Facebook Music + Last.fm?

Would be great if Last.fm built a Timeline app built on the new Open Graph API, so that we could get our information over to the Facebook Timeline.
This will surely drag/engage more users to to the site.
One thing Last.fm has if you compare to the other services, is the Events/band pages wich is a big deal, for me at least.
Imagine to be able to get all old and new data into Facebook Timeline from my scrobbling.

This might be a lot of work to write/rewrite of your API, but please look into it :)

Surely a good way to grow the site.

Agreed x1000! I really hope last.fm has something on the way soon, else I may have to make the jump to Spotify :-(

greencrazyeye said:
When I first saw Facebook launched music service in partnership with "Spotify, Rhapsody, MOG, Rdio, Soundcloud, Earbits, Vevo, Slacker Radio and Songza", the second thing that came to my mind was: "Why Last.fm wasn't there too?".That's the wrong thing that came to mind. What should have come to mind was: "Why isn't Last.fm doing what Facebook seems to be doing, in terms of music service integration."

Timeline = Scrobbler

There were calls quite some time ago for LFM to build tighter integration with their on-demand music partners. Rather than simply linking to external tracks on a partner's site, build a player that would automatically pass through streams for those users subscribed to on-demand partner X.

Let us subscribe to MOG, Spotify, etc., and drive playback over here on LFM. In other words, be a true hub and accommodate far greater functionality by implementing tighter, transparent integration.

Didn't happen here... but it did somewhere else.

There's a new scrobbler in town. Protect your intellectual lead by constantly evolving, or remain stagnant, rest on your laurels, and risk having your arse handed to you. We'll see what happens.

I loathe Facebook. But, I'm extremely happy to see someone else take on scrobbling. LFM (CBS) gave up on the "advancing what can be achieved" front a long time ago.

Read, Watched, Listened

Integration with multiple on-demand services / random playback services.

Unified player that plays passed through streams based on a captured library.


It's much more than just sending loved tracks to Twitter, Babs. They built in scrobbling, and not just for music.

You remember that thread a while back when we discussed basic music services? Catalog, Playback, Library, etc., and one of the services was identified as the key to it all... the service that enables serving as hub... the one, unique service: scrobbling. Well, Facebook started checking off those services one by one via integration or direct support, and they've now implemented the hub.

The piece that supports the whole Timeline UI is a scrobbler.

Ah I see. The live transmission I watched of the announcement was juddery and I didn't follow up with any reading.

So, seems what we need is a clever soul to transfer those Facebook scrobbles to here. Last.fm is all about capturing that data. If all those music sites have done deals with Facebook to submit their music to them, and that music is accessible - what? locally? worldwide? are we still talking the same regional permissions? - then why not use Facebook as yet another source for music for our own Last.fm accounts?

If people just want to listen to radio and capture some basic data, it's not so bad, it introduces them to the idea of scrobbling. The curious might look up what scrobbling means, and others might keep hearing Last.fm and investigate. There's no real knowing how this works out but it's not outlandish to think that out of half a billion Facebook users, some of them might create Last.fm accounts because of that basic introduction. Scrobbling just went mainstream.

cos everyone still uses iLike

JustSomeOldJoe said:
Tecfan said:
yes, you missed. everything you listen to on Spotify is placed in weekly and monthly charts shown in your profile/timeline. it's dysfunctional scrobbling..Dysfunctional reporting, yes; dysfunctional scrobbling, no.

It's dysfunctional scrobbling because they don't actually use the scrobbles for ~anything. No personalized event and music recommendations. So it's functional scrobbling in its true sense, but nowhere near the Last.fm scrobbling

It's a bit more than Facebook introducing a music thingy. There's also people's habits to consider, as well as whether it works. So far, I'm seeing people remove that info from their news feeds. If Facebook irritates people at this level, there's not much incentive for people to go looking for these basic charts, because they're already annoyed.

As for Facebook being a giant, I have one word - Ping. Apple the Almighty, with its immense reach, didn't manage to crack that one.

We'll have to see how it goes. My guess would be once people are introduced to the idea of scrobbling, and if they're really interested in their listening habits, they'll find Last.fm. Any decent article or blog would suggest that anyway, Why? Because that's what the site is designed for. In Facebook, it's just more 'noise'.

What people enjoy in Facebook is their friends' news and comments, all those silly, funny updates, pics etc. Impersonal updates get in the way. You can't muddle up the comms and the data. So really, if Facebook want this to work, they need better filters. Meanwhile, if Facebook do indeed introduce this new player (where did you get that from?) we'll no doubt get a groovy greasemonkey, it's inevitable, because 40million of us are already building our charts. I certainly won't use Facebook music player unless it scrobbles. And I don't see much point anyway as I already have accounts with other UK music sites and set them up to scrobble. So really, the focus is on new users. The half billion now introduced to the idea of scrobbling. Anyone not that interested might find Facebook music adequate. Anyone who gets into it will be told about Last.fm. So yes, it's competition, like all the others, but you have to look at people and what they're like too.

I mentioned iLike because that was a player a lot of people used in Facebook which was also annoying. I hated all those 'iLike' updates. Again, anything auto or impersonal and it's not wanted. Did you use Facebook then, Joe?

^^ these are my personal views, if that wasn't clear...

JustSomeOldJoe said:
There were calls quite some time ago for LFM to build tighter integration with their on-demand music partners.

Too late now... :(

ahum... somebody already mentioned something on Spotify - Facebook - Last.fm combination back in May. http://www.last.fm/forum/21717/_/684950/_/15041550

The question is how FB will look at listening history (srcobbles, wiki's, similar artists) as a means of creating more advertising income for them. It probably will but how much? It will probably determine their next steps. Whether to buy Last.fm from CBS or a similar site, buy out the engineers, copy the idea of scrobbling or just to collaborate with Last.fm.

Or do we get a race between Google Music and Facebook to merge Last.fm with one of them. Which one would be the better?

OldJoe, if facebook is indeed serious about adopting the music scrobbling idea they will hit the same obstacles that last.fm haven't bothered to move away during the last 3 years. Since the 'next generation thing' in 2008 last.fm has been developed forward so slowly that it can be neglected besides the major shrinking feature-wise.

Yes, there is the realtime api in the works and the boolean radio and a client 2.0. Since 3 years that will all be released "soon". But will that help? If we now scrobble to this new facebook timeline thing we will get the same pile of messy data like here at last.fm that no-one will ever touch to actually use it. Because in the moment you do a datacenter melts down or you realize that your schema sucks badly and you refer to musicbrainz, discogs or even iLike.

I doubt that facebook can launch with all these stream providers mentioned above in europe or canada. They probably won't even care about the rest of the world. The article linked in the first post says spotify would be available worldwide - it's not - so is google music, the amazon cloud - and what not. And let me quote a quote from the artice linked in the linked article:
Update: “There’s nothing new to announce,” a Facebook spokesperson told us. “Many of the most popular music services around the world are integrated with Facebook and we’re constantly talking to our partners about ways to improve these integrations.” This is what we hear for years. That won't be any different at facebook. Well, maybe one difference - 95% of the facebook users wont even care because the 5% who do are already here. As Babs said. It might be fun to have that on facebook but it's in no way serious - but appealing. last.fm can learn from it and make its stance ... finally .... please! :)