I have a love-hate relationship with Last.fm. It’s weird.
In some ways it is great, discovering new music, seeing what people have listened to, all good. On the other hand even paid up members like me get these crippled 30 second tastes of music rather than full streamed tracks.
What’s that all about?
I understand that music companies might have their usual pig-headed approach to music rights etc, but the service (correct me if I am wrong) helps promote music to people who might not otherwise have heard it. A tiny snippet doesn’t do that very well.
Another gripe is it thinks I am a full-on prog-rock fan. Or into obscure Bolivian folk trios. Yes, my taste is pretty eclectic, and I do like a couple of prog bands but most of my musical taste (which they know very well) could not really be described that way. It’s like Amazons recommendation engine recommending bizarre choices because of gift purchases, one example seems to skew the whole bloody thing.
Glad I got that off my chest.
If you want to see what I am listening to my last.fm profile is here. Just, please, do not recommend 25min psychedelic Bolivian folk tracks.
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Hm, maybe last.fm is getting you and I confused, ‘cos you know I love a bit of the old Bolivian folk trio…
Aah, that explains it
Maybe I am last.fm fan, but what really do you want a suggestions engine to do anyway? I mean, Amazon and Last and netflix and pandora, they all pretty much do the same thing. Collaborative filtering. Agree with you on the pig-headedness of record companies.
What do I expect it to do? Look at what I listen to and recommend something similar
What it seems to do currently is take what I listen to 1% of the time and think that is what I *really* want recommendations on.
I’ve got one word for you: Pandora!
Chris, I hope you have a valid excuse for listening to Take That!
@Jack – I will check that out
@Mark – Yup. I like them
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