Problem with tag ‘black square’

Hmmm, I was just able to play the radio station for this tag. But you're right, it doesn't seem to show up in the search. Also, the tag page says it was built by 1 person, used 1 time, which is clearly not true.

tag ‘black square’ has been created in first ten-day period of September.

Any tag you use will be a global tag, so when you use a new tag for the first time, a new global tag page will be created for it. It'll need more content for the radio station to become available, though. This used to be something like 15 streamable items, if I remember correctly; but as discussed here, this isn't quite working for new global tags at the moment anyway.

Global tag stations can by played by everyone, unlike personal tag stations which can only be played by subscribers, but it might be that more than one tagger is required before the global tag becomes a radio station (at least used to be like this, not sure if this still applies).

sorry to be a bit out of topic, but I was curious: what is the meaning of the 'black square' tag?

<sticky mouse button>

New bug with another global radio today: the 'recent activity' on this global tag page has reverted to a bunch of entries from July 2008 and a whole lot between then and now have disappeared. Hope this doesn't mean all those tags for August, September and October are actually lost to the radio as this is a long standing group project involving many contributors consciously putting in ongoing effort to tag for it.

Aside from this, the stats at the top of the pages on global radios are still stuck where they were back at the site changeover in July. On this global tag page, there have been many tags daily and many new group members contributing to the radio since that time, none of which have registered in the stats since July. Seeing stats changeover rewards group members who are involved in these kinds of group radio projects and encourages more involvement.

This just adds to the problems damaging the activity levels and enthusiasm around Last.fm groups since the July site changeover. Other issues include group music recs being on endless hiatus and the messaging of group members not working properly for at least 2 months.

It would be great to get these things working again. Groups at Last.fm have been limping along for months now, a shadow of what they used to be.

I've long said that Last.fm is a great concept and probably an amazing system to behold (if I were privileged enough to get to peek under the hood), BUT the customer relations part of their business really needs a lot of work... and that's putting it as kindly as I can.

There really should be a consolidated place for users to: (1) see what the general status of the system is, including functions that are currently offline; and (2) peruse the current list of known issues, and the schedule (if any) for their resolution. I imagine that alone would cut down a lot of the traffic in the forums.

Additionally either the (volunteer, mind you!) forum moderators need to be better informed by Last.fm (so they can actually tell us something we don't know) or the company needs to hire employees to handle complaints, help requests, and suggestions in an official capacity. It's called "Customer Relations Management", or CRM.

Once I learned that the mods were volunteers who were largely kept in the dark by the company, I started dealing with them more sympathetically. But I've largely given up on filing those complaints, help requests and suggestions, because I know that (unless one of my fellow users knows the answer) my input is just going to go into a black hole.

So here we have a situation here where a problem in the global tag pages is having a major impact on many groups (including one that I moderate and musicgodlything is a member of), and eventually on the overall appeal of Last.fm. Maybe the issue will get fixed, maybe it won't. The point is that we'll never know one way or the other, until something changes -- once again, without a peep from the company. I think the overall cavalier attitude towards the customer is far more damning than any inconvenience caused by the new site...

intpmann said: I think the overall cavalier attitude towards the customer is far more damning than any inconvenience caused by the new site... Never have truer words been spoken about Last.fm.

<in a Forest Gump voice>Momma always said "It's Not What You Say, It's How You Say It."
Well, the way it's been "said" by this site ain't too nice at all.

aniaki said:
intpmann said:
I think the overall cavalier attitude towards the customer is far more damning than any inconvenience caused by the new site...

I totally agree.

Staff need to focus more on customers, helping them and giving them what they want. At the end of the day, the site is for us to use and obviously you want people to subscribe to keep the site running. Subscribers won't pay if key features aren't working and what they are saying is "going into a black hole" as intpmann put it. I know I won't renew my subscription once it's over in a months time.

You do know they prob make more money from having you be able to see the advertising than your pittance from subscribing?

as long as people keep scrobbling...I think that's the real cash input for last.fm =)