# Trying Out Last.fm (Again)



## Lenfer (Aug 15, 2011)

I have tried *Last.fm* twice now and didn't like it. I found it too intrusive and I could never find a username that reflected me. If anyone has an idea for a username that would suit me please let me know.

Also rather than add my own real life friends and use my real name. I'd like to just use it to keep in touch with members here. That way my information would not be on display for whole of the WWW to see. If you use *Last.FM* and would like to be my friend please let me know. 

*L'enfer* :tiphat:

ps.

Some swine has already used the username *L'enfer*!


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

You can find me under callumjhack3tt. Personally, I find last.fm's catalogue rather limited - I'm always searching for things it doesn't have. However, I think its listening record and social features are interesting, so for some time I've had my Spotify and media player use hooked up to it, so whenever I listen to anything with those services, it's also recorded. You'll see that I'm currently listening to Benjamin Grosvenor via Spotify.


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## Lenfer (Aug 15, 2011)

Polednice said:


> You can find me under callumjhack3tt. Personally, I find last.fm's catalogue rather limited - I'm always searching for things it doesn't have. However, I think its listening record and social features are interesting, so for some time I've had my Spotify and media player use hooked up to it, so whenever I listen to anything with those services, it's also recorded. You'll see that I'm currently listening to Benjamin Grosvenor via Spotify.


I didn't like *Last.fm* all that much I hated *Spotify* due to it forcing you to join *Facebook*. The thing I liked about *Last.fm* was finding new musicians that I had not heard of before. I'm embarrassed to say it but I found *Maria Joao Pires* through *Last.fm*.

Since moving away from first *Paris* and then *London* I find myself a little isolated out here. I like having the chance to chat with like minded people who share my taste in music. I have tickets to a few events in the next few months though so I'm not as bothered about it right now. 

If I do sign up again I'll be sure to send you a message *P*. How are you liking *Grosvenor*?


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I joined Spotify a while before they made the facebook attachment compulsory, but if I were starting now, I certainly wouldn't use it because I don't like to have applications access facebook.

Grosvenor was, I'm sure, very good, I just don't find the composers on that disc particularly enticing.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

I've got an account for Last.fm but I'm never bothered using it.


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## samurai (Apr 22, 2011)

I believe that *Spotify *is much better organized, has a wider selection from which to choose and is far easier to navigate around than *Last.FM. *Like Polednice, I was able to get *Spotify* before it had its mandatory *Facebook* app., and, equally like Polednice, if this had been a requirement for joining* Spotify*, neither would I have joined. Does anyone know if this Facebook mandate is in effect in the USA as well as the UK?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Lenfer said:


> I have tried *Last.fm* twice now and didn't like it. I found it too intrusive and I could never find a username that reflected me. If anyone has an idea for a username that would suit me please let me know.
> 
> Also rather than add my own real life friends and use my real name. I'd like to just use it to keep in touch with members here. That way my information would not be on display for whole of the WWW to see. If you use *Last.FM* and would like to be my friend please let me know.
> 
> ...


A user name is the last of your worries.

It's catalogue is about as limited - or more so -than a light survey course on classical music. Look up Stravinsky, find one or two movements from the Firebird, another from Petrushka, etc. They often do not have the complete three movements of even a classical symphony, making them one of the very lightest, like those CD collections of one movement from the popular classical composers.

Software for such things, I include YouTube and Amazon, in the further recommendations departments, is a massive fail.
Like Amazon, where you have 'shown' an interest in Alban Berg, and the following recommendations are for a string quartet of Brahms performed by the Alban Berg quartet, LOL. They are all about equal in suggesting similar unrelated recommendations.

I think you are better off, once you've found a composer you know less or little of, Hitting good ole WikiDubiousPedia, which is good enough to list a larger spectrum of many a composers works, and then sniff around Youtube for the pieces by name.

One of the WORLD's best classical stations, 24 - 7, streamed live online and free, is WFMT (98.7). It is radio, but there are archive programs also available. The variety of what they play, classical, is wide. They play usually, complete pieces without interruption, what few ads there are are read live by the announcers, with no annoying jingles. Their announcers are very erudite on the subject of music, and often their comments are informative.


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## Chrythes (Oct 13, 2011)

I'd suggest Spotify as well. It's got an enormous amount of music. I believe they have got most of what NAXOS has ever released, including many releases by EMI, Vrigin, Hyperion, BIS and more. 
If joining Facebook is a problem just create a "false" account that would be only used to register to Spotify.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

Well, I guess I'll be the only one here to say anything positive about last.fm. I don't use it to listen to music on it, as I don't use any program to listen to music except for actual music I listen to from my hard drive. I don't like streaming music whatsoever. So I'm not worried about their catalogue or anything of that nature. I personally enjoy using it just for the tracking nature, since I tend to be interested in statistics. There are many off-site things you can do with last.fm that I find rather interesting. It shocks me sometimes to see what I listen to over a certain period and how much I listened to x and y. I really don't find its recommendations "laughable" like PetrB does. Mind you, the recommendations are made up of what people actually listen to, and not just who they think is similar. It has to do with person x listening to say Schonberg and listening to Webern a lot. Then a lot of other people do the same and Webern becomes a similar artist to Schonberg. The principal is that people listen to music similar to what they like, and people with the same taste will enjoy those artists. If you take a trip to Schonberg's page you will see his top similar artists are Webern, Berg, Messiaen, Ligeti, Xenakis, Carter, and Boulez, and in my opinion rightfully so. 

Now, it may go wrong sometimes because of this system. I've listened to artists that don't have very many plays and the recommendations were completely unrelated. Mind you, most people don't listen to classical music. I don't just listen to classical music, which makes things more interesting for me. I find that many avant-garde artists are well represented with solid recommendations in place, and when you move up the ladder to other genres I love like Jazz, Ambient, Post-Rock, etc. they are very spot on. I also find it interesting to go about and read people's opinions on various artists, songs, and albums. Last.fm also motivates me to get my library of music groomed. It's also a lovely place to find new music through other people with similar taste and share things with various friends if you happen to know anybody with last.fm.

It isn't for everybody and I put off signing up for the longest time after I had several friends tell me to get one non-stop for a year. I haven't stopped using since I signed up two and a half years ago. I find some of the features need fleshing out and they have been working on changing things. I signed up after a major change apparently, because prior to when I signed up they were a more stream friendly site with more options. If that is what I was after then I wouldn't be satisfied with last.fm, but for my purposes it more than satisfies.


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

Last.fm is what it is. It's the only "social networking" thing I use, so if I want to make some sort of statement by defriending someone, at least I have one way.

Geez, that's a pretty negative use now that I think about it.


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## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

Cnote11 said:


> Well, I guess I'll be the only one here to say anything positive about last.fm. I don't use it to listen to music on it, as I don't use any program to listen to music except for actual music I listen to from my hard drive. I don't like streaming music whatsoever. So I'm not worried about their catalogue or anything of that nature. I personally enjoy using it just for the tracking nature, since I tend to be interested in statistics. There are many off-site things you can do with last.fm that I find rather interesting. It shocks me sometimes to see what I listen to over a certain period and how much I listened to x and y. I really don't find its recommendations "laughable" like PetrB does. Mind you, the recommendations are made up of what people actually listen to, and not just who they think is similar. It has to do with person x listening to say Schonberg and listening to Webern a lot. Then a lot of other people do the same and Webern becomes a similar artist to Schonberg. The principal is that people listen to music similar to what they like, and people with the same taste will enjoy those artists. If you take a trip to Schonberg's page you will see his top similar artists are Webern, Berg, Messiaen, Ligeti, Xenakis, Carter, and Boulez, and in my opinion rightfully so.
> 
> Now, it may go wrong sometimes because of this system. I've listened to artists that don't have very many plays and the recommendations were completely unrelated. Mind you, most people don't listen to classical music. I don't just listen to classical music, which makes things more interesting for me. I find that many avant-garde artists are well represented with solid recommendations in place, and when you move up the ladder to other genres I love like Jazz, Ambient, Post-Rock, etc. they are very spot on. I also find it interesting to go about and read people's opinions on various artists, songs, and albums. Last.fm also motivates me to get my library of music groomed. It's also a lovely place to find new music through other people with similar taste and share things with various friends if you happen to know anybody with last.fm.
> 
> It isn't for everybody and I put off signing up for the longest time after I had several friends tell me to get one non-stop for a year. I haven't stopped using since I signed up two and a half years ago. I find some of the features need fleshing out and they have been working on changing things. I signed up after a major change apparently, because prior to when I signed up they were a more stream friendly site with more options. If that is what I was after then I wouldn't be satisfied with last.fm, but for my purposes it more than satisfies.


This......


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## humanbean (Mar 5, 2011)

I'm quite religious about the last.fm scrobble system. "Scrobbling" is where your music program/player/device sends a data record to their server every time you listen to a music track. These scrobbles can then be analyzed into daily, monthly, and yearly charts, showing how many times you've "scrobbled" a track or artist. I try to scrobble every single track I listen to everyday, and have been pretty successful at it since I started in my pre-classical days in 2008. Most people I've introduced it to find it pointless, but I find it interesting that in 10 years I will be able to look back and see how many Beethoven plays I've accumulated in those years, and each track I listened to on a given day.

For classical music it's a bit hectic because scrobbling is based on your tags. And there are hundreds of ways of naming some works (i.e. "Piano Sonata", "Sonata for Piano", etc.) which leaves a bit of a mess. Luckily there's a small group over at Musicbrainz fleshing out a standardized naming system, but little progress has been made in standardizing the hundreds of thousands of classical works/movements.

Anyway, with that said, I find the actual radio useless. I actually think they should split the scrobbling site away from the radio, because the former is much much more useful and unique.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

I created my own tagging system for Classical really... I don't fuss too much over it because it can be highly variable in reality. I find it quite silly when you go on any given composers page and their top track is "Adagio". Makes me laugh at how inane it is.


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

Yeah. There's no way the classical statistics will ever not be a mess. Just tag your symphonies as "fart pancake #5" if you want.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

I believe Argus does tag his Mozart like that.


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## Lenfer (Aug 15, 2011)

Sorry for not replying to this thread for ages. I don't really use the "radio feature" on *Last.fm*. I really just use it for recommendations. I've found one or two composers and musicians I didn't know about before. My boyfriend has an account and I use his just now. Perhaps in time I will start my own but for now I don't want my info out there, thank you all for your replies.


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