Last.fm is not handling the feedback well, IMHO

I find the defenses of the new layout curious. They basically come down to: "It's change" and "people always complain" and "you will get used to it in time" Not a convincing argument much less a constructive response.

The outrage Last.fm is seeing is real and with substantial justification and they dismiss at their own peril. I have been a very heavy Internet user since 1994 back when we all thought an image tag was cool. I can say without hesitation that I have seldom if ever seen a new Web site design be less suited for the site's intended purpose. To make a simplistic analogy - it would be as if Google redesigned their site and made the search term entry box almost impossible to find. Now, maybe Last.fm's new corporate bosses have some radical new direction for the site :: shudder :: but I think it is fair to say that the reasons most people use the site - to discover new music and artists, has been hampered by the new site design.

The problem with the new site design is far more than just not being able to like a new layout immediately. Anyone who says that all it is quite frankly is being insulting and a little ignorant and/or arrogant. The problem is the functionality of the new site design is horrible. See my Google analogy above. The new design makes Last.fm irrelevant for the majority of Last.fm users and their major use for Last.fm - to easily discover new music. The reality is that the vast majority of people will not suffer much inconvenience trying to get to where they want to go on a Web site (That's Web Design 101). People will just go to a different site.

What made Last.fm the great and distinctive site it was was that within 15 seconds anyone could discover a new artist, a new song, or a new listener, who could lead them to more new songs, etc. It worked so well because the old Last.fm didn't overemphasize graphics or social networking gizmos. It was straight-forward love for musical diversity. Now, last.fm's new design makes that difficult and gives us instead inflated graphics, a very slow Web page that requires way too many scrolls to get to important information (That's Web Design 101 again), force-feeding of "here is your library, no you can't edit it" and "here is your music playlist, oh did we forget to mention you have to pay for it now?", and make it almost impossible to communicate with and meet other members.

And for what? No straight answer given by last.fm other than "it's new, it's great." Why? A company may love its product to death but if the company's customers don't love it, the company will die. (That's Business 101) That Last.fm seems to be doing nothing but poo-pooing the massive outpouring of dislike (dare I say hatred) for the new site design with "it's change" and "people always complain" and "you will get used to it in time" is bizarre. Many people have expressed that the response and the whole rollout shows ignorance and arrogance on last.fm's part.

Whether Last.fm is truly ignorant, arrogant, or so callously uncaring about its customer's opinions is beside the point. The narrative and belief that that is Last.fm's attitude is starting to take hold and Last.fm is ignoring that at its own peril. That over 3,500 (and counting) people have already joined a group demanding the return of the Old Last.fm is not, as one last.fm moderator has said, "irrelevant." Last.fm would be wise to craft a better response.

Respectfully,
Douglas

Agreed. There is too much stuff in the way of what I want from the site.

I'm glad someone took the time to formulate what I think most of us are thinking. Thank you, Douglas. Let's just hope that "the man"s lack of communication is not an attempt to draw this out, until it blows over. Tact is key here.

TOTALLY agreed Douglas, thank you.

Agreed, well worded letter.

Agreed, that's the point ...

Agreed.

Very good text.

Even Coca-Cola admitted that "New Coke" was a mistake. I think there is a paralelle here. Coke tried to be like Pepsi and now Last.fm is trying to be like MySpace and Facebook. Coca-Cola listened to their customers and changed back to their own distinctive product. Will Last.fm?

they are still working on it, it seems. let's wait and see...

Completely signed.
Can we get some replies from a staff member please?

I find it hard to believe you're NOT reading this.
So grow some balls and reply to this letter.

Keep in mind all this happened multiple times over the last TWO MONTHS of beta. Everytime a new group was allowed access the forum filled with comments like:
"I hate it!"
"If last.fm does this I'm leaving!"
"Whoever made the monstrosity should be fired!"
"Last.fm is going to go out of business!"
"Thanks for selling out! CBS's cronies caused this and September 11th!"

But a week later most people had become accustomed to the site. I've noticed many of the people defending the new site on the forums today are people who were threatening to leave when they first saw the beta.

So feel free to stick to your guns that because we're about 36 hours into the new site and staff hasn't reverted the site it must mean they're ignoring you (personally I'd just leave for a week and come back when the general pissing and moaning died down to specific requests and bug issues).

But this current site went through a longer vetting process with more customer requested tweaks and changes than any of the previous versions (and more than most other website betas I've seen). By time the beta was over most people were pretty accepting of it and it ran quite well; once the bugs created in the transition from 25,000 users to 6.whatever million users are ironed out it should be quite nice.

I've seen it happen about 3 times during the beta, and once for every update last.fm has done. Within a couple weeks only a few hardcore haters will still have issues and everybody else will be enjoying all the new upgrades (plus the "paint it black" change should help alot).

I'd like to point out that I've been hugely misinterpreted in this "relevance" thing. My point when I said that was not that the group's irrelevant to last.fm, or that it should be ignored, but was that the user who linked me to it seemed to have ignored most of the post (of mine) which he was replying to. The part where I said that this has all happened before. Because it has, on every site redesign. I also want to repeat that I'm not speaking officially for last.fm, just expressing my opinions - my main opinion on the matter being that most people are over-reacting.

There are definitely things about the new site which could be done much better. An inbox notification visible without clicking the drop-down menu is a must, and I'm shocked they went live without the reply tracker being implemented, or forum search, and a number of other things which need attention. But I can't agree with people who are complaining about the functionality of the website (except in the case of lowering the chart-length to 200), most of the navigation is exactly the same as the old site, except one menu's been moved from a tab-bar along the top to a menu down the left-hand side.

The aesthetics could be improved (I really don't think the flash player goes with the banner), but when I see people saying things like "last.fm's new design makes that difficult and gives us instead inflated graphics", I'm astounded. The old site was far more graphics intensive. Everywhere you looked on the old site it was full of icons and gradients, if anything the new site has too little going on.

As for staff responses - it's at times like these that they're most needed on the forums, but unfortunately it's also times like these that they're least likely to be able to provide one, as new bugs are discovered and ironed out.