Last.fm Group Essay

LastFM Essay
Last.fm is a UK-based Internet radio and music community website, founded in 2002. On May 30th 2007, it was announced that Last.fm had been bought by CBS for £140million. After CBS redesigned Last.fm a press release recognized the redesign saying it had generated a 20% growth in the sites traffic. On Tuesday, 24 March 2009 it was announced on the official Last.fm blog that Last.fm will charge users — except for those in the United States, United Kingdom, or Germany — a subscription fee of €3.00 per month for use of Last.fm radio. Since April 27 this subscription has become active.People have their own profiles on last fm when they subscribe, so they can listen to music. You can see their profile picture and how recently they have been on the site. It also tells you the last song they listened to or are currently listening to. You can ‘browse people’ by selecting the country they live in, and what taste in music they have. Last.fm claims over 30 million active users, based in over 200 countries. at the minute LastFM is worth £7.87 million

User interaction
It is now free for artists to sign up and join the pages they may already have from other users. They can then upload their music and earn royalties every time their song is played and their music will be played in radio shows similar to the genre of their music.
There is also a shout box feature that allows the consumer to give feedback on the artist, radio show, group or musical events that are advertised on the artist’s page.
There are also groups that users can join for each artist, genre or tags set up by users. There are discussion boards and forums consumers can also add pictures to the site or the site which can be played in slideshows of artists when they are played.
On each page there is a recent activity section like most social networking sites that update users on tags, comments and other users’ activity in relation to the artist.
Not knowingly the users are always interacting with the site because of the Scrobbler software which automatically uploads what you have been listening to so that the site can develop a playlist / radio show for the user and other users in what they listen to. A customizable display of Recently Played tracks is now available via some web services, allowing users to add them to blogs, MySpace or as forum signatures. To promote the music they listen to.

Availability
Last fm can be played through multiple different devices. They still use scrobbler technology either sending the data automatically with an inbuilt internet connection or the scrobbler software sends the user data to the site when attached to a computer. These devices are:
1. IPod,
2. IPod touch and IPhone,
3. Other players with the Rockbox firmware
4. Playstation portables
5. Microsoft Zune
6. Toshiba's Gigabeat line
7. SanDisk's Sansa series
8. Samsung's YP series
9. TrekStor Vibez
10. Smartphones
11. X-box
There is laso a range of media players with the software that have the software support to send song information to Last FM, some of these are the X-Box media centre, VLV media player, Spotify and aTunes.
There is also plugins available to allow you to use Last FM through players like iTunes, Yahoo music engine, RealPlayer and Napster.


Recommendations for the future
Last.fm has never had a public radio API, although we've tolerated third-party clients using the undocumented calls that our client uses. This is finally about to change - we're going to make a public, documented streaming API available to everyone who has an API account. There are a few limitations:
1. Only subscribers will be allowed to stream using API applications unless you negotiate a separate deal with us - we need to get the money to cover royalties.
2. You won't be allowed to use our API to stream to mobile phones. This is unfortunately a limitation of some of our licensing agreements. (We may make exceptions to this)
These changes should be made by the end of next week. Alongside this, we'll be shutting down the remainder of the old, undocumented streaming APIs over the next couple of weeks.

To allow dance company’s to publish there work onto the site
To do all that is possible to keep up with competitors;
Maintain the site is free
Allow small adverts to cover costs

Rivals of Last FM
Imeem
· Social media site
· Share with friends


Pandora
· Easier then imeem or Last.Fm
· Intelligent internet radio service
· Gives feedback on other things you would like depending on what you have already chosen.
· You can buy tracks from ITunes or Amazon MP3 from this site.

Yahoo Music
· Closed music unlimited service
· Using Rhapsody instead still most popular though
· Based on preferences you give and gives feedback and suggestions based on this.
· Internet Explorer the only compatible browser

ITunes
· Uses Apple
· Pay for music – shop
· Convert it onto your apple phone or TV
Spotify
Adverts after every few tracks
Unlimited free streaming music

Napster
· Been around 10 years
· Mp3 contents shared
· Copyright infringement issues