October 21st site update - forthcoming changes for subscribers

Hello,

We've just released the latest version of the Last.fm website. The main element of this release is the announcement of some forthcoming changes to Last.fm:

From November 17th, some subscriber-only radio stations will be discontinued – Loved Tracks Radio, Personal Tag Radio, and playlists. These changes will let us focus on our more popular features, developing new stations, and making our music catalogue even broader. We understand these changes will come as a shock and we hate taking features away, but we'll be doing our best to make your subscription worthwhile over the coming months. Even so, we understand you may not want to remain a subscriber, so you can get a refund if you prefer.

You can find out more about these changes here or request a refund here.


We've also made some additions to the Last.fm API, including a track.unban method and XML output for recommended new releases. There'll be documentation in the usual place for these soon.

Finally, we fixed 9 bugs in this release, including broken RSS feeds for recommended events and problems deleting autocorrected artists from your library.

Other interesting stuff from the music universe since last time include a blog post about double vision (kind of) and a vinyl scrobbler from the Boston music hack day.


[Edit on Nov 1st, 2010]
Important staff replies in this thread:
acreature (Oct 22)
acreature (Oct 22)
acreature (Oct 24)
acreature (Oct 25)
acreature (Oct 25)
Knapster01 (Oct 25)
acreature (Oct 26)
acreature (Oct 27)
StudleyUK (Oct 27)
acreature (Oct 28)
Knapster01 (Oct 28)
StudleyUK (Oct 28)
Knapster01 (Oct 28)

acreature said:
We understand these changes will come as a shock and we hate taking features away, but we'll be doing our best to make your subscription worthwhile over the coming months. Even so, we understand you may not want to remain a subscriber, so you can get a refund if you prefer.

Wouldn't it have been smarter to announce the new facilities before chopping out these facilities? Bizarre!

Last.fm is discontinuing "a few" subscriber-only radio stations
http://www.last.fm/stationchanges2010

This is killing one of the core elements of this service. I wonder how other subscribers would react... I am extremely disappointed as everyday I listen to my carefully built tag radios. Now it will be all vanished...

The nice little word that I put into brackets ("a few") in many cases means "most", dear Last.fm!

:(((

I know there are users here with literally thousands of tags. Though I'm personally not one of them, this is surely going to piss them off? Upsetting the free users is one thing, but upsetting all your paying subscribers is a totally bizarre move that I just can't get my head around. Seriously, what reason is there to subscribe anymore? How is this going to bring in any revenue? Sorry but this site is getting pretty useless. If you're just going to focus on the scrobbling stuff, then fine, but at least sort out artist disambiguation, album data and proper merging of artists and tracks.

...just...wow...

Can't wait to see what Babs and the other tagging gurus are going to say about this. Also can't wait to see the incredible features that are going to keep me subscribing here, because right now, loved tracks radio and tag radios are the primary features I subscribe for.

Knapster01 said:
Pedro_71 said:
This is really a shock! Many users put a lot of energy into putting together their own tags. This was a great way to enjoy music...
If it requires that much energy make it a delux service for extra charge...

I have been a great supporter so far... You will definitely lose many such people...

We're looking at ways for you to export playlists of your Loved Tracks, Personal Tags and Playlists. It's going to take a little longer to get the finer details ironed out though.

That is appreciated, but this is not the main point! As annadoll2010 expressed before we are here to discover and RE-LISTEN artist who are in many cases off the main stream, therefore even if I export the names out it will be virtually impossible to find them anywhere... Besides the service you provided so far was great that there were no necessity to download tons of data to the computer and still had the chance to listen again particular group of artists. If we are pushed to mainstream radios, I can wait ages to meet again my loved few thousand listeners artist....

We're just as sad as you - I'm going to lose my very favorite radio station.

Not to mention losing the awesome tag I mix into the feed from NASA during lift-off. (There are only four Shuttle launches left, make sure you try it!)

Right now, I look a little bit like this:

percy74 said:
...just...wow...

Can't wait to see what Babs and the other tagging gurus are going to say about this. Also can't wait to see the incredible features that are going to keep me subscribing here, because right now, loved tracks radio and tag radios are the primary features I subscribe for.Babs the Tagging Guru is way ahead of you and already inventing the future...

Yes, losing personal tag radios is an immense loss. For me personally, that's 5 years' work down the drain.

However, there's a flip-side, one using Last.fm more, and the other making more of music sites partnered with Last.fm.

On the Last.fm side, the next best thing to personal tag radios is unique global tag radios, usually associated with groups. My own examples would be central point, next big things amongst others. I know there are enough enthusiastic people around who really get into collaborative tagging and creating radios for themselves. From this, I can see groups becoming more important again. They've been languishing by the wayside for far too long. Last.fm could help us by making groups more visible.

On the external music sites side, I mean those music sites "powered by Last.fm". This means they get their similar artist radios by using Last.fm's algorithms. For the most part, we can't do much more than we can here, but the next generation of interactive on-demand radios, such as the ones from We7 and MOG, allow for user-interaction at a track-by-track level. Which means you can customise your radios in real-time as they play. I've known about We7's radio before it launched, just never made the time to try it. I'd like to see what I can make it do.

I know these two are region-specific, but the way things are going, what with Apple launching their new streaming service, and Google working on something too, both presumably global, the one question that's the most important to us is: but does it scrobble? If it does that, they'll get some love from me and, I imagine, everyone else.

re subscribing - I think we're back to people making individual decisions on whether they want to support the site or not, just as it was once upon a time before the focus moved to what we get back for it.

I know this sounds like I'm positive or putting a spin on things but I think it's just me and how I handle bad news - 'yes, this is crap, but what can we do instead?' sort of thing.

This is entirely my view, I'm not speaking as a mod or anything. Just to clarify.

What a SHOCK to wake up to this morning!!! Needless to say i am very 'upset' with these forthcoming changes!! I have spent much time building my 'loved' tracks and 'playlists', etc. only to not be able to access them!!

And..........re: REFUND. I understand not getting my refund because my personal subscription will end before the changes, but what about the 3 gift subscriptions I paid for that will NOT end before the changes??

I never complained when you took away full track streaming as I found out at that time that Canada never had it to begin with!! That was a shock!! Guess you don't miss what you don't have.

I don't see any reasons to be a 'subscriber' anymore!!

No time to write a long response but enough to voice disbelief at such a terrible piece of news. I had to think hard before subscribing when the cost doubled. This will get rid of the main reason for doing it. The mind boggles.

acreature said:
From November 17th, some subscriber-only radio stations will be discontinued – Loved Tracks Radio, Personal Tag Radio, and playlists.Just to clarify, does this also mean that the ability to love, tag, and create/add to playlists will be removed also, as well as the ability to browse online and/or access those lists via api, or is it just the ability to play those lists as stations that's going away?

Answer appears obvious, but I'd rather not assume.

Thanks.

Knapster01 said:
JustSomeOldJoe said:
acreature said:
From November 17th, some subscriber-only radio stations will be discontinued – Loved Tracks Radio, Personal Tag Radio, and playlists.Just to clarify, does this also mean that the ability to love, tag, and create/add to playlists will be removed also, as well as the ability to browse online and/or access those lists via api, or is it just the ability to play those lists as stations that's going away?

Answer appears obvious, but I'd rather not assume.

Thanks.The ability to tag, love tracks and add to playlists isn't going anywhere. We're very much hoping we can provide another way to listen to these personal radio stations eventually.Cool, then the ability to browse/manage these lists online "and" via the API will stay intact also, yes?

Thanks for the quick reply.

I've cancelled. Not only do I listen to my tag radio, I listen to my friends loved and tag radio. There's no reason to pay for what I can get from Pandora or Slacker for free.