last.fm
 |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| the social music revolution | |
| Social software | |
| languages | German , English , French , Spanish , Italian , Portuguese , Swedish , Polish , Turkish , Russian , Japanese , Chinese |
| operator | CBS |
| editorial staff | Felix Miller , Martin Stiksel and Richard Jones |
| On-line | 2002 |
| https://www.last.fm/ | |
last.fm is a social software and online music service . Based on their listening habits, users receive recommendations for new music, information about concerts in their area and contact suggestions for users with similar musical tastes. In order to record the users' musical tastes in detail, users use plug-ins in their playback software to notify last.fm of all the tracks played, which can then be viewed in publicly accessible profiles.
Last.fm was originally an internet radio and streaming service . Record companies and musicians were encouraged to license last.fm to play their music. last.fm had a directory of over 80 million individual tracks, seven million of which could be streamed and 150,000 of which were free to download as files. The streaming service was discontinued in 2014.
history
Last.fm was created from the two sites last.fm and audioscrobbler.com .
Audioscrobbler was started as a computer science project by Richard Jones at the University of Southampton in England . He developed the first plugins and opened the programming interface (API) for the developer community, by means of which many music playback programs were supported on various operating system platforms. Audioscrobbler was limited to log music played on a registered computer, which enabled lists of favorites ("charts") and filters created in cooperation (engl. "Collaborative filters").
Last.fm was founded in 2002 by the Austrians and Germans Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel, Michael Breidenbrücker and Thomas Willomitzer as an internet radio founded -Station and music community site and walked out of the net label produced "Insine". The music profiles of the various users are compared with one another and the similarities determined in this way are used to generate dynamic playlists. In this way, the listener's musical taste should be met as precisely as possible. "Love" and "Ban" buttons could be used to adjust your "profiles" during playback. Last.fm won the "Europrix 2002" and was nominated for the Prix Ars Electronica in 2003.
The developers of Audioscrobbler and Last.fm began working closely together and moved to the same offices in Whitechapel , London , and by 2003 Last.fm was fully integrated with the Audioscrobbler profiles. Input could come through an audio scrobbler plug-in or a Last.fm music station. The two websites also shared some community forums . On August 9, 2005, the Audioscrobbler website at audioscrobbler.com was fully integrated into the Last.fm website. Audioscrobbler.net was launched on September 5th, 2005 as a development-oriented website.
Last.fm merged with Audioscrobbler on August 9, 2005 and thus took over its functions. These save all the pieces of music played on the PC in a database, generate individual or global best lists (“charts”) and connect users with “musical neighbors”, i.e. H. those with a similar taste in music, determined from the respective artist lists. If a user of Last.fm hears a music track, its name (title line and artist) is transferred to Last.fm, stored there in the user profile and otherwise statistically evaluated. Last.fm calls this transfer process "scrobble" (to scrobble).
On July 14, 2006, a new version of Last.fm was published. The playback of Last.fm radio streams and "scrobbling", ie the transmission of titles that are played with other programs such as iTunes , Winamp or Amarok , were combined under one program interface for the first time. Further innovations are the improvement of the friends system and the simplification of bidirectional friendships as well as the Last.fm dashboard , in which users can see all of their profile data on one page. This includes, among other things, recent journal entries, music recommendations and replies to forum messages, as well as advanced options for online music purchases.
A Japanese version of the website was launched on July 15, 2006 .
Since December 19, 2006 the page is also available in a German version. A German-language browser is usually directed directly to the German site.
On May 10, 2007 a new version of "Playlists" was published. This allows you to put together a playlist with at least 15 pieces of music, which are then played in full length in random order. A new section called Widgets has also been introduced. In addition to a playback widget for playlists, it also contains widgets for digital charts (with a 30-second playback function), a radio player widget and the well-known “Quilts” (widgets that display a configurable list of the most common titles). The widgets can be inserted into other communities such as Myspace , Virb.com etc.
Music videos were introduced on May 17, 2007, but no music video channels yet.
On May 30, 2007 it was announced that Last.fm was sold to the American company CBS Corporation for $ 280 million .
Spiegel Online initially implemented Last.fm in its website on June 14, 2007, which was the first major cooperation of its kind on the part of Last.fm. Due to defects in the youth protection filter , the publisher initially withdrew the offer. After improving the filter, the offer was resumed.
In 2007, Last.fm began to consider music played on iPods and to assign it to the user account. However, this support was still experimental and did not yet work reliably.
On July 17, 2008, the user interface received a new structure, a new color scheme and new functions, while others were no longer available.
As of April 22, 2009, the radio function cost 3 euros / British pounds / US dollars per month for users outside the USA, Great Britain and Germany.
At the beginning of 2012, the entire user database was hacked and over 43 million users were compromised. The passwords were unsalted with the outdated md5 algorithm hashed.
The following changes have been implemented since January 15, 2013:
- In the USA, UK and Germany, radio in the desktop client is chargeable, as everywhere
- There are no significant changes in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Brazil
- In all other countries, Last.fm will no longer offer a radio service from this date
End of streaming 2014
"Today we have announced significant changes to Last.fm subscriptions. From the 28th of April 2014, our subscription radio streaming service will no longer be available. This means that traditional subscriber radio will no longer work on any platform or device. "
“Last.fm's radio service was finally shut down on April 28, 2014, and radio stations can no longer be played on external players. The "internal" player on the Last.fm page only plays the relevant YouTube videos (if they are available and also available); Last.fm has completely stopped streaming, and many songs were previously only linked to Spotify. Only "scrobbling" with external players is still possible. "
Surname
The name “last.fm” is made up of “last”, the English word for “the last one”, and “FM”, the abbreviation for frequency modulation . So it should signal that Last.fm is the only (and therefore last) radio station you need.
use
last.fm website
The last.fm website offers numerous web feeds in several formats (currently its own XML formats, RSS and XSPF ). In this way it is very easy for developers of programs and websites to access the information on last.fm. There is also the "Audioscrobbler Web Services" API for developers . Unless otherwise stated, the web services of last.fm can be used under the Creative Commons license by-nc-sa .
last.fm scrobbler
The last.fm scrobbler is a client program for the services of last.fm and also serves as a reference implementation of the available interfaces. A graphical user interface allows numerous services on the website to be used conveniently without having to open the web browser .
Since the player is programmed in C ++ and uses the Qt framework, it is available for many operating systems.
Free programs
- Amarok : With version 2.0, the integration of last.fm is part of the software. Version 1.4, which isstill based on Qt 3 , could be expanded with a last.fm plug-in.
- aTunes : Offers the transmission of played tracks and shows further last.fm information on the song title, album and artist.
- Banshee : Offers extensive integration of the functions of last.fm.
- BMPx : Offers a very extensive integration of the functions.
- Clementine , audio player, Qt 4 Fork from Amarok 1.4
- Exaile
- Herrie : command line player
- MediaPortal : Media center application with last.fm support.
- MusicBee : Media player with extensive integration of last.fm
- Pana , audio player, fork of Amarok 1.4.10
- Rhythmbox
- Songbird
- tomahawk
- Jaangle Transmits pieces played and obtains artist information including pictures from last.fm
- Squeezecenter : Transfers the pieces you have played to your personal last.fm account.
- Vagalume : A playback program for last.fm originally developed for the Maemo platform for mobile devices, which is also being further developed for Gnome .
- Kodi
- Mobbler player for mobile phones based on Symbian S60
- VLC media player (from version 0.9.0 an integral part of the program)
Proprietary Programs
- AlbumPlayer : Supports recommendations and submission of played tracks.
- MP3Toys : Supports recommendations and the transfer of played pieces.
- TrillyTunes : Mediaplayer-Plugin for the instant messenger Trillian, supports recommendations and the transmission of played pieces.
- SongStory : program for the iPhone. Provides track, album and artist information.
- Simfy : Music streaming service, "scrobbles" (transmits) pieces played to the personal last.fm user account.
- Spotify : "Scrobble" pieces played to the personal last.fm user account.
- Deezer : "Scrobble" pieces played to the personal last.fm user account.
Plugins
Last.fm plugins with a more or less extensive range of functions are available for almost all popular playback programs.
Some players for which plugins are available:
- AIMP (supports Winamp plugin)
- Audacious
- cmus
- foobar2000
- iTunes (as well as iPod and iPhone )
- JetAudio
- MediaMonkey
- Music Player Daemon
- MusikCube
- Noatun
- Rhythmbox
- Songbird
- Spotify
- QCD
- Quod Libet
- Winamp
- Windows Media Player
- XMMS and XMMS2
- XMPlay
Scrobbling from unsupported devices
Using the identification of acoustic fingerprints , music can also be transmitted to last.fm from devices that are not directly supported. This also makes it possible to send tracks from records or from the radio to last.fm.
- Life Scrobble : A non-publicly available proof of concept that uses Echonest Music fingerprinting.
- Scrobblr : An application for Android mobile phones that records music through the built-in microphone and uses Gracenote as an identification service.
Radio streams: playback, conversion to recording (until 2014)
The website itself offered both an integrated Flash player and playback via external applications using its own URL protocol ( lastfm://) for playback of the last.fm radio streams . In addition, the streams were supported by several of the open source projects listed above.
There were several programs that converted the last.fm radio stream. These in turn act as an HTTP streaming server and therefore make it possible to play the last.fm radio with almost any streaming-compatible player. These include MyLastFM or LastFMProxy , among others .
The recording of the radio stream was possible, for example, with the free programs TheLastRipper and LastSharp ; patches existed for the original playback program Vagalume that made it possible. The so-called ripping was not approved, especially after registering in the last.fm terms of use , but was not a criminal offense in terms of copyright law. However, since a change in the last.fm API, the recording programs no longer worked.
Financing and employees
Last.fm is funded through advertising on the website, the sale of music (CDs, downloadable files) and concert tickets, as well as donations from users and contributions from subscribers. In 2005, Last.fm received its first funding from business angels , led by Stefan Glänzer, who also took over the shares from Michael Breidenbrücker. In 2006, the European investor Index Ventures joined the company , whose general partners Neil Rimer and Danny Rimer joined the Board of Directors, consisting of Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel and Stefan Glänzer (Chair). In June 2009, the Miller / Stiksel / Jones founding trio announced that they would be leaving Last.fm later this year.
Privacy controversy
On February 22, 2009, the Internet magazine TechCrunch posted an article on its blog accusing Last.fm of helping the RIAA track down people who infringe copyright laws. TechCrunch cited an informant who worked at CBS - the owner of Last.fm. The latter stated that the RIAA had been given the IP addresses of users who "scrobbled" the album No Line on the Horizon by the band U2 , which at the time was only available as an illegal copy, and who consequently obtained it illegally. Last.fm vehemently denied this allegation; The co-founder Richard Jones described the allegations as rumors and defamed TechCrunch on his blog with the words "Techcrunch are full of shit" TechCrunch followed up and published another article in which again statements from new informants were listed that the disclosure of personal data confirmed by CBS. This was followed by another, but more diplomatic, denial of the allegations by Last.fm employee Russ Garrett. TechCrunch responded with a third article listing alleged inconsistencies in Garrett's statements.
In June 2012, some passwords were found on the Internet by Last.fm users. All users of the portal were then advised to choose a new password.
Event system
Since October 2006 there has been a so-called "event system". A concert list is automatically created for the user based on the individual music profile. In addition, the user can add his own events. The interaction between users is to be strengthened, since one can see which other users have attended and want to attend the same concert.
In March 2007 the "event system" was expanded to make larger cities directly accessible via a link.
Fingerprinting
The Last.fm system enables tracks by unknown artists to be "scrobbled" by creating new ones if necessary. As a result of the manual - possibly country-specific or error-prone - marking ("tagging") of a piece of music, different spellings for the same album, the same piece of music or the same performers were created. Since this was not recognized by the software, statistics were falsified, among other things.
Last.fm now prevents this with so-called fingerprinting . This is a process that determines a unique identification number ("ID") for each piece of music, regardless of the metadata ("tags") and transmits it to Last.fm. This means that incorrect or alternative (such as the German "Tschaikowski" and the English "Tchaikovsky") spellings can be recognized and catalog data can be cleaned up.
known problems
The Last.fm system cannot distinguish artists of the same name; H. their artist pages are inevitably combined.
literature
Arno Malcher, Personalized web radios - broadcast or on-demand? The copyright classification of internet-based music services using the example of personalized web radios. Kovac, Hamburg 2011 (also: Cologne, Univ., Diss., 2010), ISBN 978-3-8300-5548-8 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Tonspion.de: The Last Radio (Interview with Last.fm founder Martin Stiksel)
- ↑ EUROPRIX Student Award Winners 2002 . EUROPRIX. Archived from the original on July 18, 2006. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 3, 2006. (English)
- ↑ Music site Last.fm bought by CBS . BBC NEWS. Retrieved May 30, 2007. (English)
- ↑ DWDL: "Spiegel Online" has something on the ears
- ↑ DWDL: Spiegel Online has already deactivated Last.fm again
- ↑ Spiegel-Online: Last.fm-Comeback at SPIEGEL ONLINE
- ^ Richard Jones: Radio Subscriptions. last.fm, April 22, 2009, accessed April 23, 2009 .
- ↑ John Mannes: 43 million passwords hacked in Last.fm breach. In: TechCrunch. Retrieved September 2, 2016 .
- ↑ http://www.lastfm.de/announcements/radio2013
- ↑ http://www.lastfm.de/forum/21717/_/2226535
- ↑ http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/LastFM , s. a. http://www.laut.de/News/Musikwebsite-last.fm-Stream-aus,-YouTube-an-27-03-2014-10282
- ↑ Frank Patalong: Last.fm: The last radio. September 14, 2009, accessed August 11, 2010 .
- ↑ http://herrie.info/
- ↑ http://getmusicbee.com/
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ TrillyTunes: Archive link ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ SongStory: http://paulsteinhilber.de/apps/songstory.php
- ↑ Life Scrobble: Archive link ( Memento of the original from October 10, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Scrobblr: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.scrobblr
- ↑ TheLastRipper: http://thelastripper.com/
- ↑ LastSharp: Archived copy ( memento of the original from September 12, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Vagalume: Archive link ( Memento of the original from April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Netzwelt: Right to ripping: Are you allowed to record last.fm and Co.? January 27, 2008
- ↑ www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/10/last-fm-founders-to-leave
- ↑ First article at TechCrunch (eng)
- ↑ Blog entry at Last.fm
- ↑ Second article at TechCrunch (eng)
- ↑ Third article at TechCrunch (eng)
- ↑ Last.fm: All users should change their password , netzwelt , accessed on June 8, 2012
- ↑ http://www.last.fm/help/faq?category=Artist+Pages&setlang=en
