last.fm posts

TubeRadio.fm turns YouTube into a powerful music player

by Jay Hathaway Oct 26th 2009

Using YouTube to listen to music is nothing new. Search for a song you want to hear, and you're very likely to find it, even if there's no official music video. YouTube isn't built to listen to music though, and that's where TubeRadio.fm comes in. It's a slick music player that lets you create playlists from YouTube, and can even find entire albums at once, using track listings and album art from Last.fm. The TubeRadio homepage describes the service as "iTunes meets YouTube meets Spotify," and that's not much of exaggeration.

TubeRadio.fm puts more emphasis on the "radio" than the "tube": the videos themselves take up very little space in the UI. More space is devoted to the tabbed info box at the bottom of the screen, which automatically pulls up lyrics and artist bios. TubeRadio does a good job of getting the album versions of songs when you use 'Discography Mode' to grab whole albums, but occasionally it will find a live version instead. Fortunately, there's another mode that searches all of YouTube, and you can manually add the version you want, if it exists.

Tags: itunes, last.fm, music, music player, music videos, MusicPlayer, MusicVideos, playlist, spotify, tuberadio.fm, youtube

Filed under: Audio, web 2.0

Last.fm HD radio stations coming to major US cities

by Jay Hathaway Sep 11th 2009

CBS, the parent company of Last.fm, is launching HD radio stations in the four largest US markets, powered by Last.fm. We've seen traditional radio stations go online before, but it's rare to see an online service take to the airwaves like this. The stations will play music based on Last.fm's weekly charts, which sounds like a Web 2.0 twist on the old call-in countdown votes on the radio stations of my childhood.

To tune in to the actual stations you'll need to be in LA, New York, Chicago or San Francisco, and have an HD radio. That means this might be a bigger win for HD radio adoption in general than for Last.fm in particular. If people are going to start buying HD receivers, it'll be because there's enough quality content to make the investment worth it. Last.fm's stations might be a good start.

If you're not, though, you can still catch the online streaming version of the station through the Last.fm site or through Last.fm's mobile apps. Listeners can also expect in-studio performance and interviews from a studio Last.fm has set up in New York. With data from over 25 million users, Last.fm might be taking the mystery out of the formula for radio success. I wonder if they'll dig up some obscure gems, too, or whether it'll just be the popular stuff.

[via Wired]

Tags: cbs, hd, last.fm, music, radio

Filed under: Audio, Browsers

Fire.FM adds a Last.FM toolbar to Firefox

by Brad Linder Aug 27th 2009

Last.FM is an internet radio service that lets you create radio "stations" by entering artists you like and listening to an ongoing stream of music from similar artists. Normally you'd visit the Last.FM web page to get started and leave it open in the background while you go about your business. But Fire.FM lets you run the service from a browser toolbar.

The Fire.FM toolbar is compatible with Firefox 3 and higher. It lets you create a new station by entering an artist name, see a list of similar bands or musicians, and access a list of recent stations. You can also use the toolbar to adjust the volume or skip tracks. And if you login to your Last.FM account and grant the toolbar access, Fire.FM will also let you tag and "love" tracks.

You can also hide the toolbar and it will keep playing in the background.

Last.FM is free for users within the US, the UK, and Germany. Outisde of those regions, it costs €3/month to use the service.

[via MakeUseOf]

Tags: add-ons, fire.fm, firefox, last.fm, music

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Microsoft, Web

Microsoft to launch internet radio service?

by Brad Linder Jul 14th 2009

A few months ago web-based music search engine and streaming media service SeeqPod dropped a hint that the company was working with Microsoft on... something. Now UK paper Telegraph is reporting that Microsoft is planning to launch a streaming music service similar to Spotify, Pandora, or Last.fm.

Microsoft could launch the service by the end of July. Users would be able to either stream songs for free over the internet or download tracks. The service will reportedly be ad-supported, but users will also have the option of paying £9.99 (about $16.30) per month for an ad-free version.

There's also a chance (I'd say a pretty good one), that the music service will be available to Xbox 360 users as well, as Microsoft continues to position the console as a multimedia hub and not just a gaming system.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Tags: last.fm, music, pandora, seeqpod, spotify

Filed under: Audio, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Open Source

Songbird 1.2 released, now with iPod sync (sort of)

by Jay Hathaway Jun 22nd 2009

Songbird, the open-source, Mozilla-based music player, has a bunch of new features in version 1.2 that make it worth taking a look at. The most important addition is 2-way iTunes syncing, so you can import and export songs and playlists back and forth between Songbird and iTunes. If you thought the whole point of Songbird was to keep you from having to use iTunes, this feature won't make you happy, but if you have an iPod or iPhone that you want to put music on, this is the closest Songbird gets to letting you do that.

The other new features include an integrated Last.fm radio add-on. Songbird already supported Last.fm scrobbling, but now it supports Last.fm listening, too, so you may be able ditch your existing Last.fm client and just go with this. There's also automatic library organization, which is something you might be familiar with in iTunes. It can move all your music files to one location and sort them based on artist and album metadata. Last, but not least if you're an audiophile, is a 10-band equalizer.

Tags: itunes, last.fm, mozilla, music, songbird

Filed under: Audio, Business, News, Web

TechCrunch vs. Last.fm vs. the RIAA, Round 2

by Jay Hathaway May 23rd 2009

Remember the panic a while back about social music site Last.FM supposedly leaking listener data to the RIAA? TechCrunch sure does, because they started the rumor, and then faced accusations of shoddy reporting from basically the whole Internet when it turned out to be false. Well, now TechCrunch have uncovered some new information that shows they were right after all ... sort of.

Last.fm's parent company, CBS, was the source of the leak to the RIAA. Last.fm didn't know about it at the time, having just turned over the data to CBS, which explains their vehement denials. TechCrunch isn't saying Last.fm lied, but they are saying that CBS duped them during the reporting for their original story, asking TC to attribute a CBS quote to Last.fm.

The reason for the link, according to Techcrunch's source at CBS, is that the requester (it could have been the RIAA, or an individual label) had the ability to hurt CBS/Last.fm on streaming rates. The source also claims that Last.fm premium accounts aren't making any profit, and the leak was made with the intent of protecting Last.fm from increased rates that could put it out of business.

No comment from Last.fm yet, but it's still early (and a three-day weekend) at their headquarters in the UK. We'll know more when they've had a chance to respond.

Tags: CBS, last.fm, leak, riaa, rumors, techcrunch

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Web

Last.fm launches adds videos, slideshows to music player

by Brad Linder May 6th 2009

Last.fm has rolled out an updated version of its music player, which shows music videos for the songs you're listening to when available. And when they're not, it will show photo slideshows of the artist.

All told, the new Last.fm player gives you something to look at while you're listening to music, which is probably little more than an attempt to get you to stick around on the web page instead of opening the music player in a browser tab and then tucking it away in the background while you go and do something else. It's a lot easier to rake in the advertising dollars if you can get people to, you know, look at your web page.

The slideshow pictures come from related images uploaded by Last.fm members.

Even if you don't care about visuals, there's another reason you might want to check out the new Last.fm music player. You can now create instant radio stations by entering the names of up to three different artists instead of just one.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Tags: internet-radio, last.fm

Filed under: Audio, Internet

Last.fm postpones international fees

by Brad Linder Mar 30th 2009

Internet radio service Last.fm is holding off on a plan to begin charging customers outside of the US, UK, and Germany a monthly fee to access streaming music. The move has received a fair amount of criticism, primarily from users who don't want to shell out 3 Euros a month to pay for the service.

In a blog post today, the company explains that it hasn't been able to make enough money from advertising in each country where the service is offered to support the service. Last.fm is holding off on charging subscription fees until it makes a few changes including the ability for users to purchase gift subscriptions for friends and pay for transactions using services other than Paypal.

[via Mashable]

Tags: advertising, internet-radio, last.fm, subscriptions

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Mobile

Last.fm drops support for 3rd party mobile apps

by Brad Linder Mar 25th 2009

Last.fm is apparently on a mission to tick off everyone who uses the service, one group at a time. Yesterday the company announced that it would begin charging for access outside of the US, UK, and Germany. Now Last.fm is killing support for unofficial clients that run on mobile devices.

The official Last.fm apps for iPhone and Android still work.

On the bright side, Last.fm plans to release a public API that will make it easier for developers to come up with third party clients for the service -- as long as they run on desktop computers. The API will ensure that only Last.fm subscribers can stream music. But the API will not work with mobile phones due to licensing agreements.

Responding to the predictable outcry of criticism, Last.fm updated its official blog post on the subject to suggest that some exceptions to the no-mobile client rule may be possible. But you'll need to get permission from Last.fm.

[via Gizmodo]

Tags: android, iphone, last.fm, mobile

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Web

Last.fm to charge international users a subscription fee

by Brad Linder Mar 24th 2009

Online music streaming service Last.fm is about to begin charging users in all but three countries a subscription. If you don't live in the US, UK, or Germany, you'll be able to listen to up to 30 tracks as part of a free trial. after that, you'll need to shell out €3.00 each month to use the service.

Last.fm, which is owned by CBS works with thousands of musicians, labels, and others to secure the rights to stream music in the US and internationally. But either Last.fm is getting greedy, or someone at the company realized that the cost of streaming music and paying for license fees in all of those countries was too high and Last.fm needs to find some way to pay its bills.

Last.fm competitor Pandora pulled the plug on all of its international streams in 2007 and 2008.

[via Mashable]

Tags: last.fm, music, subscription

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Windows, Freeware

Save Last.fm and Aupeo tracks to MP3 with Music Downloader

by Lee Mathews Mar 11th 2009

I wrote about LastSharp a while back - it's an application developed in C# that allows you to download tracks from Last.fm. If you'd prefer an option that doesn't require the .Net runtimes, there's Last.fm Music Downloader - which is also totally portable.

Launch Music Downloader and drop in a Last.fm url - it can be a similar artists link (http://www.last.fm/listen/artist/Tool/similarartists) or global tag (http://www.last.fm/listen/globaltags/polka). Click the start button, and the playlist begins downloading to your hard drive. There are a few settings you can tweak: default save folder, album art downloading, download speed limit, and maximum number of downloads.

Files are automatically named artist - track title.mp3 by default, and the deep folder layout option will sort them into \artist\album subdirectories.

It's also worth noting that I was able to download tracks from Aupeo - even though the service isn't available to me in Canada. Finding artist links can be a little tricky, though, without access to their web site.

You might encounter some trouble downloading from Last.fm from time to time like I did, but that's something I fully expect when using an app like this. It's not really the way Last.fm intends its library to be used, after all.

[via gHacks]

Tags: aupeo, download, last.fm, mp3, music, streaming-audio

Filed under: Audio, Macintosh, Social Software

Amua: cool, minimal Last.fm player for Mac

by Jay Hathaway Mar 5th 2009

I went looking for a Last.fm client for my Mac recently, and discovered that Amua is well worth considering. It passes the basic tests for a good Last.fm app: it scrobbles tracks, it lets you skip, love and ban songs, and provides access to artist, user and tag stations. It also stays out of the way in a menubar icon, and only shows its small, discreet current track display when you tell it to.

I didn't realize it at first, but Amua uses iTunes to stream songs from Last.fm. Not a big deal to me, since I have iTunes open 90% of the time I'm on my Mac. If iTunes is a dealbreaker for you, then you might need to find yourself a different player. There are reasons to stick with Amua: it hardly uses any system resources, and it supports Growl. The main improvement I'd like to see would be hotkeys for the play/pause/skip functions. The iTunes hotkeys will stop Amua, but won't get it going again or skip to the next track on Last.fm.

Tags: amua, client, last.fm, music, os x, OsX

Filed under: Audio, Business, News

Even RIAA says Last.fm never handed over data

by Jay Hathaway Feb 23rd 2009

Last.fm has finally put up an official blog post to respond to the TechCrunch-initiated rumor that they turned over users' information to the RIAA as part of an investigation into leaked copies of the new U2 album. The post reiterates that Last.fm takes its users' info very seriously, and that they really don't have the time or system resources to start running extra data dumps, for the RIAA or anybody else. The post is amusingly titled "TechCrunch are full of shit," although I doubt anyone at Last.fm is very amused by this incident.

It also includes an interesting graph of U2's popularity on Last.fm. After the TechCrunch rumor came out, U2 plays skyrocketed. Either more people realized the new album had leaked, or they faked the metadata in protest, as several commenters at both Last.fm and TechCrunch suggested they would do.

Here's the kicker, courtesy of Ars Technica: even the RIAA says they never asked Last.fm for user info, and Last.fm never gave it to them. If you had any doubt that Last.fm was telling the truth, you don't even have to take their word for it anymore. This supposed data sharing never happened.

Incidentally, Ars also figured out how the new U2 album leaked in the first place: it was briefly available for sale on an Australian music site before they realized the mistake and took it down.

Oops! Too late! High quality, DRM-free U2 files are now all over the Internet.

Tags: last.fm, leaked, new-U2-album, no-line-on-the-horizon, RIAA, U2

Filed under: News, P2P

Last.fm not really sharing data with RIAA

by Jay Hathaway Feb 20th 2009

Have you torrented the new U2 album? We won't tell, and neither will Last.fm, if those unreleased tracks show up on your listening profile. That's not what TechCrunch is saying, though. Earlier today, they incorrectly reported that Last.fm turned over listener data to the RIAA as part of an investigation into piracy of the U2 record. According to TechCrunch's anonymous source, "I heard from an irate friend who works at CBS that last.fm recently provided the RIAA with a giant dump of user data to track down people who are scrobbling unreleased tracks."

But according to one of Last.fm's founders, commenting on the TechCrunch post, "This is utter nonsense and totally untrue. As far as I can tell, the author of this article got a "tip" from *one* person and decided to make a story out of it. Techcrunch is full of shit, film at 11." I'm not attacking TechCrunch's reporting here, I'm just doing some reporting of my own to make sure everyone knows that this story should apparently be downgraded to rumor status, and there's no need to dump your last.fm account over it.

UPDATE: Despite it being past 1AM at Last.fm's London HQ, the Last.fm staff have posted in their forums: "Of course we work with the major labels and provide them with broad statistics, as we would with any other label, but we'd never personally identify our users to a third party - that goes against everything we stand for. As far as I'm concerned Techcrunch have made this whole story up."

Tags: last.fm, music, p2p, riaa, rumor, techcrunch

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Web services, Google, Mobile

Last.fm launches Android client

by Lee Mathews Jan 23rd 2009

If you love Last.fm and happen to have an Android handset, today's your lucky day: the popular social streaming audio service has released a client tailor-made for your device. More good news: it's free.

In addition to browsing and searching for artists and genres (and listening to them, of course), you can also find concert information and let your friends know whether or not you'll be in attendance.

As an added bonus, the app works in the background - allowing you to enjoy your favorite Last.Fm stream while staying productive with other apps.

To get the app installed, point your G1 to this page on the Android Marketplace.

[ via JKOnTheRun ]

Tags: android, last.fm, streaming-music

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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