Forum » Web Site Support

When are recommendations going to be fixed?

 
    • irotas said...
    • User
    • 28 Aug 2008, 19:03

    When are recommendations going to be fixed?

    I really miss the group recommendations and the ability to recommend to all friends. Without these Last.fm just isn't nearly as fun or useful as it was before.

    I've been waiting several weeks now hoping these features would reappear (the statement has been that they're "on hiatus"), but I'm getting nervous that they'll never be implemented again.

    Can staff please comment on this?

    Why not? It's zeitgeist, baby!
  • It's not something that is easy to fix. Certainly not when so many other things are being worked on.

    You already posted the staff comment: it's on hiatus. That means it will not be there until they find time to get to it, basically.

    (\__/)
    (='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste Bunny into your
    (")_(") signature to help him gain world domination.

    ze bunny! :O
    • irotas said...
    • User
    • 28 Aug 2008, 19:17
    Every project has a schedule of major milestones. Surely this is somewhere in the schedule. I'm just curious how much longer people will have to wait for this feature to return.

    I don't think it's unreasonable to ask Last.fm to give us some visibility into their progress implementing new features and making bug fixes. A 'Roadmap' page would be especially nice and I think would reduce a lot of frustration if people had some idea what was going on behind the scenes.

    Why not? It's zeitgeist, baby!
  • Such a roadmap is used by some, but it also puts alot of pressure on a team. If you fix a release date, things will often be rushed and thus turn out worse. See the gaming industry, particularly EA games, if you need an example. Compare this to Blizzard Entertainment, and you'll know what I mean.

    It would be nice to have a list of "We're working on...", though.

    (\__/)
    (='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste Bunny into your
    (")_(") signature to help him gain world domination.

    ze bunny! :O
    • irotas said...
    • User
    • 28 Aug 2008, 19:53
    The team either gets explicitly (but manageable) pressure from the roadmap, or implicit unmanageable pressure from users who silently disappear from the site and stop using the service.

    Why not? It's zeitgeist, baby!
  • Also, I'd like to quote the following staff post from the labels forum:

    alcxxk said:
    Hi all,

    To address pixieguts' list:

    . will the feature for 'journals from friends' (aka 'recommended reading') return?

    The old system by which this was done isn't compatible with the way that the new site works, so this needs to be redone. We've taken on board your feedback about how much it meant to you, and it will probably be back at some point.

    . will recommendations to 'all friends' return?

    This is less likely. Currently all recommendations are tied in with the "sharing" system, which takes recommendations straight to the recipent's inbox. Thus we think it's worthwhile to have people actually have to choose who to recommend something to, rather than blanket spamming them. Using the share function with multiple people is easier if you press the down cursor in the window for entering usernames, as this will list all of your friends.

    . will recommendations to groups return?

    As has been said, yes, this will be back in some form.

    . will recommended music radio ever again include recommendations from our friends and groups rather than just the automated recs from Last.fm?

    I think that this will have to wait until the new equivalent to the group recommendations system comes in. However, the developers did get a lot of feedback against this feature - I personally was put off my recommedations radio by the amount of utterly terrible music I was being played that was recommended by people that had no relation to my music taste from non-genre-specific groups - groups relating to web communities or software.

    . will we get more reliable response and support from Last.fm again in future?

    Just today we've doubled the size of the team dealing with label support. It's been a very difficult time for us recently with growth in the site and just the two of us responding to the forums and the support email system. Please bear this in mind whenever you have a question to ask when an answer could be found on the forum or in the FAQ.

    . does Last.fm care about its independent artist users any more?

    Yes, very much so, and I don't believe that changing the site in order to supply more and more features for listeners to discover new and obscure music runs contrary to this, even if it means that for a short period there will be some services unavailable.

    As for timeframes: no, we can't give you these. We're a comparatively small team, working very hard and some things do take time.


    Thanks for your patience,

    Chris



    To any mod/staff: perhaps it would be useful to make an area/blog post/stickie with notable staff comments. That way, we can refer people to it instead of having to search for a quote all the time, as well as them reading it before complaining. Thank you in advance!

    (\__/)
    (='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste Bunny into your
    (")_(") signature to help him gain world domination.

    ze bunny! :O
    • irotas said...
    • User
    • 28 Aug 2008, 21:14
    I vehemently disagree that recommending to all friends is "blanket spamming":

    1) This is a very good way for independent artists to share information about new songs, albums, events, etc.

    2) If someone is sending out an obnoxious number of recommendations to all users, you simply remove them from your friends list. I certainly had to do that on a few occasions but never found it overly troublesome.

    3) Last.fm could introduce a feature to the website to allow a user to enable/disable receiving of blanket recommendations.

    4) I personally used the feature to make an 'artist of the month' recommendation to all my friends. This generated an enormous amount of positive feedback both from users and from the artists that I was recommending.

    5) Selecting individual users to recommend to is really a pain. Let's face it, this isn't Facebook. We don't personally know every single person in our friends list. It's just unrealistic in this sort of a network to expect someone to be able to select a specific subset of friends for each recommendation.

    6) Since blanket recommendations were removed, the number of recommendations going around has plummeted precipitously.

    Why not? It's zeitgeist, baby!
    • [Deleted user] said...
    • User
    • 28 Aug 2008, 21:35
    thanks, i wasn't aware there was any sort of response on the matter


    . will recommendations to groups return?

    As has been said, yes, this will be back in some form.


    some form

    i spent countless hours going though my recs and some people did make genuine recommendations that were actually really good

    of course, i don't remember all of the bands' names now since i stored them on my recs page for future reference. this new form isn't going to remember all these bands for me is it. thanks for the heads up guys!

    unless i'm mistaken, could someone let us know? grasping at straws here..

    will recommended music radio ever again include recommendations from our friends and groups rather than just the automated recs from Last.fm?

    I think that this will have to wait until the new equivalent to the group recommendations system comes in. However, the developers did get a lot of feedback against this feature - I personally was put off my recommedations radio by the amount of utterly terrible music I was being played that was recommended by people that had no relation to my music taste from non-genre-specific groups - groups relating to web communities or software.


    i find it pretty amazing he/ she's not aware you were always able to modify this feature so as not to get exactly that problem? i filtered out spam recs pretty effectively but even if you didn't feel like doing that you could turn off the option of listening to all friend/ group recs entirely, or filter out groups you didn't want recs from. thanks for making that choice for me, now i have no rec radio i'd like to use at all

    sorry but i am pretty astounded we're hearing this update from someone who's apparently never really even used their recommendation station

    To any mod/staff: perhaps it would be useful to make an area/blog post/stickie with notable staff comments. That way, we can refer people to it instead of having to search for a quote all the time, as well as them reading it before complaining. Thank you in advance!

    good idea


    EDIT: chilled out my tone. still annoyed tho

    Edited by a deleted user on 29 Aug 2008, 06:26
    • DFA1979 said...
    • Subscriber
    • 28 Aug 2008, 23:32
    irotas said:
    I vehemently disagree that recommending to all friends is "blanket spamming":
    If you're sending recommendations and not filtering your list down to people likely to actually enjoy it, I don't see how it's not spamming. And if the reason you're not filtering them is because you don't know them, that just raises the question of exactly why you're friends with them anyway. If someone started sending me recommendations of bands I'm not likely to enjoy, just because they also have other friends who are likely to enjoy it and can't be bothered to choose just them, I wouldn't appreciate it at all. In fact, I'd ask them to stop and then I'd delete them from my friends list if they didn't. Recommendations become worthless if they're not actually targeted at people who're going to like them.

    You've got a valid point when it comes to artists using them to, for example, alert their fans to new songs they've just uploaded, or an album release date being announced, etc., but for a non-artist user I have to side with the staff on the issue of whether or not it's "blanket spamming". If you just send it to your whole friends list, without removing people unlikely to appreciate it, then I can't see how it's anything else.

    (btw, please keep in mind that this is entirely my own opinion as a user and nothing more than that)

  • If you're sending recommendations and not filtering your list down to people likely to actually enjoy it, I don't see how it's not spamming. And if the reason you're not filtering them is because you don't know them, that just raises the question of exactly why you're friends with them anyway.

    Its likely that they are friends with Irotas because they are interested in the same kind of music and don't mind recieving recommendations. This is after all a music networking site, quite often users know nothing about each other apart from their music taste. As an artist, many of my friends are people who I don't know personally, they are my friends because they like my music. Setting aside my own severe difficulties since the last.fm update to let others know about my own music (its discussed elsewhere and you mentioned it above), I don't see why a non-artist or non-label-owner can't operate in the same way. Particularly if they are a group owner of a group that focusses on a particular type of music, as are many 'non artists' who work like this.
    In any case, this objection has already been addressed several times. Firstly, its not hard to remove someone from your friends list. Secondarily, you should be able to disable blanket recommendations. Thirdly, its not hard to ignore the occasional rec.

    I think its a real shame that rather than attack this percieved problem (I say percieved because I've never personally heard of anyone complaining about 'recommendation spam') in a more balanced way, last.fm has severely damaged people's ability to let others know about good music on this site.

  • Totally agree with Northcape's and Irotas's comments above.

    With the way the site currently is, there are simply no real ways for artists to let fans/friends know about new material (let alone try to develop any interest in their music from scratch if they haven't already got listeners established!). The recent changes are a total disaster for independent artists at this site, with playcounts dropping by 300% and more in the short time since the site has been introduced.

    Extensive further discussion about this here.

    Aside from that, groups are now pretty much completely dead too with no group music recommendations (it is indeed amazing that the staff response about this seemed to show no awareness that you used to be able to easily filter out unwelcome recs from recommendations radio) and also group leaders not even able to message their members now. Gone are the days of a group newsletter it seems or any real sharing of music in groups. Nice reward for the enthusiasm and dedicated involvement of so many users at this site...

    Hard to understand why Last.fm would devastate the activities of its most passionate and creative users like this and barely even respond to discussion about it.

  • irotas said:
    I vehemently disagree that recommending to all friends is "blanket spamming":

    1) This is a very good way for independent artists to share information about new songs, albums, events, etc.

    2) If someone is sending out an obnoxious number of recommendations to all users, you simply remove them from your friends list. I certainly had to do that on a few occasions but never found it overly troublesome.

    3) Last.fm could introduce a feature to the website to allow a user to enable/disable receiving of blanket recommendations.

    4) I personally used the feature to make an 'artist of the month' recommendation to all my friends. This generated an enormous amount of positive feedback both from users and from the artists that I was recommending.

    5) Selecting individual users to recommend to is really a pain. Let's face it, this isn't Facebook. We don't personally know every single person in our friends list. It's just unrealistic in this sort of a network to expect someone to be able to select a specific subset of friends for each recommendation.

    6) Since blanket recommendations were removed, the number of recommendations going around has plummeted precipitously.


    I just can second what your are saying.
    I have not felt spammed with recos from my "friends" and I've always got excellent feedback on my recos from my friends. Now I am missing theirs and they are missing mine.

    I hope this feature will be back immediatly despite any program schedules etc.

    I am a paying customer - and a lot others too.

    Seven Seas and Seven Continents - There is a Whole Lot of Music to Discover!!
    • kb7clx said...
    • User
    • 10 Sep 2008, 20:51
    Actually I never recommended anything to my entire friends list. For one thing they speak 3 different languages, and different friends share different types of music with me, but even so I found it simpler and quicker to select friends from the combo box under the old system. I'm blind and use a screen reader, and this new list of names you get by holding down the arrow key or whatever, it's useless to me because I can't select any of them, and it's a pain to copy and paste just the username from what's there. This whole new system has become less accessible and more convoluted. If I want to write in my friends' names I have to first write them in notepadd because if I try writing them in the box, my computer freezes forever and becomes unresponsive. Same thing happens if I want to tag something. And if I write tags in the box I'd damned well better be sure I didn't make a mistake before I hit comma because after you hit comma the text goes up to form a link and is not editable, at least not by me. Thus I must always open notepadd to write in my tags, make sure there are no mistakes, select all of them, then paste them into the box and wait about 5 seconds for the freeze to let go. It's no different in Firefox or IE. It's just a clunky system now. Feels like a Model T has replaced a farari, or to put it another way, it's a bit like my old C64.

  • i am still waiting for a staff comment how to recommend to my entire friends.

    rgds - RM

    Seven Seas and Seven Continents - There is a Whole Lot of Music to Discover!!
    • kb7clx said...
    • User
    • 20 Oct 2008, 23:46
    Well you can push the down arrow in the recommendations edit box, but all that really does is show you a list of all your friends. You can't really do anything directly with that. Now I think they've made it so you can send messages to more than 11 people at a time, so just write all your friends usernames in a notepad document separated by commas and paste it in the box.

    • dankine said...
    • User
    • 21 Oct 2008, 09:56
    RudiMoser said:
    i am still waiting for a staff comment how to recommend to my entire friends.

    rgds - RM


    The comment was 'this is less likely to return', as it is basically spam. Also, you're no longer a paying customer ;p

    "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
    "I don't want to believe, I want to know"

    Auto Corrections Group
  • as it is basically spam.

    Complete rubbish -this argument was comprehensively countered earlier on this thread. If you aren't interested in hearing about new music from your friends (though I'm not sure why this would be the case), its easy to remove friends or potentially even filter out recs. Though this would be much easier if they weren't mixed in with normal messages...
    Not giving up hope on this yet.

    • DFA1979 said...
    • Subscriber
    • 21 Oct 2008, 13:22
    northcape said:
    Complete rubbish -this argument was comprehensively countered earlier on this thread. If you aren't interested in hearing about new music from your friends (though I'm not sure why this would be the case), its easy to remove friends or potentially even filter out recs. Though this would be much easier if they weren't mixed in with normal messages...
    Not giving up hope on this yet.

    It's really not "complete rubbish" that has been "comprehensively countered". I doubt any of the arguments put forward in this thread (by either side) changed anybody's mind - some people think it is spam, others think it's not. It's a matter of opinion, not something that can be dismissed as "complete rubbish" or that can be proven wrong. I still think it's spam, for one - I'm quite happy to receive less recommendations when they're recommendations aimed at "all of <somebody>'s friends", not at me.

  • irotas пишет:
    I vehemently disagree that recommending to all friends is "blanket spamming":

    1) This is a very good way for independent artists to share information about new songs, albums, events, etc.



    EXACTLY! that's one of the main values of the LAST.fm for small labels and bands. Without this feature LAST.fm looses it's attractiveness for me like 50 percent...

  • Dictionary: spam
    (spăm) n.

    Unsolicited e-mail, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups; junk e-mail.

    (sauce).

    Apart from that, if you define spam as 'unwanted mail', there should at least be a box on your profile somewhere to filter these messages. Though usually, kicking people like that out of your friendlist should work.

    (\__/)
    (='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste Bunny into your
    (")_(") signature to help him gain world domination.

    ze bunny! :O
    • kb7clx said...
    • User
    • 27 Oct 2008, 20:28
    Don't forget guys, you can still send recs to people NOT on your friends' list! EVERYBODY forgets that one, even staff it seems. If that's not a spammer's loophole I don't know what is.

  • kb7clx said:
    Don't forget guys, you can still send recs to people NOT on your friends' list! EVERYBODY forgets that one, even staff it seems. If that's not a spammer's loophole I don't know what is.


    This is about giving a load of recommendations in one click, what you're talking about is selecting every person by hand.
    On the other hand, it *is* quite annoying if one would get a crapload of recommendations one does not want. However, this is not the case. At the moment anyway.

    (\__/)
    (='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste Bunny into your
    (")_(") signature to help him gain world domination.

    ze bunny! :O
  • Just my two cents about the sharing system. I HATE the SPAM in my mailbox!!!! I consider it more spam in my mailbox than in my recommendation box which I could ignore if I wanted to. I have more work to delete the unwanted recommendations, than to ignore the recommendation box. Further More: right now I have to allow people to Spam my mailbox because else I can't receive any news from my favorite independent artists. I don't like the new system, sorry.

    And when are group recommendations coming back?? Why can't we get a little hint like It's going to be looked at in .... (Even if it's March next year I don't mind. I know I have to wait till then, right now I know NOTHING). I don't want to put pressure on the staff! I still think last.fm is great. And I really like the new layout, the library etc... etc... But Where I work I have to work with deadline's too. Even better, If I don't respect my deadline's someone is going to have no money or food, so It's going to be gard to survive for that person, I'm a social worker.

    So I believe Last.fm is the FIRST company ever that doesn't want to work with deadline's or what. Now I wanna work there...

    I'm gonna be honest. I didn't subscribe for another year because I feel I'm not fairly treated as a customer.

    Can we at least have a hint when it is going to be looked at?

  • guys, you have literally killed last.fm eliminating this facility. And you have done a poor favour to independent artists by deleting the best way to selectively spread their work.
    The Recommend to All Friends facility, used healthily was a powerful mean for knowledge and music education.

    but Ok, it was the natural continuation to the purchase of CBS.

  • Gripe gets a bump

    [misses recs]++

Anonymous users may not post messages. Please log in or create an account to post in the forums.