Facebook Music + Last.fm?

HodgeStar said:
OldJoe, if facebook is indeed serious about adopting the music scrobbling idea they will hit the same obstacles that last.fm haven't bothered to move away during the last 3 years.They already have a client that allows you to playback, in-line, a track using "your" source of choice... got pulled for release (we've seen that one a few times). Another feature that got "pulled" for the initial release was the ability to join a stream your friend/co-worker/enemy/etc. is "currently" listening to.

To drive that, you have to build a namespace map... map source x's track a to source y's track a. They "must" tackle some of those problems to drive some of the functionality they have planned.

LFM already does it to a degree... it's why they can provide external links to rdio, mog, spotify, etc. We just don't see any benefit from it because cleaning up the catalog presentation apparently isn't a big enough deal to justify budget.

Since the 'next generation thing' in 2008 last.fm has been developed forward so slowly that it can be neglected besides the major shrinking feature-wise.Damn straight!

That's precisely why I am glad someone else has adopted music scrobbling.

Facebook ain't LFM in that regard. They don't move at a snails pace, and the ecosystem for 3rd party development is a wee bit different.

I don't give a damn if Facebook "wins" in the space. Frankly, I'd rather it be an LFM. What I do give a damn about is precisely what you pointed out: LFM management has NOT taken many of the things you, I, and many others care about seriously enough to actually commit budget and move it along.

I welcome someone else "serious" in the scrobbling space.

The only thing i see Facebook doing is bringing in more revenue. The video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3b94kFBah8

Seems to be trying to push the trends further. Last.fm is still better in statistics, all Spotify/Facebook is doing is being social with it. The biggest problem Spotify has is not every one of your music files will scrobble if it is not on their database. Last.fm has the ability to scrobble almost everything. Sure, fb is mainstreaming it, but i have tried it out & it's pretty meh compared to last.fm. Spotify already scrobbles to last.fm anyways so really i don't see how Last.fm would be pushed onto the side. Perhaps if FB will expand it, Last.fm may need to compete, but really i don't see much competition here. I can't really see people leaving last.fm to jump on spotify/facebook & perhaps most who use Spotify/FB may be interested in checking out Last.fm.

Facebook added more integration to music services on artist pages:

Interesting article. I think it underestimates the importance of scrobbling from players like iTunes, WMP, Winamp and the like. Log out of Last.fm and go to the home page for evidence. At any given time, about 80% of the scrobbles coming into Last.fm are from those media players that Facebook doesn't scrobble. So, the first thing Facebook would have to do to dethrone Last.fm would be to find a way to accept those scrobbles.

It was mentioned earlier in this thread - scrobbling for the sake of scrobbling is next to pointless. There needs to be some functionality included: end results like recommendations, automatic playlist generation, etc. As of this post, I don't see Facebook doing anything beyond "hey, look at what I'm listening to, you can listen to this track if you want."

As far as what Last.fm should do, I think OldJoe is really onto the key: a hub that can resolve the tracks from your own collection, from Spotify, MOG, Rdio, Grooveshark, cloud players like Google and Amazon, and the rest. Don't just collect the data I submit from all of those sources, allow me to access the music from all of those sources through your site/player. Playdar and the Tomahawk music player are the two projects that are closest to accomplishing this (that I've seen), but they're both still in their alpha stages - very buggy and difficult to use for most people.

I think Last.fm could abandon their radio service altogether and serve as a music management hub, that both collects listening data, and makes nearly the entire site playable by plugging into these on-demand services and making the files playable in one place, regardless of the source. The result is no streaming costs for Last.fm, while "freeing the music" at the same time. In essence, Last.fm becomes THE place to play all the world's music, while no content is streamed from the site itself.

Music is available everywhere these days, but it's not all in one place. I think the first service that puts it all in one place will win.

Well I don't know to be honest. I don't have a Facebook account, but from what I understand, Facebook doesn't have a recommendation engine based on what you scrobble there, so even if all the world's music is available there (which it certainly isn't if the only sources are what's available on on-demand services like Spotify and MOG), there's no easy way of sifting through all of it to find what you want. Recommendations are necessary to find your way through it all.

Does Facebook have a player? I'm not talking about clicking on tracks one at a time to listen to music, I'm talking about a player in which you can build playlists and queue up tracks and albums in it. Or a radio feature that can generate a playlist for you, based on an artist, album, or track of your choosing? These are things the Last.fm engine can already do. So what's harder to accomplish? Building a recommendation engine and similarity algorithms and so on, or more fully integrating music partners to be able to play all of their content through your own player/website? I don't know the answer to this question.

I think both both services have work to do to reach that goal, if that is indeed their goal at all. Facebook has the cooperation needed from the music services and the ability to play their content on site, and Last.fm has the recommendation engine and algorithms to generate playlists. But both are needed to accomplish the goal. Who knows, maybe Facebook will buy Last.fm from CBS and combine them. Why reinvent the wheel after all?

I love Last but it has an absolute shit team when it comes to spreading the gospel. PR, whathave you. The whole shebang.

For the last couple of YEARS, before Spotify hit the US or this latest FB thing, NOBODY mentions Last.

Every article that mentions options mentions the half dead Slacker or the troubled MOG. Sometimes Rdio. Sometimes they talk about corporate attempts to harness the segment of the market with things like iHeartRadio, etc. Last FM is never even mentioned.

But then, when CBS relies on third party people to fix their problems and forgot their Facebook integration almost two years ago...

Hell, even when the relaunch of MP3.com happened i don't think anybody mentioned Last (which powers the system).

I don't know if it's because it's all hunky dory in London and over there they do do community outreach, but outside the Isles, you are dying.

Wake up Last. Give a crap CBS.

-G.

spineshank155 said:
The only thing i see Facebook doing is bringing in more revenue. The video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3b94kFBah8

Seems to be trying to push the trends further. Last.fm is still better in statistics, all Spotify/Facebook is doing is being social with it. The biggest problem Spotify has is not every one of your music files will scrobble if it is not on their database. Last.fm has the ability to scrobble almost everything. Sure, fb is mainstreaming it, but i have tried it out & it's pretty meh compared to last.fm. Spotify already scrobbles to last.fm anyways so really i don't see how Last.fm would be pushed onto the side. Perhaps if FB will expand it, Last.fm may need to compete, but really i don't see much competition here. I can't really see people leaving last.fm to jump on spotify/facebook & perhaps most who use Spotify/FB may be interested in checking out Last.fm.I think you bring up the most important thing. Facebook has not integrated any real media players - only streaming services. Facebook does not share the music you own, just the music you're checking out.

However, I disagree with the idea that Facebook must "do something" with the listening data they collect. Facebook is directing attention to streaming services, and the streaming services are encouraging or requiring Facebook logins.
Phase 2: Spotify drops their free plans for the US, iHeartRadio adds advertising, etc.
Just got paid. Friday night.

I Personally, I think it's cool enough just having a timeline of what my friends are listening to. That's what I always wanted from Last.fm. Unfortunately, I have about five real-life friends on here. Facebook has ALL of my friends. Every. Single. One.

What they lack on Facebook, are music players that people actually use. I, myself, don't use Spotify, rdio, MOG... The only music player I use that works with Facebook Music is iHeartRadio (a service that doesn't have on-demand selections, so the music that goes in my Facebook timeline isn't even music I chose to play). Know how many friends I've seen on my feed, scrobbling from a Facebook-approved music player? Four.

I would say, "Facebook doesn't need to link Last.fm. They need to allow scrobbles from iTunes, iPods, WMP, etc - and Last.fm won't matter anymore." But it's apparent Facebook only wants to deal with subscription services, so...

It is incredibly important for Last.fm to jump into the Open Graph movement. All that needs to happen is for Last.fm to realtime report scrobbles out to FB and link to the track's page. This will drive a large amount of traffic back to Last.fm. Spotify has seen tremendous growth just in the short time that Open Graph has been live.

Please, get some programmers on this. Facebook is trying to help Devs out to make it an easy process. I'm sure they would love to have another major partner using their tools.
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/beta/

akrde said:
So what do you think: Will Facebook Music Kill Last.fm?

And what should Last.fm do finally to not let this happen?LFM's biggest problem is, they're a software company that believes it's a media company.

Scrobbler, API, Catalog, RQL, Focused Music-Specific Community Features... all of those things are service definers, yet a good number of 'em languish and rot away.

You can focus in on the 80% all you want, but there's virtually no loyalty there (the next free service gets 'em... check out Grooveshark). It's the 20%, in this case, that matters... the 20% that wants to do more.

RJ got 15% of LFM? I'm sure he's not sweatin' it, but... he deserved a helluva lot more. His scrobbler IS LFM.

Just read a new report by JWT focusing on online music services, trends, the cloud, providers, etc. This is the 'intelligence' arm of a humongous ad agency trying to see what's going to happen, medium term, so they can then tell that to the potential clients/advertisers. Guess how many times Last is mentioned?

-G.

PS: you can download the report here in exchange for your email address (enter any made up bs if you feel so inclined, it should still work) it's the October paper under the title 'Things to Watch: Music Edition' http://www.jwtintelligence.com/trendletters2/

juepucta said:
And another one, now in infographic form

http://infographics.fastcompany.com/magazine/159/music-database-infographic.html

-G.first i thought, wow, great! then i looked closer and found some similarities to this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bartolomeu_Velho_1568.jpg

-H.

Jue, yes, Last.fm is losing the positioning because they always try to take one that's not theirs or that they cannot hold or don't want to expand on decisively - as Joe pointed out above.

This infographic, is indeed very interesting. But it depictures the music world seen from the point of view of another company - the Echo Nest - who have been trying to define a product from the very beginning and to sell it too. The center of this world is their database. which in my opinion is wrong when it comes to what Last.fm is. If we put a miraculous machine in the center of this world like they do - it reminds more of the "Melodic middleAGE" than the "Melodic middleMAN". i once tried to get some answers here, in this regard:

http://blog.last.fm/2011/06/23/anatomy-of-the-uk-charts-part-2-clash-of-attitudes

it seems they don't have any ... it wasn't always like that

http://www.flickr.com/photos/criminalintent/396466520/in/photostream/

-H.