As mentioned in the HN submission, Last.fm went through a redesign already over a decade ago. It stripped so much functionality that the site became useless except for merely tracking one's own listens, and there were already libre alternatives for that.
Last.fm is one of my go-to examples of how the internet has become a lonelier place. The old Last.fm was deeply linked with real life: it would show upcoming gigs in your town along with members who might be attending, and you could easily meet people in your own location who shared your own tastes in music. Where does a person find music-related socializing now?
> You could easily meet people in your own location who shared your own tastes in music. Where does a person find music-related socializing now
I'd say Instagram serves the role of Last.fm you described (for better or worse). But really you can just go to the gigs and talk to people. That's guaranteed people in your area with similar interests.
This is true, and I hate it. All the local DJs I enjoy post their gigs on instagram and nowhere else. All the fans I know use instagram to get updates about where the shows are happening.
In practice I just wait for my friends to tell me where the music will be, but I also hate the whole setup deeply and want instagram to die in a fire.
No seriously, like 18 months ago I solved this exact issue in my corner of the world by simply creating a static website and putting them there on a calendar and now I'm like a microcelebrity of my own running a "brand" that every organiser knows of.
I want to do the same but I live in a big city (millions of people). How do you recommend approaching this? There is no board/calendar that would get the attention of thousands of people and without that it's useless in a big city.
I also hate meta but unfortunately it's where many scenes live. Path of least resistance for venues, artists, to share their shows. I would disagree with the other commenter who said to "be the change". I've seen dozens of event aggregating sites and what they all lack is actual people using it. We live in Meta's hell, but everybody's there (speaking as Gen Z).
This is avoidable if you have a specific niche though. A lot of groups online and in cities give me hope. What kind of music are we talking here?
That's not a Last.fm issue, that's a general trend that affects everything.
People don't blog on their personal sites any more, blog comments don't really exist any more, MySpace / Tumblr like sites are not popular any more and people don't share everything private on social media any more as everyone realized that the internet is not always a friendly place and there's enough public cases where this fired back.
The same also applies to the platform itself, opening yourself up to more user contributed data is often a real headache as you need to moderate it properly and that needs resources too. Ask Meta's moderator team how much fun they are having.
I used to love Last.FM and was a paid subscriber. Their neighbourhood radio was a great way to find music
rateyourmusic.com is also dead to me now. And MusicBrainz is an excellent resource marred by horrible user experience and a primary focus on listing every issue of an album in every country and in every format (who the hell wants that?)
Listing every issue of an album in every country and every format is precisely what Musicbrainz was founded for (as a successor to CDDB). Any social features are just extras on top of that.
For those now following the Last.fm so closely, in May of this year they became independent again (https://support.last.fm/t/last-fm-is-now-independent/118591) after being owned by CBS for a very long time, which is very exciting and I'm glad it wasn't just shut down by CBS.
As mentioned in the HN submission, Last.fm went through a redesign already over a decade ago. It stripped so much functionality that the site became useless except for merely tracking one's own listens, and there were already libre alternatives for that.
Last.fm is one of my go-to examples of how the internet has become a lonelier place. The old Last.fm was deeply linked with real life: it would show upcoming gigs in your town along with members who might be attending, and you could easily meet people in your own location who shared your own tastes in music. Where does a person find music-related socializing now?
> You could easily meet people in your own location who shared your own tastes in music. Where does a person find music-related socializing now
I'd say Instagram serves the role of Last.fm you described (for better or worse). But really you can just go to the gigs and talk to people. That's guaranteed people in your area with similar interests.
This is true, and I hate it. All the local DJs I enjoy post their gigs on instagram and nowhere else. All the fans I know use instagram to get updates about where the shows are happening.
In practice I just wait for my friends to tell me where the music will be, but I also hate the whole setup deeply and want instagram to die in a fire.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
No seriously, like 18 months ago I solved this exact issue in my corner of the world by simply creating a static website and putting them there on a calendar and now I'm like a microcelebrity of my own running a "brand" that every organiser knows of.
I want to do the same but I live in a big city (millions of people). How do you recommend approaching this? There is no board/calendar that would get the attention of thousands of people and without that it's useless in a big city.
Are they not also on Resident Advisor?
I think it's possible for 3rd parties to add to Resident Advisor.
I also dislike Insta only events. I still have facebook where I follow up on some venues. But just a few websites with calanders would be coolio.
I also hate meta but unfortunately it's where many scenes live. Path of least resistance for venues, artists, to share their shows. I would disagree with the other commenter who said to "be the change". I've seen dozens of event aggregating sites and what they all lack is actual people using it. We live in Meta's hell, but everybody's there (speaking as Gen Z).
This is avoidable if you have a specific niche though. A lot of groups online and in cities give me hope. What kind of music are we talking here?
This.
My best friend cold-messaged me on last.fm 18 years ago: "wanna exchange music? add me on MSN: ..."
A bigger question is why Last.fm did this, and why they don't do it again now that they're independent. I've been on Last.fm. since 2005 at least.
That's not a Last.fm issue, that's a general trend that affects everything.
People don't blog on their personal sites any more, blog comments don't really exist any more, MySpace / Tumblr like sites are not popular any more and people don't share everything private on social media any more as everyone realized that the internet is not always a friendly place and there's enough public cases where this fired back.
The same also applies to the platform itself, opening yourself up to more user contributed data is often a real headache as you need to moderate it properly and that needs resources too. Ask Meta's moderator team how much fun they are having.
I used to love Last.FM and was a paid subscriber. Their neighbourhood radio was a great way to find music
rateyourmusic.com is also dead to me now. And MusicBrainz is an excellent resource marred by horrible user experience and a primary focus on listing every issue of an album in every country and in every format (who the hell wants that?)
Listing every issue of an album in every country and every format is precisely what Musicbrainz was founded for (as a successor to CDDB). Any social features are just extras on top of that.
I made Raygum to (hopefully) simplify what you're describing - https://raygum.com
Please email me (<username>@gmail.com) with any feedback or to rant about music apps in general!
Is it not possible to discover new artist you might like based on your taste?
I don't see how this relates to anything the parent comment talked about.
He said it become useless except for tracking. For me it was a place for music discovery.
Resident Advisor. Spotify also tells me when a band's in town.
For those now following the Last.fm so closely, in May of this year they became independent again (https://support.last.fm/t/last-fm-is-now-independent/118591) after being owned by CBS for a very long time, which is very exciting and I'm glad it wasn't just shut down by CBS.
Self-hosted Koito[0] and glad I left Last.fm.
Not even a good first-party export, gotta use some hacked together third-party one to get your data out.
[0]: https://github.com/gabehf/koito
ListenBrainz[0] is a decent alternative if you don't want to self-host. You can import your Last.fm scrobbles there pretty easily.
[0]: https://listenbrainz.org/
A lot of people run both koito and listenbrainz
> But I also wept. How is it possible that two almost identical endpoints have the key names differ on several spots or complete absent.
average legacy PHP backend :)
The PHP part is unnecessary there, any code base that's more than a hobbyist project will have these kind of issues.
> "...Tell me your username and i'll give you (six) URLs..."
> (period can be: 7day, 1month, 3month, 6month, 12month or overall)
> Recent tracks
> Loved tracks
> Top tracks
> Top Artists
> Recommended tracks
> Recommended tracks in JSON format
https://github.com/xiffy/lfm
Is the code public? I'd like to port this to https://rss-bridge.org/
Yes! Been wanting something like this for my personal dashboard. So much easier than hitting their full API just for scrobbles.
Besides the useful product, also a very lovely site.
Page size around 85 KB, bullshit around 0 BS, loaded in 140 ms on my end.
Cool!
I'm wondering why my recommended tracks are different between the two feed formats? Same uid as here.
Also, my JSON feed doesn't seem to validate and is not served with the proper MIME type.
Don't see any slop in the code. Good job!