Last.fm taking major step towards becoming great big clever iTunes in the sky

I just spent 10mins fiddling with the beta-test of the new Last.fm (you’ll need to be a subscriber to Last.fm to have a play - if you aren’t, come back later, I’ll update this post with some screenshots later today).

I have to say, though their iconic design is gone (looking kinda Facebook-y now!), some of the customisation options are gone (for now), such as sliders to increase the obscurity/randomness of new bands it thinks you’ll like (if you’re feeling adventurous), this overall looks very promising and paints quite a clear picture for the future direction Last.fm is expected to take.

The salient ‘new’ feature is the Library. I say ‘new’; the current iteration of Last.fm has largely the same functionality, but this redesign does it justice as an increasingly central feature of the service (whereas charts once were, as some people have complained). The Library, much like your iTunes, lists all songs you listen to, and your playlists.

The new design incorporates a CoverFlow-like display of albums, or artists, for example. Unlike iTunes, this isn’t a list of your mp3’s - it’s any song you have listened to (that get ‘scrobbled‘, in last.fm parlance). This is a strong acknowledgement of how music consumption is evolving: you could be listening to your CDs, it might be an mp3 your friend emails you, it could be your mp3 library on your network hard-disk (NAS), or it could be a song streamed on last.fm, hypem, or whatever other streaming services Last.fm chooses to scrobble; might even be streamed through your shiny new 3G iPhone.

Last.fm is building a very impressive online library of songs available for streaming; so even if the song I listen to is off a CD, it gets listed in my Last.fm library, and chances are, I can just click a link from there and listen to it whenever I damn well please - CD or no CD. See what Last.fm is doing here? It’s moving our listening online; just like downloading a song from iTunes, I can add tracks or entire albums to my Last.fm library at the click of a button.

So far any song can be streamed free up to 3 times, but what if they charged users for adding albums to their library, but once it’s there, you can stream the album as many times as you like, on a similar fee basis to iTunes? Or can they really just rely on monetizing traffic through adverts and subscriber fees like the one I currently pay?

What we’d be seeing emerge in the former case is a really peculiar business model - you pay not to ‘own’ the music (as in, buying a cd or downloading the mp3) - you pay a lump sum royalty fee to be able to play it, and your Library is a collection of music you have paid to have access to - both a digital permissions locker and a great big (clever - recommending songs) jukebox in the sky.

What would be great in this hypothetical scenario would be if songs I scrobble from my CDs or mp3s or other streaming services were automatically added to my locker (as they are now), on the assumption that I have paid for them already, so Last.fm assumes I have permission to listen through them as well. Methinks this might be legally impossible. What I wouldn’t give to understand the licensing agreements Last.fm has with labels that allows them to stream me millions of songs on my command!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 4:40 pm and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Q dub —1 month ago with 1 point

One more point:

It's the exact same trend as the transition from POP mail to webmail, or any other desktop-to-webtop transitions predicted in other apps.

Q dub —1 month ago with 1 point

I absolutely see music moving in this direction. People will purchase permanent licenses but do not need to be in possession of music.

* Possession is an antiquated tradition from the world of physical goods.
Instead, digital media should be sold as a combination of a right-to-play and some level of ability-to-access (e.g. streaming via browser + stream via phone) I think the ability-to-access will be the most important level. Provide sufficiently convenient access and most users wont' care as much about rights restrictions nor "archival" needs.

gregory —1 month ago with 1 point

for me it has not been so enjoyable since cbs or whoever, bought it... before, it was sheer magic, now, i feel like i am somebody's marketing target. so i pass.

Skyler —1 month ago with 1 point

What the fuck is a jukebox in the (sky)? I think it's wishful thinking on your part. To be able to listen to the song, last.fm has to have that track legally licensed and available on their servers in order to re-play it. Right now, most of the stuff that they don't have available would be the music I would want to listen to. Who wants to wait for a low-quality streamable version of an album to load if they can just listen to a high quality version that they already have on disk, or on their mp3 players? The full tracks thing is awesome if you want to hear a few samples from a band a friend has recommended to you or whatever, but as far as actual listning to it goes, I think people will always choose their mp3 player or the files they can download from the internet and put into their computer ect.

The service won't just add any song you play, and it's certianly not as amazing and ground breaking as you're attempting to make out.

Philippe Bradley —1 month ago with 1 point

Well here's the thing. Firstly Last.fm has a very good online catalogue of songs, available streamable, for free - and legal, too; being purchased by CBS will probably help them really put their backs into doing bulk deals with all labels, major or indie. So the big streaming jukebox in the sky isn't a pipe dream - there's already more free streaming music up on there than anyone's hard drive could hold; much less a mobile phone, nor even an ipod.

Secondly, this is a jukebox you can add albums to on the fly, wherever you are - you might be watching TV, hear a cool song and if that TV is interactive, press the red button and add it to your online jukebox; or you might be listening to it through web radio, it gets scrobbled and added automatically. Even in mp3 format you are still physically tied to your music; you have to sync it between all your devices to be able to listen to it. In an increasingly all-IP-connected world of consumer electronics, it makes precious little sense not to hold all your media in the cloud. And rather than each person having their own cloud, last.fm appears to be building one cloud and figuring out who has what access to which bits of it.

This is not just wishful thinking. It's the path of least resistance for the tech, and a reasonable explanation for this particular redesign/re-emphasising of the Library feature.

Oh, and the service *DOES* add every song you play, if it gets 'scrobbled'. That's technology they've had since day 1 (when last.fm was just Audioscrobbler); now they use that (plus albums/tracks you manually add) to make up your 'Library', and tie each song in your library (that they have in their cloud) to a full, streaming track; and links to download it as mp3, for those weekends/commutes that happen to be off the grid.

This is not "wishful thinking".

Skyler —1 month ago with 1 point

Here's the thing though... streamable for free, a mere three times. That's it. What use it that to me? None. I'd rather pay to own and download the digital (and high quality version) rather than pay for unlimited access to the streamable version that I can only play with an internet connection.

I think you're getting ahead of yourself with the whole red button thing. That seems like a feature pretty far off in the future.. Nice idea, just nothing that's going to happen soon on last fm.

Sure, I know it adds everything I play, but what I meant was that just because I play a song and I scrobble it doesn't mean that I can then play that song on another computer that doesn't have all my files on if its not available in the full version on last fm. That's why it's not that fantastic.

Philippe Bradley —1 month ago with 1 point

I can well appreciate that your comment that I may be getting ahead of myself - I often do.
But content is already very impressive and growing steadily, so apart from the files it doesn't have (yet?), it *is* a 'jukebox in the sky', to all intents and purposes. How it caters to the niche versus the mainstream in its ever growing catalogue remains to be seen. Here's hoping both are equally well served

now, as for only being able to play them 3 times, I largely suspect that's because they haven't yet totally figured out the revenue side of things. 3 plays is a taster. In this post I linked to an earlier post I made: http://www.overthecounterculture.com/2008/lastf...
Check the screenshot. It promises "unlimited access", does it not? But they need to make sure they know how much that's gonna cost them in order to know how much to charge for the service; part of that is knowing what the auxiliary (non-subscription) revenue is to a streaming service - how many shoppers do they send to Amazon to download/buy the single or album, how many ads get clicked on, etc, how many times do people listen to each song and is that from (costly) major labels, or are people streaming underground stuff that maybe costs last.fm less (in terms of streaming royalties)... etc.

Mark Allen —2 months ago with 1 point

The locker sounds exactly like one of the incarnations of mp3.com, which the labels threw a hissy fit over. Funny how a couple years of declining revenues can change things.

Philippe Bradley —2 months ago with 1 point

Come to think of it, that *is* quite similar! Funny indeed (especially in the week in which the labels announce a bit partnership with Napster)

Over The Counter Culture

Last.fm taking major step towards becoming great big clever iTunes in the sky