Last.fm. You can either listen to all sorts of radio stations – on the website or with our Last.fm Scrobbler (desktop player) – or to previews in either full-length or as 30 second samples.
Please note that while playing previews is generally free, Last.fm Radio is a subscriber feature in many countries – see the FAQ “Do I need to pay to listen to the radio?” for more information.
Radio stations
There are many ways to start a radio station, but an easy one is by going here and entering an artist or tag/genre you like to create a radio station which will play you related music.
You can also start radio stations on the site by clicking on any “Play (this station)” buttons wherever you see them.
You can start radio stations in a similar way in the Last.fm software, by entering an artist or tag you like, or by selecting a radio station from your “My Profile” on the left-hand side.
If you have your playback settings set to “Play music in the Last.fm software”, clicking radio station buttons on the website will make the stations play in the software player for you.
Previews
All tracks that are available for listening on Last.fm radio stations can be played as previews as well. Playable tracks are marked with a play icon , which you can click to make a track play in the player on the site.
Previews can only be played on the site, not in the software player.
Previews will play either in full-length or as 30 second samples – you can read more about this here.
1) Library: Your Library radio plays you all tracks you’ve ever scrobbled to your profile, or tracks by artists you’ve added to your Library otherwise. You can listen to your own Library radio or to other users’ stations.
2) Recommendations: The Recommendations radio is a personal station for you, which lets you listen to the artists that have been recommended to you by Last.fm. You can view and manage your recommendations here.
3) Loved Tracks: Loved Tracks radio simply plays all tracks you have loved (or another user has loved). This type of station is generally only available to subscribers.
4) Personal Tags: Personal Tag stations play all items you have, or another user has tagged with a specific tag. This type of station is generally only available to subscribers.
5) Global Tags: Global Tag stations play all items all users have tagged with a specific tag (as opposed to Personal Tags).
6) Similar Artists: Similar Artist radio plays music which is similar to a given artist. Similar artists are automatically created based on our users’ listening habits; also see: How are similar artists calculated? These radio stations are not endorsed by any artist.
7) Neighbourhood: Neighbourhood radio stations play music from your or other users' neighbours' libraries.
8) Groups: A group’s Member Radio plays music from the group members’ libraries.
There are different reasons why you might get a “no content” or “not enough content” error when listening to the radio:
Although we have a lot of artists, albums and tracks in our catalogue, please remember that only those with a play icon can be played – this goes for radio stations, too.
Due to radio licensing laws, we can’t allow for our radio streams to play tracks from one artist or album more than a certain number of times per a set time frame. For example, it’s not possible to listen to five tracks by the same artist within one hour, on the radio; this doesn’t affect previews.
Therefore, please check that the radio station you’re listening to has enough playable content – at least 45 tracks by 15 different artists – as otherwise it might run out of content for you due to these licensing restrictions.
If it’s your own radio station that gives you this error (such as your Library radio, your Loved Tracks radio, a playlist or a personal tag station), you’ll need to add more tracks to it so that it won’t run out of content too quickly.
Another way to overcome this error message is to either wait it out, or to listen to something else. Times like these are a great opportunity to go out digging for other radio stations. You never know what you may come across!
You can listen to playlists if you’re a subscriber. To listen to a playlist – your own or anybody else’s – go to the playlist’s page (for instance in your own library), and click the “Play this playlist” button. Playlists will always be played in shuffle mode, and they have to contain at least 45 tracks by 15 different artists before they can be played.
Note: Playback in the software player is currently not supported; you can listen to playlists only on the site.
If you’re not a subscriber, you can also create your own playlists, but you can’t listen to them continously. Your newest playlist will be displayed in the player on your profile page, where you and other users visiting your profile can listen to its tracks as “one-by-one” previews.
You can listen to any track where you can see a play button next to its name, or selecting it from the player on the site if it’s listed there.
By default, we can only allow for you to listen to a 30 second preview of a track. Should the rights holder allow for there to be a full length preview available, you'll find the words “full track” next to the track name.
If you live in the US, the UK or Germany you can also listen to many tracks in full length up to 3 times for free by using our Free On-Demand service.
If this happens to you, you probably live in the US, UK, or Germany. In these countries, we currently offer a service called Free On-Demand which allows you to listen to specific tracks up to 3 times on demand, in full length and for free.
Afterwards, these tracks will be played as 30 second previews for you. This doesn’t affect the radio – in radio stations, all tracks will always be played in full length, even if you’ve used up your 3 plays limit for Free On-Demand.
If you come across tracks, or even artists on Last.fm that you can’t listen to as they’re not available to play – this is when they’re not marked with a play icon – but that have other listeners, this is because these users have scrobbled their own music files when listening to them with their own media player on their computer.
By scrobbling your music, information about the artist, album and track names is sent to Last.fm, and based on this information many statistics, like an artist’s tracks charts or the top listeners are generated. You can read more about this here in the “What is scrobbling?” FAQ.
Yes, you can. If you’re using the Last.fm Scrobbler, simply go to “Recently Banned” in the “My Profile” sidebar on the left-hand side, open the expanded view and right-click the track you wish to un-ban – clicking “Un-ban This Track” will remove it from your banned tracks.
On the website, you can click the “More” or gear button for a banned track and select “Unban track” from the dropdown.
If you live outside the UK, US and Germany then Last.fm Radio is a subscriber feature. This was changed on 22 April 2009; you can read more about the changes here.
If you live in the UK, US or Germany:
If you live in one of these three countries, you can listen to Last.fm Radio for free (with the exception of subscription premium radio features: listening to playlists and stations of music you've loved or tagged).
If you live in another country:
As a Last.fm user living in a country other than the UK, US or Germany you get a 30 track free trial before you need to subscribe to listen to Last.fm Radio.
Once this trial is over, purchasing a subscription for only €3.00 per month will allow you to listen to non-stop, personalised radio. This includes all station types (including premium radio features: listening to playlists and stations of music you've loved or tagged).
Note: if you live in the US, UK or Germany this does not apply to you, as listening to Last.fm Radio is free where you live.
Every Last.fm user gets a 30 track free trial to Last.fm Radio. To activate the trial, you must sign up for a free Last.fm user account and verify your email address if you don’t have an account yet, and then be logged in on the website with your account.
Once you’ve done this you can start listening to Last.fm Radio – To start listening, type in your favourite artist or tag (genre); you'll then be able to listen to 30 tracks of Last.fm Radio to try before you buy.
Once you start listening, you'll see a message indicating roughly how much of your free trial you've used up. A track’s play is defined as 30 seconds, which means that if you skip a track after it’s been playing for more than 30 seconds this will count towards your 30 track free trial.
When your free trial is over, you’ll need to subscribe in order to continue listening to the radio. You can do this, or learn more about subscriptions first on the Subscribe page.
Yes, on the radio page you can create either a combo radio station with multiple artists, or one with multiple tags. You can add up to three artists or three tags for a station, choosing from artists and tags selected for you based on your music taste.
Multi-Artist Radio is a “Similar Artists” combo station, which will play you music similar to ANY of the artists that you choose. This lets you build up broader radio stations with more varied content.
Multi-Tag Radio is a “Global Tag” combo station, which will only play you music that matches ALL of the tags that you choose. So choosing ‘60s’ and ‘rock’ will only play you rock from the 60s.
The radio page doesn’t tune into any radio stations. It says “Please wait while your radio loads...” but nothing happens.
The radio plays, but there are no images or other information; the page seems to hang.
The player is buffering, but then there’s a constant “Oops! Error connecting” or “Oops, there was a problem starting this station. Please try again.” error.
If you have any of the problems described above, please try the following troubleshooting tips:
You need to accept third-party cookies to enable the delivery of ads on the radio page which if not delivered may block your radio player.
If you have any ad- or flash-blocking extensions, such as Adblock Plus or NoScript, please try disabling them. Do also check if you have any computer security or firewall that may blocking scripts.
If you have checked the above and still have problems using the radio on the site, clear your browser cache and cookies, then log in again and try to play another radio station.
If you’re having consistent connection problems, check your computer security, firewall or router settings, anything that could affect the radio connection, and make sure your soundcard is configured correctly and not busy otherwise.
The “Are you still listening message” you may get when listening to the radio is based on inactivity – you will only see it when there haven’t been any clicks, skips, or any other interaction for a set period of time. This is currently 60 minutes for regular users, and 6 hours for subscribers.
The idea behind this is that, since we pay licensing and bandwidth costs for every track we stream, playing to an empty room gets pretty expensive, and therefore we’ll pause the radio if you’ve been inactive for this given period of time.
Is there a way to turn this message off?
You’ll of course not get this inactivity message when interacting with the radio page while you’re listening to a station, as described above. You’ll also get much less frequent visits from the bear if you’re a subscriber, as the inactivity period for subscribers is 6 long hours. You can learn more about the other subscription benefits and get a subscription on our Subscribe page.
, which you can click to make a track play in the player on the site.
button for a banned track and select “Unban track” from the dropdown.
