Design Analysis Last.fm

I am a huge fan of music. If I’m ever just browsing on the internet when it’s not school related, there is a 90% chance that what I’m doing is music related. So, the social media service I chose to check out was Last.fm. It’s a service that is wholly about music and finding out new bands, so I think it’s safe to say that the community it serves would be people like me who are always on the look out for new music as well as music lovers in general.
Signing up for the account is free and has no age restrictions that I could see. Since this service is all about music and the users musical taste, there is little room for personal info other than the basics like age, location, and general interests.
Essentially, the site is an online “radio” type of site with thousands of artist profiles and songs available for streaming. After signing up, you have to install the the “scrobbler” gizmo. This keeps track of what you listen to by using your computer’s music player and sends that information (track title, artist, album, genre etc.) to Last.fm, Also, there is the “iScrobbler” application that links to your iPod and updates your music play info each time you plug the iPod into your computer.
I think the only real “goal” of the users on Last.fm is to find new music/bands. However, the more music you listen to, the more information Last.fm receives about your tastes, and eventually it will start recommending artists that it thinks you will like based on what you have “scrobbled.” I listen to music pretty much any time of day that I’m not interacting with people, so it only took a couple of days before I was getting recommended to things like new albums coming out by artists I’ve recently been listening to and where/if I can purchase them online.


I’m not exactly sure what it takes to be “socially successful” in Last.fm since it’s mainly just about you and your tastes. Perhaps it’s about having a lot of music scrobbled in order for Last.fm to know your tastes better, which in turn will help it to recommend you more artists/genres/concerts etc. There are basic services like adding friends, leaving comments and messages (text only). You are also able to see what are listening to (live) or have listened to already, including how many times they have listened to that particular track/artist. It also shows you how “compatible” your music tastes are with other people and points out some artists that you both listen to. From there, the real “social” aspect comes in. Everyone knows word-of-mouth is the best type of advertising, so what better way to find out about new music than by talking with others that have similar tastes as you? Much like how I was finding out about bands on Soulseek, Last.fm provides the same type of interaction focused on music, except with much more information about the artists, including biographies, full tracks, sample tracks, videos, and has artist profiles.

I think that services like Last.fm are the future of digital social networking. Facebook and Myspace are much more broad and in some cases too general. These types of sites are basically email, but with pictures and videos. They are great for what they provide, keeping in contact with others, but often times they have far too much advertisements and spam. If more services that are focused start popping up, then I think they can be successful in their own way. I would almost compare it to how magazines are particular toward a specific subject or market. As well, I think the idea of your profile, or the information on your profile, being updated constantly with things you like (while doing minimal work on the users’ part) could have vast possibilities. I can see some subjects not being all that popular, but if only a few people are thoroughly and regularly participating, then that’s better than having a lot people and no focused idea. As long as the design of the service is relatively simple (clean and organized) and has some sort of focused theme for people to bond over and talk about, then I think that is where the future of Social Networking is really going. Last.fm is an awesome example because in the end, the user is benefiting.