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[wysig] Geskiedenis

Daar was aanvanklik twee verskillende dienste, naamlik Audioscrobbler en Last.fm. Audioscrobbler is in 2005 met Last.fm versmelt om sodoende die hedendaagse Last.fm te vorm.

Audioscrobbler is aanvanklik deur Richard Jones begin as 'n rekenaarwetenskapprojek terwyl hy nog die University of Southampton School of Electronics and Computer Science in die Verenigde Koninkryk bygewoon het. Jones het die eerste inproppe ontwikkel, en waarna hy 'n API aan die gemeenskap oopgemaak het, wat ondersteuning vir vele musiekspelers op verskeie bedryfstelsels gebied het. Audioscrobbler kon slegs 'n opname maak van die musiek wat 'n geregistreerde gebruiker afgespeel het op 'n geregistreerde rekenaar, waarvan grafieke en samewerkende filtrering moontlik gemaak is.

Last.fm is in 2002 deur Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel, Michael Breidenbruecker en Thomas Willomitzer (almal van Oostenryk en Duitsland) gestig. Dit is begin as 'n internetradiostasie en musiekgemeenskap wat eenderse musiekprofiele gebruik het om dinamiese afspeellyste te genereer. Die knoppies "love" en "ban" het gebruikers in staat gestel om langsamerhand hul profiele te verpersoonlik. Last.fm het in 2002 die Europrix gewen en is ook genomineer vir die Prix Ars Electronica in 2003.[1]

Die Audioscrobbler- en Last.fm-spanne het naderhand meer en meer saam begin werk. Hulle het later in dieselfde kantore in Whitechapel, Londen, inbeweeg, en teen 2003 is Last.fm ten volle met alle Audioscrobbled-profiele geïntegreer. Teen daardie tyd kon data-invoere deur middel van 'n Audioscrobbler of 'n Last.fm-stasie geskied. Die webwerwe het ook vele gemeenskapsforums gedeel; tog is daar sommiges wat uniek aan iedere webwerf gebly het.

Op 9 Augustus 2005 is die ou Audioscrobbler-webwerf by die audioscrobbler.com domeinnaam ten volle met die nuwe Last.fm-webwerf versmelt. Op 5 September 2005 is audioscrobbler.net gelanseer om 'n ontwikkelingsgeoriënteerde funksie te vervul.

On 14 July, 2006, an update to the site was made. This update included a new software application for playing Last.fm radio streams and for logging of tracks played with other media players. Other changes included: improvement of the friends system and updating it to require a two-way friendship; the addition of the Last.fm "Dashboard", where users can see on one page relevant information for their profile; expanded options for purchasing music from online retailers; and a new visual design for the web site (including an optional black color scheme).

Within the community reactions to the new visual design were mixed. Opinions were also divided between those who welcomed the introduction of more social features and those who argued that technical issues (such as an incompatibility with Internet Explorer 7 and other known bugs) should have priority. With over 10 million tracks "scrobbled" each day, the popularity of the site at peak times often causes the databases to overload, with consequent delays in updating personal charts and other data.

On 15 July, 2006, a Japanese version of the site was launched. Currently, the site is available in various other languages, including German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, Russian, Turkish, Korean and Simplified Chinese.

As of December 2006, Last.fm teamed up with EMI on Tuneglue-Audiomap.[2]

In October 2006, the site won Best Community Music Site at the BT Digital Music Awards, and in January 2007 it was nominated for Best Website in the NME Awards.

At the end of April 2007, rumours of negotiations between Viacom and Last.fm emerged, suggesting that Viacom intended to purchase Last.fm for about £225 million.[3]

In May 2007 it was announced that Channel 4 Radio is to broadcast a weekly show called Worldwide Chart that reflects what Last.fm users around the world are listening to. There are also plans to add a video section, enabling users to create their own personalised video channels.

On 30th May 2007 it was announced that Last.fm has been bought by CBS for £140 million with Last.fm's current management team staying in place.[4]

[wysig] Fondse en personeel

Last.fm Bpk. word befonds deur die verkope van aanlyn advertensiespasies, maandelikse gebruikersubskripsies en donasies. In 2004 het die maatskappy hul eerste rondte donasies van Peter Gardner gekry. Gardner is 'n beleggingsbestuurder wat die stigters reeds sedert 2002 ken. 'n Tweede rondte is deur Stefan Glaenzer (gevolg deur Joi Ito en Reid Hoffman) gelei. Hulle het almal in Breidenbrueckers se aandele belê. In 2006 het die maatskappy hul eerste rondte kapitaalbefondsing van European Investors Index Ventures gekry. European Investors Index Ventures se algemene lede Neil Rimer en Danny Rimer het beide by Last.fm se direkteure aangesluit, wat uit Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel en Stefan Glaenzer bestaan.[5]

Daar is tans sestig personeellede. Hulle is almal tans in Oos-Londen gebaseer, behalwe vir Edouard Brière, wat in Swede woon.

[wysig] Features

[wysig] User accounts

The free User account includes access to all the main features listed below. Registered Users are also able to post in the Last.fm forums, send and receive private messages and use the Last.fm client music player.

  • Profile: A Last.fm User can build up a musical profile using any or all of several methods: by listening to their personal music collection on a music player application on a computer or an iPod with an Audioscrobbler plugin, or by listening to the Last.fm internet radio service, either with the Last.fm client, or with the embedded flash player. All songs played are added to a log from which personal top artist/track bar charts and musical recommendations are calculated. They call this automatic track logging scrobbling.
Last.fm automatically generates a profile page for every user which includes basic information such as their user name, avatar, date of registration and total number of tracks played. This can be customised with additional information or photographs if desired but the overall layout cannot be changed. There is also a Shoutbox for instant messages. Profile pages are visible to all, together with a list of top artists and tracks, and the 10 most recently played tracks. Each Users' profile has a 'Taste-o-Meter' which gives a rating of how compatible your music taste is.
Profile pages can also include lists of friends, weekly musical neighbours, favourite tags, groups and events. An optional customisable playlist may be also added, with tracks that the user wishes to share or promote. Other features include the ability to remove songs listened to within a 2 week timeframe, navigation to linked profiles (such as friends and musical neighbors) and a list of individual users' favorite albums.
A customisable display of Recently Played tracks, is now available via web services, allowing users to add them to blogs, MySpace or as forum signatures.
  • Recommendations: The most recent expanded service on Last.fm is a revamped personal recommendations page known as "The Dashboard". This is only visible to the user concerned and lists suggested new music, events, journal entries and other people with similar tastes, all tailored to the user's own preferences.
Recommendations are calculated using a collaborative filtering algorithm so users can browse and hear previews of a list of artists not listed on their own profile but which appear on those of others with similar musical tastes. The page also lists music that has been directly recommended to the user and groups the user belongs to, journals written by users about artists the user listens to, and other users who have listened to similar music recently. There is also a 'recommendation radio' station which will play music specifically filtered based on the user's last week of listening. Last.fm also permits users to manually recommend specific artists, songs or albums to other users on their friends list or groups they belong to, providing the recommendation in question is included in the Last.fm database.
  • Groups: Perhaps the most-used community feature within Last.fm is the formation of user groups between users with something in common (for example, fans of an artist, a genre of music, or membership of another internet forum). Groups may be linked to artists and countries. Any user may start a group and add members. Most groups are open to all, but membership may be subject to approval by the Group Leader. Last.fm will generate a group profile similar to the users' profiles, showing an amalgamated set of data and charting the group's overall tastes. Individual groups have their own discussion forums and journal space, and a group radio station based on members music profiles is automatically generated once a sufficient number of members have joined. Group members are also able to submit recommendations of artists or tracks to all the other members of their group.
  • Events : With the October 2006 update, 'events'-functionality was added, which lets users specify a location and a radius from the location, then suggests gigs or festivals that that user may want to see in the area. Users can set themselves as attending an event.
Any registered user may add a new venue or event which will then be listed on the band or artist's main page, together with other details if available. There is also a facility to submit reviews and photographs of past events.

[wysig] Subscriber accounts

Last.fm offers paid accounts, costing £1.50, 2.50, $3 or ¥350 per month. Some of the extra features that paid users receive are:

  • No advertisements
  • More radio options (custom radio stations for a user and loved tracks radio)
  • The ability to view recent visitors to one's own profile page
  • Beta testing at beta.last.fm
  • User icon changes colour from grey to blue, and states "Subscriber"

[wysig] Artist pages

Beeld:Ihackedlastfm.png
A screenshot of an artist page which was fabricated by manipulation of ID3 tags; a demonstration of a shortcoming of the system.

Once an artist has had a track or tracks "scrobbled" by at least one User, Last.fm automatically generates a main artist page, even if there is no music available for streaming on the radio. This page shows details of the total number of plays, the total number of listeners, the most popular weekly and overall tracks, the top weekly listeners, linked groups and journals, a list of similar artists, most popular tags and a shoutbox for messages. There are also links to events, additional album and individual track pages and similar artists radio. If the artist has music available for streaming or download an embedded flash player is also included with samples of the most popular tracks.

Users may add relevant biographical details and other information to any artist's main page in the form of a Wiki. Edits are regularly moderated to prevent vandalism. A photograph of the artist may also be added. If more than one is submitted, the most popular is chosen by public vote. User submitted content is licensed for use under the GNU Free Documentation License.

At present there is no way of differentiating between bands or artists with the same name and all data is aggregated, often causing serious anomalies when the artists concerned are from completely different genres.

[wysig] Music catalogue

Last.fm's music library contains hundreds of thousands of individual audio tracks and past and present albums from artists on all the major commercial labels. Users are not allowed to upload copyrighted audio files but commercially available albums are regularly added by Last.fm staff. Most currently popular and other well known artists have tracks available for streaming, although there are significant gaps in coverage and the most recent releases are not always added immediately. The music catalogue includes a wide variety of genres including classical, opera and musicals, as well as many little known and specialist recordings which are no longer generally available.

In February 2007 Warner Music, the world's fourth-largest music company, announced that it had signed a deal to allow its entire catalogue to be played on Last.fm.[6] Warner's music will shortly be made available over Last.fm's service in Europe and North America. The site's co-founder, Martin Stiksel, said they were also in talks with the other three major labels and content holders.

On 9 July, 2007, it was announced that Last.fm has also signed a deal with the Sony BMG record label. The partnership will give the service's users access to the entire Sony catalogue of music.

[wysig] Independent artists and record labels

Independent record labels and unsigned artists are encouraged to promote their music on Last.fm, because the filtering and recommendation features mean that the music will be played for users who already like similar artists. Labels and artists can upload their own music for streaming and Last.fm provides access to weekly airplay statistics, with facilities for promoting individual artists or tracks. Labels and artists may choose whether their music is to be made available for streaming only, or for purchase or free download.

[wysig] Previews and free downloads

30-second previews of any of the streamable tracks are available on demand, from anywhere in the site, by clicking on the blue arrow next to the name of the track or artist. Some tracks are also available to preview in full if the label or artist has specifically authorized it; these are indicated by gold arrows. (All tracks are played in full when users listen to appropriate stations).

In October 2006, Last.fm brought back its free download service which allowed users to download select tracks as specified by the artist or the label. The service only includes tracks on "indie" labels or by bands who upload their own material, although some artists who have since moved onto a major label such as Coheed and Cambria and My Chemical Romance have kept their free songs available for download. More than 100,000 songs are currently downloadable, [7] and there is a separate free download chart, updated weekly, showing the 200 most popular tracks.

[wysig] Tags

With the August 2005 relaunch, Last.fm supports user-end tagging or labeling of artists, albums, and tracks to create a site-wide folksonomy of music. Users can browse via tags, but the most important benefit is tag radio, permitting users to play music that has been tagged a certain way. This tagging can be by genre ("garage rock"), mood ("chill"), artist characteristic ("baritone"), or any other form of user-defined classification ("seen live"). However, since the tagging is not moderated, it is prone to manipulation by the site's users, most often resulting in genre disagreements among users or pushing certain artists higher up certain tags (the most well known example of this is boosting Paris Hilton to the top of the "brutal death metal" tag).

Subscribers are also able to create personal tag radio stations containing only tracks and artists that they have tagged themselves. All tag radio stations (including subscriber's personal tag stations) can be played by anybody, including non-subscribers.

[wysig] Charts

One of the most popular features of Last.fm is the automatic weekly generation and archiving of detailed personal music charts and statistics which are created as part of its profile building. Users have several different charts available, including Top Artists, Top Tracks, and Top Albums, as well as Weekly Top Artists and Weekly Top Tracks. Each of these charts is based on the actual number of people listening to the track, album or artist recorded either through an Audioscrobbler plugin or the Last.fm radio stream.

Additionally, charts are available for the top tracks by each artist in the Last.fm system as well as the top tracks for individual albums (when the MP3 tagging information is available). Artist profiles also keep track of a short list of Top Fans, which is calculated by a formula meant to portray the importance of an artist in a fan's own profile, balancing out users who play hundreds of tracks overall versus those who play only a few.

As the information generated is largely compiled from the ID3 data from audio files "scrobbled" from user's own computers, and which may be incorrect or misspelled, there are many errors in the listings. Tracks with ambiguous punctuation are especially prone to separate listings, which can dilute the apparent popularity of a track. Artists or bands with the same name are not always differentiated. The system does attempt to translate some different artist tags to a single artist profile, but does not attempt to harmonise track names.

Charts are also available for user groups, thus providing a view into a demographic slice, and can reveal interesting new music based on the preferences of similar users.

The Last.fm artist charts currently do not take track length into consideration. For example, an album with 22 short tracks will boost that artist's popularity for a particular user's rankings much more than an album with only 5 long tracks, even though the user spent the same amount of time listening to each. The impact of this problem is limited to personal charts. All other charts are calculated using reach, that is, the number of users who play a certain artist or track, rather than the total number of plays. This is also a defense against users who in the early days of Audioscrobbler submitted spam data in order to boost the rankings of a particular artist or song or their own ranking as a fan.

[wysig] Global charts

Beeld:Lastfmcharts globaltrackcharts september2006 2006-09-03.png
Global Track Chart showing the top 10 tracks for the week ending September 3, 2006

Last.fm generates weekly "global" charts of the top 400 artists and tracks listened to by all Last.fm users. To prevent the artificial boosting of an artist or song by deliberately repeated tracks from a single listener, these charts are based on the total number of individual listeners (the reach) and not the number of actual plays.

The result is notably different from traditional commercial music charts provided by the UK Top 40, Billboard magazine, Soundscan and others, which are based on radio plays or sales. Last.fm charts are less volatile and a new album's release may be reflected in play data for many months or years after it drops out of commercial charts. For example, The Beatles have consistently been a top 5 band at Last.fm, reflecting the continued popularity of the band's music irrespective of current album sales. In addition the Last.fm charts are much more rock, indie and alternative influenced and less pop influenced than regular charts.

The main reason behind the differences is that the charts reflect the musical taste of the particular demographic of the service's users, not that of the general public. Last.fm users generally have an Internet connection, may be more computer-literate than average, and may have wide collections of music from which to choose, due to the ability to download MP3 files from the internet.

The Global Tag Chart shows the 100 most popular tags that have been used to describe artists, albums, and tracks. This is based on the total number of times the tag has been applied by last.fm users since the tagging system was first introduced and does not necessarily reflect the number of users currently listening to any of the related "global tag radio" stations.

[wysig] Last.fm radio

Last.fm offers customised "radio stations" consisting of uninterrupted audio streams of individual tracks selected from the music files in the music library.

Stations can be based on the user's personal profile, the user's "musical neighbours", or the tracks that the user has marked as loved when listening to any station. Groups based around common interests or geography also have radio stations if there are enough members, and tags also have radio stations if enough music has the same tag. Radio stations can also be created on the fly, and each artist page allows selection of a "similar artists" or "artist fan" radio station. (As of December 2006, it is no longer possible to create a "multiple artist" station i.e. a station based on music similar to that of more than than one artist. Last.fm have cited copyright restrictions as the reason for this change [1].)

Under the terms of the station's radio licence, listeners may not select specific tracks (except as previews), or choose the order in which they are played, although any of the tracks played may be skipped or banned completely. The appropriate royalties are paid to the copyright holders of all streamed audio tracks according to the law in the UK.

The radio stream uses an MP3 stream encoded at 128 kbit/s 44.1 kHz, which may be played using the in-page flash player or the downloaded Last.fm client, but other community-supported players are available as well as a proxy which allows using a media player of choice.

As part of a recent programme of improvements in February 2007, registered users are also able to export the Last.fm flash player to embed into blogs, personal websites, Facebook or MySpace pages. [2]

[wysig] Last.fm Player

Sjabloon:Inligtingskas Programmatuur

An "in-page" Flash player is now provided automatically for all listeners, it is no longer necessary to download additional software in order to listen to any of the music available from the Last.fm music library. It is necessary, however, to download the Last.fm Client if a user also wishes information about played tracks from their own digital music collection to be included in their personal music profile.

Prior to August 2005, Last.fm generated an open stream that could be played in the user's music player of choice, with a browser-based player control panel. This proved difficult to support and has been officially discontinued. The Last.fm client is currently the only officially supported music player for playing customised Last.fm radio streams. The current version combines the functions of the music player with the plugin that transmits all track data to the Last.fm server, and effectively replaces the separate Last.fm Player and the standalone track submission plugins. It is also free software licensed under the GNU General Public License and available for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

The player allows the user to enter the name of any artist or tag which then gives a choice of a number of similar artist stations, or similar global tag stations. Alternatively, Recommendation radio or any of the user's personal radio stations may be played without the necessity to visit the website.

The player displays the name of the station and track currently playing, the song artist, title and track length as well as album details, the artist's photo and biographical details, album cover art when available, lists of similar artists and the most popular tags and top fans. There are several buttons, allowing the user to love, skip, or ban a song. The love button adds the song to the user's loved tracks playlist; the ban button ensures that the song will not be played again. Both features affect the user's profile. The skip button does not. Other buttons allow the user to tag or recommend the currently playing track. Other features offered by the application are: minor editing of the user's profile including removing recently played artists and songs from the loved, banned, or previously played track lists; lists of friends and neighbours, lists of tags and a list of previously played radio stations. Users can also open their full Last.fm profile page directly from the player.

The client also enables the user to install player plugins, these integrate with various standalone media players to allow the submission of tracks played in those programs.[8]

In a former release of the Last.fm Player application, the user could select to use an external player. When this was done, the Last.fm Player provided the user with a local URL, through which the Last.fm music stream was proxied. Users could then open the URL in their preferred media player. The newer player has no such functionality.


[wysig] Other players

  • LastFMProxy: a Python script written by Vidar Madsen, allows users to use their own music player again, by connecting to Last.fm and relaying its stream to the user's player of choice.
  • Online Last.fm Player: an open source PHP application made for listening to Last.fm radio streams on a webpage. It allows users who can't run or install any applications on their PC to listen to radio streams.
  • lastfmmobile (lfmm): In the vein of LastFMProxy and Online Last.fm Player, lastfmmobile (lfmm) facilitates direct manipulation of the Last.FM Shoutcast/mp3 stream. Originally designed for Internet Explorer for Pocket PC, on the Windows Mobile platform, the portability of Javascript and the server-side rendering of PHP make lfmm available on a majority of web enabled devices. Still under heavy development.
  • Rhythmbox: is able to play last.fm streams through its last.fm plugin as of version 0.9.7. It also supports submitting the track information of other tracks to the last.fm profile.
  • Amarok: has had the ability to play Last.fm streams integrated into the application as of version 1.4.1, and continues to support submitting information. Users of previous versions can play the streams using the LastamaroK script (homepage), which is based on LastFMProxy.
  • MyLastFM: an open source desktop client for the Windows platform which can play Last.fm streams or relay the streams to other music players (similar to LastFMProxy). It requires Microsoft .NET version 1.1 Framework.
  • Last Exit: an open source GTK+-based client similar to the official player. There are official deb packages for Debian [3] and Ubuntu [4] and there is also an unofficial package that let you save the song [5] Ubuntu forums thread about the save song patch.
  • Shell.FM: an open source console based player for Linux.
  • Amua: a small, open source client for Mac OS X that resides as a menu item.
  • PandoraFM: lets you listen to your customized Last.fm radio stations built by tagging within Pandora and the Last.fm web site. A web based, online Last.fm player.
  • BMPx: Supports native song reporting as well as Last.fm radio playback since version 0.3x
  • LastBASH: A console/terminal based Last.fm player, written in Bash.

Since Last.fm consists of a Shoutcast mp3 stream it is possible to listen on Last.fm using the player of your choice.[9]

[wysig] Audioscrobbler plugin

Last.fm can optionally build a profile directly from a user's music played on their personal computer. Users must download and install a plugin for their music player, which will automatically submit the artist and title of the song after either half the song or the first four minutes have played, whichever comes first. When the track is shorter than 30 seconds (31 seconds in iTunes) or the track lacks metadata (ID3, CDDB, etc), the track is not submitted. This feature is available to dial-up users, as data is cached and submitted to Last.fm when an internet connection is established.

[wysig] List of supported media players

Following applications have native support for sending song information:

  • AlbumPlayer
  • Amarok
  • Audacious
  • Banshee
  • BMPx
  • Exaile
  • Ezmo
  • Helium Music Manager
  • Herrie
  • Listen
  • LobsterTunes
  • MediaPortal
  • MP3Toys
  • Rhythmbox
  • VUPlayer
  • XBoxMediaCenter (XBMC)
  • YamiPod

Plugins are available for the following applications: [6]

  • AmigaAMP
  • Banshee
  • Beep Media Player
  • foobar2000
  • gmusicbrowser (unofficial plugin)
  • iTunes
  • LAUNCHcast (via LaunchScrobbler)
  • J. River Media Center
  • MediaMonkey (using Winamp plugin)
  • Muine (unofficial plugin)
  • MPD (unofficial, mpdscribble, scmpc)
  • musikCube (unofficial beta plugin)
  • MXPlay
  • Noatun
  • Pandora (music service) (via the LastFM Firefox Extension, through PandoraFM or with OpenPandora)
  • Pocket Player a music player for Pocket PC and Smartphone devices running the Windows mobile operating system
  • Rhythmbox
  • Quintessential Player/QCD
  • Quod Libet
  • SlimServer
  • Songbird
  • Winamp
  • Windows Media Player
  • XMMS
  • XMPlay
  • Yahoo Music Engine

[wysig] Supported audio players (hardware)

There is some support for portable audio players. Since these are offline (which breaks the last.fm concept), track info has to be batch scrobbled. Players for which batch upload software is available:

  • iPod: The most recent version of the Last.fm software for Windows features experimental iPod support. However, there are several other programs which support this feature.iPodScrobbler, via YamiPod, lastPod (former audioPod, audioPod+)[10], iSproggler (Windows), iScrobbler (Mac iTunes), Rockbox replacement firmware
  • Various other players: supported with the RockBox firmware - logs made by these players can be uploaded to the Audioscrobbler service via a web based interface written by stead : Rockbox .scrobbler.log to Last.fm Upload
  • Zenses is an open source utility program for MTP compatible devices such as iriver clix, Toshiba's Gigabeat line, SanDisk's Sansa series, Samsung's YP series, Microsoft Zune, & Creative's Zen players. It lets you submit play counts from the player to last.fm, view charts on what you've played and create recently added playlists. Zenses was designed and developed for use with Creative's Zen Vision:M media player, however it should also work with most other MTP compatible devices. For more info on MTP and corresponding devices check here: Media Transfer Protocol. Some MTP players such as the SanDisk Sansa M230 don't register play counts and thus will not work with Zenses.


All Audioscrobbler plugins are open source and the listening data it collects is released under a Creative Commons License. The data is available from Last.fm's Audioscrobbler site.

[wysig] Other third party applications

[wysig] Blog

On 30 May, 2007, Last.fm launched their company blog.

[wysig] Easter eggs

The Last.fm website has several easter eggs concealed within, relying on in-jokes:

  • A fake user page for David Hasselhoff, presented as if he were a member of the Last.fm development team, here (Hasselhoff's favourite track is the Knight Rider theme).
  • A fake artist page for Matthew Ogle, the lead web developer at Last.fm, here. Ogle has a fake album page, From Alberta to the Albert, Live from the Hot Grapefruit Lounge, and even a fake fan club. The latter reports that a new album, made in collaboration with Hasselhoff, is about to be released. Ogle's fake songs are regularly scrobbled by users and staff members. Matt Ogle was captured on film performing a live rendition of Silent Night with his accordion in the Last.fm offices in December of 2006. The most popular tag for his music is "nu-post-awesomecore".
  • A fake artist page for Norman Casagrande, the chief music research honcho for Last.fm, here. Casagrande has a fake fan club devoted to him, and even a fake event page in which he appears to be performing alongside Ogle and Hasselhoff in the office's local pub. Norman's "hit" track is titled "Norman in da Casa Grande", which is a pun based on his name.
  • The site team page often features comedy photos and job descriptions for staff members.
  • In listing the various services provided by signing up, the site used to state that you receive a free pony. In reality, "Pony" was the codename for the site's recommendation system.
  • The office microwave has its own artist page under the moniker "The Singing Microwave". The page features a biography and a recording of the song "Bacon & Mushroom Tagliatelle".
  • At the very bottom of each page is an Audioscrobbler "slogan", which changes each time the page is refreshed. They are all based on well known sayings or advertisements. These originally appeared at the top of the old Audioscrobbler website pages, and were all created and contributed by site members.

[wysig] Similar services

  • SongTaste, a clone of Last.fm, exists in China and draws heavily from the site.
  • imeem is a competitor to last.fm, but the model is closer to 'youtube for music' with music available on demand.
  • MOG