The last.fm post
Martin Stiksel of London-based music networking site last.fm tells me that the company will release a new and improved version of its software tomorrow. Currently, the site uses a set of plug-ins to report your playing habits to the company’s massive database. And a standalone player that plays you recommendations according to what it has gleaned about your tastes. It does this by using its “giant computer brain” [sic] to look at what you play, and then at what people who like the same things as you also play.
The company also plans to change the name of its plug-in from ‘audioscrobbler’ to ’scrobbler’. “It will scrobble your music,” says Stiksel, almost maintaining a straight face.
So is this Web 2.0? After all, you don’t even need to visit the site to benefit from its recommendation service, let alone social network with anyone. “Well, yes, I think so,” says Stiksel. “it’s a web application so it’s in line with that part of that trend. Also, it’s combining the knowledge of all of our users in a ‘wisdom of crowds’ way. No music journalist could have the knowledge required to keep making new recommendations to all of our users. All people together know more than one person could ever know.” Last.fm also encourages users to form groups and blog about their favourite music, offering free space to every user. This approach differentiates last.fm from Pandora, a rival internet radio company. Pandora employs a team of editors to categorise and subcategorise music in order to provide music recommendations with qualities in common to a group or song you suggest to it. The jury is out on which provides the better recommendations, but last.fm wins on its Web 2.0 credentials.
Can you make any money from last.fm? I always ask this question, even when I know the answer. “We have advertising on the site. We’re working regularly with 10,000 record labels to supply the music so we have pretty close relationships with many of them. We sometimes have difficulties with some labels, though. Some record companies are very suspicious of any internet music venture. They think we’re all pirates,” he grins. Or I think he is grinning: this is a phone conversation. There’s also money from subsciptions. Users can upgrade their account for a £1 a week to get rid of the adverts and get priority when the server is being heavily used.
“We want to be able to sell music downloads, as well. It seems like a good idea - we introduce people to new music, and then hopefully, we can introduce a mechanism so the users can purchase the track they’re listening to. If we can make it quick, simple and inexpensive, I think that will work. We have some obstacles, though. We really don’t like DRM protected music, but the labels have a hard time accepting that. They think it will lead to piracy.”
I tell Stiksel that I am a regular user of the service. “You want to be careful who you tell that to”, he laughs. “People like to go and look at other people’s pages to see what they’ve been listening to. We call it audiostalking. Like when you go to someone’s house and the first thing you do is look at their bookcase and record collection. You think it gives you an idea of what sort of person they are. We have a lot of funny stories of people trying to defend what’s on their page - ‘Oh it was my little brother’, they’ll say, or ‘oh, that came on by accident’”.