playing Def Leppard instead - not cool.

Try http://www.Mercora.com - When I type in an artist I get to listen to that artist if music is available AND, if multiple songs are available I get to choose the song to play - not just one song. For popular artists, there are lots of song/track choices to choose from.

November 1st, 2006 at 4:34 pm

- Raj: I think we all get what he means by indie. And FWIW, I agree that a large part of it sucks badly.

- Bill: but then again you don’t get the same traffic TechCrunch does, do you?

November 1st, 2006 at 5:33 pm

“When I type in an artist I get to listen to that artist if music is available AND, if multiple songs are available I get to choose the song to play”

Sounds like a cool service, but I think this is kind of missing the point about what last.fm is trying to do, as is the discussion about indie music being good or not good. As someone with a lot of experience in the indie music world (both the indie label and CDR sets), I agree that there is a lot of not so great stuff there. It’s just like the internets… some web sites I like and others I find, you know, totally lame. The whole idea of the social aspect of this site is that if my friend Bob is listening to some crazy *indie* band I’ve never heard of, and I typically dig Bob’s taste in music, then it follows that I might want to check that band out.

I think it’s great that they started offering labels the ability to put songs up for download, and it’s not invasive on the community at large.

November 1st, 2006 at 6:56 pm

“I personally won’t be using it because Flash objects in use freeze text fields in Firefox 2.0 on my Intel Mac”

Thats more an indictment of Firefox, not Last.fm. Firefox is (still) a shoddy browser on the Mac.

November 1st, 2006 at 11:23 pm

You wouldn’t be trashing independent music if you heard a decent indie artist.

Try looking up “Cavendish” on iTunes sometime. Australian band, definitely on par with anything commercial. I caught them on ROVE Live last week (Australian TV show).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ghs9NtvBTE - is a clip if you’re keen.

You can’t tell me indie music is bad after listening to them.

November 2nd, 2006 at 4:55 am

Flash player definitely helps - but I still find (i) performance hits/breakups when the Flash player window is in the background, and (ii) less good than Pandora at playing ’stuff SIMILAR to this’ *PROVIDED THAT* I pick artists in a pretty obvious genre. For indie stuff, not sure… social recommendations probably win over ’sounds-like-this-based-on-parameters’.

Have commented earlier on both last.fm and Pandora here

November 2nd, 2006 at 10:10 am

What I want is this. Give me an iTunes plug-in that recommends music through both user habits and musical qualities, lets me opt out of “indie music” if I prefer and gives me access to free or dirt cheap files with related concert tickets and other value added items for sale. MP3 blogs like those aggregated on the HypeMachine impress me more than all these recommended indie music plug ins.

I love the Hype Machine and last.fm, but agree that there feels like something is missing on both services. Lately I have been playing around with Streampad: http://www.streampad.com and find that it really ties these two services together nicely. I installed the desktop software and now have remote access to my own music library. The way it ties together my library to mp3blogs as well as other people’s listening habits has lead me to discover a lot of new music (yes, indie music!). Streampad is not perfect yet, but I have read that it is just one guy, so it seems pretty impressive for where it’s at.

November 2nd, 2006 at 8:32 pm

“I find that the sheer majority of so called ‘indie bands’ just aren’t very good.”

Marshall, what music do you listen to - Kelly Clarkson and Backstreet Boys? You may be surprised that most music lovers’ #1 request on surveys is “new artists” or “not the same stuff I always hear on the radio”.

You may also have heard of this new site called MySpace, it’s pretty big these days, and a lot of people say it’s big because of the indie bands. I guess you probably don’t use MySpace, maybe the indie music there bothers you too, but you gotta face reality that it’s very very popular.

If your music tastes are so limited and so different from the average population, why are you even writing reviews of music sites?

November 3rd, 2006 at 5:54 pm

(Disclaimer: I’m the CEO of iLike.com & GarageBand.com)

Marshall, as an avid reader of yours, I feel you could be more open-minded in this case — not only when you say “the new features are all about indy,” but also in your rejection of music that’s not endorsed by a major label.

I disagree with your statement “the new features are all about indy.” If you were reviewing GarageBand.com, this would be accurate. But it doesn’t feel accurate in your review of LastFM. (And it also wasn’t accurate when you said that about iLike — the primary focus of iLike is to help you find music with friends).

More importantly, while you’re entitled to your own personal music tastes, you’re assuming the public at large shares those tastes when you declare that all indie music is bad.

MySpace is the #1 music destination on the internet — and it’s not because they have the same major-label songs you find everywhere. Likewise, American Idol shows that mainstream audiences *are* interested in amateur performers (and many of those amateurs have developed into hits beyond the Idol audience).

If it works for karaoke pop singers, can it work for unsigned bands? To find out, we recently launched our own “reality show” on FM radio. As of this week, a dozen FM radio stations in the US, incl several major metro stations (NY, SF, Philly, Detroit, Vegas), are airing the “Garageband Faceoff” daily during *drivetime* (peak listening hours). Take a listen — you might like what you hear. You can stream or get the podcast at GarageBandFaceoff.com. It would be REALLY ironic if something that’s mainstream enough to reach millions of listeners on drivetime FM radio is too indie for TechCrunch.

It is hard to believe that I find myself having the long-tail debate with a blogger. Not long ago, professional journalists claimed “blogs are amateur and bad journalism,” and people like you proved them wrong. The same applies to music, as Internet distribution and cheaper recording tools are changing the game. The only difference with music is that systems for enabling the best indie music to rise to the top are still being refined.

Ali Partovi