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Last.fm is a unique website based out of the United Kingdom. To put it simply, it’s a music recommendation service. Rather than being in and of itself a place to listen to music, Last.fm was specifically created for people who want to expand their tastes and listen to sounds they have never heard before. Users are invited to go through a quick sign up process (easily done via Facebook) and then Last.fm starts importing- and predicting- your musical tastes from 3rd party platforms such as Spotify, iTunes, Facebook, and others. From here, one can explore the site which, of course, suggests new music based on previous taste, in addition to listing tour dates, offering free downloads, linking to other websites where one can listen to music at no cost (such as youtube), and offering a platform onto which users can talk about music.
Last.fm is not a place users can listen to music. Rather, users listen to music with last.fm With all the services Last.fm offers, one would think that the website would be easy to use. Unfortunately, while it does offer some unique features, Last.fm is not very streamlined. Take their Scrobbling feature. After signing up for Last.fm and downloading their scrobbling app, every song a user listens to on their device (through Grooveshark, iTunes, etc) is added to the user’s Last.fm music profile. Listening still happens on the original platform, but suggestions are put into Last.fm as well. While, in some regions (such as the UK, the US, Brazil, and Canada) Last.fm offers radio services similar to Pandora, elsewhere in the world (i.e. in most parts of the world) their offerings are simply not available ever since they decided to pull out of the global market to focus on a few, key regions. All in all, Last.fm is an interesting experiment, but it’s not one that is very immersing.
