Music recommendation engine / social network Last.fm has launched an official, feature-rich application for the Android platform that enables users to stream radio stations (including personalized streaming radio), consult up-to-date concert information and also offers the ability to track users’ listening habits based on their Last.fm profile.
The company says the application should be available here, but I’m not seeing anything there yet so maybe we should just be patient until they get around to effectively have the app up for download on Android Market. (It’s also nowhere to be found when you actually search from the G1).
Update: it’s available from the phone now.
Update 2: app is listed online now too.
First impressions: music quality is fine but not staggering, the streaming speed is ok, the tagging process is seamless and it’s really cool to discover similar artists when you’re listening to a song from your mobile phone. Also, you get to purchase songs straight away via the Amazon MP3 store on Android.
The application enables users to access their Last.fm profile and millions of streaming tracks on Android-powered phones, and supports ‘background playback’ so you can listen to music while you access other programs. Last.fm has been offering an application for the iPhone / iPod Touch for about 6 months now with the same feature set apart from the background playback functionality.
Last.fm, which was acquired by CBS in May 2007 for $280 million, was recently forced to reduce its headcount by 20 percent but continues to report impressive growth figures.
One of their competitors, social music network Imeem, has been available on the Android platform since October 2008 (get it here), and their mobile application also took home the award for Best Mobile Application at the recent Crunchies ceremony. Now all we need is an Android application for Pandora and the race is on.
It’s also worth noting that we could find 3 unofficial Last.fm-related apps on the Android platform (Last.fm: Android Edition, Last.fm Player and Last.fm Client) although these generally received poor ratings and reviews, so there was an apparent need for a better, official one.
Co-Editor’s Update (Erck Schonfeld): I’ve been testing out the Last.fm app today. It works great, and I especially like the ability to create stations by tags or artist. But the stream just doesn’t sound as good as imeem’s, even though Last.fm is streaming at 128 kb/sec and imeem is streaming at 64 kb/sec. The reason for this is that imeem streams in AAC format, whereas Last.fm streams in MP3 format. As a result, the imeem app sounds twice as good at half the bit rate. Last.fm should consider switching to AAC as well.
Its in my Market (I’m in the UK)
Yeehaw! Let the games begin….
SG
Above commenter Geofff is right – if you search for ‘last’ on the marketplace on your phone, it appears in the results.
Although it’s at the bottom of the list of results, presumably because it’s had fewer downloads, reviews and ratings than the other unofficial apps.
Thanks, we already updated the post. Still nowhere to be found on the Android Market website.
Doesn’t show up for me on the store. Searched for “last” and nothing “official” shoed up
(<– Germany)
..
Yeehaw! Let the games begin….
http://kisalt.net/d2
Now I wish they would put out a Blackberry app…hmmm
yes look at the subscriber numbers who uses the g1 ?
I see plenty of blackberry users… even a world leader…
regards
John Jones
http://www.johnjones.me.uk
I dont know.. im pretty loyal to my pandora
No mention of the fact that the app was developed as open source, taking many contributions from voluntee, open source android developers?
This is the first large, commercial app released on the Android platform in the spirit openness that Google is trying to foster.
Disclaimer: l’m one of those developers
Awesome! Have been waiting for this for awhile. Definitely excited to see which mobile app comes out ahead.
More music business thoughts at http://www.musimuse.com
About time Last.FM! Okay I am kidding, but still, I thought since android has support for apps they would have jumpped on board. hmmm. well better late than never I guess, keep it up! Last.FM
Android is really kicking goals, have you seen Weather Channels app, awesome and ShopSavvy which uses the barcode, really sweet stuff
Not to mention, Myspace, Loopt, Amazon.
Will be a blessing once they allow paid apps, a real robust developer community will spring up to smash apple (music aside).
Re: AAC vs Mp3
I’ve been playing with the imeem app for a couple of months now and it pretty much works anywhere. Trying the last.fm app was great when I was on my home wi-fi, but as soon as I tried to go roaming with it I found that songs took forever to load and would pause and rebuffer while playing.
It’s a nice first try, but it’s just not reliable for on the go listening.
Maybe last.fm should figure out how to scrobble the music played by the imeem application, then we’d have the best of both worlds.
Can you actually scrobble songs to Last.fm too (just like the desktop application) ?
I doubt that Last.fm could support this on the iPhone, but it might be possible to access metadata from the default music player on Android.
Is it just me? Am I the only one who finds both Last FM and Imeem confusing as heck? I can’t figure out how to do something as simple as save a playlist. I can find them fine, but when I actually want to save them to my library so that I can eventually access them on my phone – nothing. And the G1 apps are terrible, because they don’t let you scroll playlists either. Both apps are pretty useless.
last.fm is great. But my favorite music streaming service is pandaro. It`s a pity that it is no more available in Germany due to licensing issues.
my “sorta” version of Pandora on Android… I listen to Pandora soley through PandoraFM (http://pandorafm.real-ity.com) so my last.fm account is filled with songs recommended by Pandora. As a result, the “Your Library” station on last.fm’s Android app primarily plays songs previously recommended for me by Pandora. It’s a far cry from the real deal, but it’s keeping me happy until Pandora’s tech team blesses us with a beta version of their current project (my guess).
i luv you
@BP: It’s not up to Last.fm to figure out how to scrobble from Imeem. It’s up to the third party app creator: Ie. It’s up to Imeem.
@Hadrien Gardeur: Yes, scrobbling from Google Android is quite possible (there are already apps for scrobbling from the music player), but unfortunately one of Imeem’s major shortcomings has always been its inability to scrobble to Last.fm. Such a thing should be a high priority – nay, an imperative – on any social music network.