Last.fm has a new look today that simplifies the navigation of the main site and makes finding music easier. Or at least, it would make finding music easier if the site wasn’t so buggy. (At least for me. I couldn’t even log in without getting an error. This may be due to fans rushing to check out the new features, or simply poor planning).
The new features a library of songs that you can now add to with a single click, instant recommendations based on the song you are listening to, and charts showing the popularity of each recommended song.
The site is now organized by music, videos, charts, and events. And for each song, there is increasingly the ability to play the entire song.
At the top of the page is a search bar, where you can enter a song or artist and hit play. That’s very Songza of them.
My love for Last.fm is being tested, but will prevail!
Last.fm it’s probablly the best social networking service i ever used.
Blog with news: tinyurl.com/liviux
It’s slow as hell for me, and I can’t imagine that’s everyone rushing to be the first to see the design. So far it feels only slightly better to navigate than Rhapsody’s website, and that’s not a good thing.
Last.fm is a solid site. For whatever reasons, however, I do prefer Pandora purely for the music recommendation aspect. An referral algorithm that takes into consideration like-musical attributes as well as user trends would create the best type of referral system for music. How to do it… http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2
Oh that looks ugly..
the iPhone app chugs on a non 3G phone. shame, as I was real amped to extend my love for Last.fm into my commute. Seems like the AOL Radio app is decidedly faster.
If any developers from Last.fm are reading this, I strongly suggest using predictive type or some such “type-memory” feature for the ARTIST field, in the Last.fm window that accompanies iTunes.
I really like the new design but the site is incredibly slow right now.
When I checked their beta site a couple of days ago, the events page wasn’t ready and there was a ticker hinting to a release in 14 days. No wonder this is broken.
Also, I think I liked the old layout better. I don’t know why they felt they needed to change anything, moreso the whole site. That said, I’ll probably keep using it.
Yes, I noticed that too, I think they might even have taken it offline temporarily?
Layout seems improved, but visually this looks horrible.
From last fm’s blog
“UPDATE: Need…more…power! We just lost an entire rack of webservers, please stand by while we restore normal service… ”
probably the source of the errors…
I think they have complicated it a bit. They should have kept it simple, they have tried to do a lot in one page.
Right now, all over the world…
…40% of this page is squeezing out the reason you’re visiting this site.
I like the old design better.
Every tech writer’s too, many commas.
As with all new rollouts, it takes time to adjust. My biggest complaint about last.FM has always been about the “clutter” on every page. I believe they organized as best as they could, but it’s still a bit overwhelming at times. The tabs on the side are definitely helpful.
Are you allowed to blatantly rip off elements from other sites?…and call them by the same name? (i.e. Recent Activity)
An alternative to LastFM that will make your ears infinitely happier: http://www.digitalfuntown.com/homepage.php
The site design is nice.. http://blabtech.blogspot.com
Last.fm is a very good site. But I really like Pandora also, since I use it on my iphone. It gives really good features
Nath
http://www.themostpowerfulcompany.com
Adam: recent activity is a concept rather than a feature specific to a certain webapp. Yes, Facebook was first (as far as I know) and I’m sure they’d get their credit should such a topic arise on the interwebs and beyond. It’s a great idea and it should be implemented as widely and on as many websites as possible.
If you just want to listen to good music, Pandora is much better.
“At the top of the page is a search bar, where you can enter a song or artist and hit play. That’s very Songza of them.”
Except that they’ve had it since at least 2006…
Get acquired. Mess things up. I can hear the comments that led up to this “ditch the pink//coral//whatever color” and instead of the clean glossy look that was one of the first and best executed “Web 2.0″ designs we now have something that looks like they stripped the bastid, beat it up, and then threw some second hand clothes at it and pushed it out on the street.
I feel bad for the design team that had the demands leading to this craptastic design forcibly inserted into their rectum by higher ups. Portfolio piece this is not.
Being a long term (almost 4 years) user of the site, I really don’t get why people are bitching about the new design so much. Since 2004 the site has improved immensely.
However, I did write a post detailing some of the usability issues on the site: http://www.peterpixel.nl/writi.....y-remarks/
It seems Techcrunch itself had bit of a redesign (of the comments). Can we have them numbered again?
And by the way, :: r ::, I totally agree.
Wait, are these threaded? If not, assume an “I guess not” reply.
Love the new design, I’ve already been using the beta since it started. Once the big rush is over it will be really nice to use and way more organized than the old one and some of the new features are amazing (recommendations as podcast-feed with direct downloads, I’m looking at you, just to name one)
Where is the new design of the age-old buggy?
What’s with the extra comma?
I don’t like the new aesthetic.
For a playlist-based alternative to last.fm check out http://www.maestro.fm
I actually don’t care for the new look as it stands right now. I don’t have the old option of choosing between black or red layouts, it is just a default red color scheme. It also didn’t really seem to add many new features, just re-vamped the layout and design. As many people have experienced, the site has been really slow today, so I will wait a day or two to dabble with it some more.
Also for those that don’t know, Last.FM is not an independent company, they are owned by CBS.
My playlist is not connecting.
I don’t know what your problem is, but last.fm is astonishingly fast in the new design. Never has it loaded so fast and I don’t have any delay between songs when listening to music.
It’s not the best design, I liked the old one better, but I will get used to it.
Did I mention how awesome fast the new design is here in Germany?
Graphically, I’m not a massive fan of this new design. The old aesthetic was nicer. However, the interfaces are better in this redesign.
One thing that I don’t understand though is why they havn’t integrated the two search boxes (the top one and the one in the middle).
It’s confusing having two - which one should I type in? The distinction is not clear. Have one box and deal with the type of query within the results using good UI.
But that’s a problem with last.fm - it is a big feature fest, and underneath it is two different things: a personal radio station and then a music community. They need to converge this into one seamless product.
Saying that, overall it’s an awesome site and users will happily put up with confusion to get what t hey want. And last.fm provides a lot of what people want. Just a few thoughts.
Last.fm is making a lot of noise recently! First with the new royalty program for unsigned artists. Now, a redesign. I’ve had my songs on last.fm for a while and pretty much through it in the same style site as myspace — i music discovery site that lets me put my songs on the web and engage with my (theoretical) fans. Basically i put my stuff on myspace, last.fm, and ilike and waited to see which gave me the most exposure. The winner was myspace with last.fm coming in second. It’s funny because I completely didn’t associate last.fm with the music recommendation sites like pandora.
I think the redesign helps deliver that message and is an important differentiating factor between myspace — their recommendation system will help “bring” you an audience and will supplement your other activities to give you a boost of what your myspace would. Come to think of it when was the last time you discovered a great band on myspace? Normally, don’t you just automatically go there when you want to check out a particular band? Last.fm’s stressing this advantage is also shown through their radio and other widgets. They’re trying to showcase the various artists.
So cheers to last.fm for trying to fuse the myspace and pandora models. I wan’t able to upload my music to pandora because you had to send them a cd (you can’t send tracks over the web!!) with a bar code, which of course I didn’t have!
With that being said, i think the look of the redesign looks awful. I think it looked much better before, and is aesthetically BORING now!
Oh my, it’s so awfully ugly :((((
join http://www.last.fm/group/Bring.....ld+Last.fm
receipts
NEW DESIGN IS CRAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.last.fm/group/Bring.....ld+Last.fm
What else to say!
I wonder if it’s a good thing to find a compensation to the lack of background information of this post in the comments. Really, if you want to bring the news, then bring the news. Don’t just open the hose and start wining about planning, bandwith problems and stuff you’ve seen elsewhere without even heading to their blog. I mean, I am happy for you that you finally found the searchbox dude, I really am.
Yeah! It’s totally buggy. That’s why I quit joining it. There are lots of websites that offer the same service as that of Last.fm which are not pain in the neck.
New design is totally shit.
http://www.last.fm/group/Bring.....ld+Last.fm FTW