The Joys of Last.fm

John Voorhees, writing at MacStories:

There are a million questions that could be answered by Apple Music that aren’t, and that’s a shame.
Spotify does a better job at surfacing interesting data with Wrapped, but if you’re like me and prefer other aspects of Apple Music, sign up for Last.fm, use one of the many excellent indie apps, like Marvis Pro, Soor, Albums, Longplay, Doppler, and Air Scrobblethat support the service, and then enjoy your weekly, monthly, and annual reports in Last.fm’s app or on its website.

I 100% agree. Not only does Last.fm let you look into the data whenever you want, but you can also have your entire year of listening history at your disposal. And past years. There’s never a better time to start scrobbling than now, and the end of the year is a great time to begin collecting the data.

I use Marvis on iOS and Neptunes on the Mac and am happy with both. Passed the 100k scrobble mark this year and set a new personal record for number of songs listened to.

Nick Heer on Apple Music and Last.fm

Jason Tate Jan 4, 2022

Nick Heer nails what I’ve been thinking for a while about what Apple Music should learn from Last.fm:

So: Last.fm. There are a few things I like about it. First, it seems to take into account my entire listening history, though it does give greater weight to recency and frequency. Second, it shows me why it is recommending a particular artist or album. Something as simple as that helps me contextualize a recommendation. Third, its suggestions are a blend of artists I am familiar with in passing and those that I have never heard of.
Most importantly, it feels free of artificial limitations. Apple Music only shows a maximum of eight similar artists on my iPhone, but there are pages of recommendations on Last.fm. Echo and the Bunnymen has twenty-five pages with ten artists each. I can go back and see my entire listening history since I started my account there. Why can I only see the last forty things I listened to on Apple Music?
There are so many things Apple could learn from Last.fm’s recommendation approach, and I wish it would. Right now, its approach is somewhere between inconsequential and unhelpful. It does not have to be this way, and it should not be this way.
Maybe part of my appreciation comes from my nostalgia for the mid-2000s internet era. They are memories of shiny, colourful logos, wet floors everywhere, and new social networks for every conceivable interest. These websites encouraged centralization and many were ultimately destructive to privacy, but there were also gems like Last.fm. It was built around a simple premise: track your music listening history for better recommendations.

Sorry for quoting so generously, but this really gets to the heart of one of the reasons I dove back into Last.fm with such vigor last year. Being able to see what I’ve been listening to, get the stats behind it, visualize that data, and get recommendations based on my entire streaming history is a cherry on top of it helping me with my weekly newsletter. There’s a whole lot I think Apple Music should be doing to make their service better.

43 Million Passwords Hacked in Last.fm Breach

Jason Tate Sep 2, 2016

John Mannes, writing at TechCrunch:

The number of passwords and the severity of the hack were not uncovered until today. The passwords were stored using unsalted MD5 hashing. Rather than storing passwords in plaintext, nearly every site that stores critical user information utilizes some form of hashing. Hashing is a method for encrypting data, but some methods are far superior to others.

These are some really bad password practices and if you have an account at Last.fm, you should go change your password. Also, LeakedSource is a good resource to see if your information has shown up in any of these information database dumps over the past few years. You can search by your email address.

What Have You Been Listening to Over the Past Month?

Jason Tate Aug 2, 2016

I recently came across a Last.fm collage generator that lets you put in your Last.fm username and it’ll spit out a graphic of the albums you’ve been listening to over a given period of time. Personally, I like the 5×5 rendition that shows what I’ve been listening to over the past month.

I’m curious — what have you been listening to over the past month? Hit the little quote bubble1 to jump the forums and share your latest obsessions. I’ve been on a huge Tiger Army kick.

Or just let me know on Twitter.↩