Web 2.0 Blog

Last.fm has become one of my favourite new websites of recent times. It is the first site of it’s kind - a social network with the emphasis on music. There’s something addictive about discovering how much music you listen to, and which artists are dominating your playlists. It tells you who your favourite artists are, how much you’ve listened to them, which are your favourite songs and albums, and you can spend ages just reading all the stats.

I have to announce my disappointment however at the social side of Last.fm, something which could have been great. With the ability to create groups, join forums and make friends with people who share your musical tastes, it’s very disappointing to find this aspect so greatly neglected by its users. Sure there’s a small number who make an effort, but I guess ultimately that there’s just not enough reward or purpose for the users to engage in any meaningful discussion anywhere on the site, which means once you look past the stats, you’ve looked past Last.fm.

Another issue I would like to address is that I like many others of recent times have become annoyed by the site’s scrobbling inconsistency. I’m talking about iPod scrobbling, something which most of the time it doesn’t want to do but every now and again it will. The dreaded ‘no ipod library found’ message is an all too familiar sight.

What annoys me most is that this problem is well documented, yet Last.fm have done nothing about it for a long, long time. At the end of the day Last.fm has limited uses, so what it does do, it needs to do well. This just isn’t the case. Last.fm is a unique site with the ability to do great things - it’s partnership with iTunes and Amazon is an indication of its potential - but someone really needs to get behind it and make it a more desireable, rewarding tool.