last100 » Last.fm

XBox 360 to support Twitter and Facebook. Who’s the biggest social network on TV now?

Steve O'Hear — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:56:12 +0000

Facebook on XBox 360

For a long time now, Microsoft has made the rather lofty claim that the company’s XBox 360 was the biggest social network on TV. For the most part that was in reference to XBox Live – the games console’s online service – and its integration with Windows Live Messenger, Microsoft’s cross platform Instant Messaging service (Windows, Mac and mobile). Yesterday, however, Microsoft announced at E3 that the XBox 360 will soon be adding support for two competing social networks – Twitter and Facebook – making the XBox 360 undoubtedly the most socially networked set-top box, but not necessarily a Microsoft-owned social network the biggest one on the television. I’m not sure how Windows Live Messenger user numbers and Facebook’s compare in terms of cross-over with XBox Live membership but it’s nonetheless significant that Microsoft has chosen to embrace two competitors.

Interestingly, the Facebook integration won’t be one way. Not only will XBox 360 users be able to access a Facebook application providing the usual functionality (status updates, view friends’ news feeds, photos etc), but XBox Live will also incorporate Facebook Connect so that various activities can be posted back to Facebook e.g. in-game screen shots and footage. The User Interface for the Facebook app could do with some improvement, reports Gizmodo, which isn’t surprising considering that the social network’s feature set is fairly extensive and is rooted firmly in the PC, making designing the perfect “ten foot” UI challenging.

In comparison, Twitter’s minimum core functionality looks much better suited to the TV (see screen shot) and, accompanied by the XBox 360 gamepad’s thum-board QWERTY add-on, could work quite well. Both services to be supported through a software update “this fall”.

Twitter on XBox 360

Other XBox 360 announcements yesterday of interest to last100 readers included improved Netflix functionality with full on-screen access to the service’s movie and TV show catolog, support for music streaming service Last.fm, and 1080p High Def content (download and streaming) through XBox Live’s newly branded video store now called “Zune”.

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Napster tries again, unlimited streaming and five downloads for $5 per-month

Steve O'Hear — Mon, 18 May 2009 14:14:53 +0000

Napster tries again

Now under the stewardship of Best Buy, Napster is taking yet-another-stab at offering a compelling music service since its glorious P2P days of yesteryear. This time round the company is touting the combination of unlimited streaming of its 7 million strong music library in combination with 5 DRM-free downloads per month, all for a monthly subscription of just five dollars. “Music fans now have the best of both worlds”, boasts the press release.

While that’s a bit of an exaggeration to say the least, Napster’s new offering doesn’t seem like such a bad deal at all. Essentially, you’re committing to buying 5 tracks per-month at average industry prices, with the company throwing in its streaming service for “free”. There is as always a potential deal breaker depending on how you like to consume your music. Device support for the streaming part of the service is, for now at least, quite limited: PC streaming through a standard web browser and possibly, though I can’t be sure, home audio systems, such as those from Sonos and Logitech (Squeezebox). In other words, there’s no support for streaming through mobile phones and other portable devices. If there were a Napster app for iPhone, for example, that might be worth paying the five dollars for alone.

Mobile support in general is an essential component if we’re ever to be persuaded to move to a cloud-based model whereby our music collection resides on remote servers and is only accessible through the Internet. That’s something that competing services such as Pandora, Slacker, Last.fm and soon Spotify, already acknowledge.

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Last.fm starts charging international users, kills third-party mobile apps

Steve O'Hear — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:46:17 +0000

After news last week that SpiralFrog has shut its doors, another reality check for ad-supported music services. CBS-owned Last.fm has started charging users outside of the US, UK and Germany, €3 per month (approx. $4.40), to make up for the short fall in advertising revenue.

“While we would like to provide the same service for users of all countries – the world is a huge place and it’s not cheap to deliver music over the Internet”, Last.fm’s Owen Parry explained on the company’s blog.

That’s no understatement.

More bad news has since slipped out. Following an update to the service’s public API, which allows third-party developers to build applications based on Last.fm, the company is no longer tolerating unofficial mobile clients, such as Pocket Scrobbler on Windows Mobile or the Symbian S60-based Mobbler, which I run on my beloved Nokia E71. Both of these apps were free to download, which can’t be said for FlipSide, a Last.fm client for BlackBerry that will also soon be silenced. Ouch.

Of course, none of this is really Last.fm’s fault, but is at the request of the record labels with whom they license music from. A Last.fm mobile app, outside of the company’s own official offerings (for iPhone and Android), isn’t covered by the terms of those deals, although Last.fm has back tracked a little by suggesting that any third-party who wants to build a mobile client can contact the company direct to see if a deal can be done. Any deal would obviously involve putting money on the table, most of which, presumably, would go straight to the major labels.

Where does this leave other ad-supported music services, such as Pandora, my new favourite Spotify, Qtrax, or the UK’s We7 (currently a last100 sponsor), is anybody’s guess, especially now that we’ve entered a global downturn. Although Pandora, Spotify and We7 have restricted certain countries from accessing their services from the very beginning and both Pandora and Spotify offer an alternative subscription-based version.

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Radiohead teams with Last.fm to offer “In Rainbows” for free, on-demand streaming

Daniel Langendorf — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:48:33 +0000

Leave it up to Radiohead to find every new distribution method possible for their latest effort “In Rainbows.” This time the band has teamed up with Last.fm to offer the album in its entirety for free, ad-supported, on-demand streaming.

“In Rainbows” can be accessed on Last.fm here. Already nearly 1.5 million listeners have streamed the album.

Radiohead is a popular band on Last.fm. Its songs have been “scrobbled” more than 108 million times.

When Radiohead introduced “In Rainbows” in October 2007, it was first made available as a download fans could purchase at whatever they wanted to pay. At the time, Last.fm noticed the interest in Radiohead was high for its community of 21 million music fans.

“Radiohead understand that the Internet is changing music distribution,” said Martin Stiksel, Last.fm’s co-founder. Last.fm is now owned by CBS Corporation.

“We believe that music fans should be able to access music for free, and just as importantly, that artists and rights holders should be paid when their music is listened to. Last.fm makes this possible.”

It’s the first time Radiohead has granted a worldwide license for “In Rainbows” to an online Web music site. It’s made possible through the “one stop” digital licensing platform that Radiohead and publisher Warner/Chappell Music created at the end of 2007.

The “one stop” strategy enables rights users worldwide to secure from one destination all the necessary digital rights from both the artist and publisher.

Since the debut of “In Rainbows,” Radiohead has released the album in physical form (January), has undertaken a mammoth worldwide tour (this spring/summer), and for the first time ever made its back catalog of recording available for sale (in June) on iTunes, the leading online distributor of legal digital music downloads.

Radiohead’s bold distribution strategy for “In Rainbows” has caught the attention of publications worldwide and is believed to be — along with similar strategies by the band Nine Inch Nails — the spark allowing well-known artists license to experiment with new forms of distribution, shaking up even more the already-shaken music industry.

After Last.fm, what’s Radiohead’s next move?

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Last.fm now streaming on Squeezebox

Steve O'Hear — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:09:29 +0000

We’re big fans of Logitech’s line of Squeezebox streaming audio devices, and today the company announced that it had partnered with Last.fm to add the social music service to its existing bevy of online streaming options.

Owners of the Logitech Squeezebox Duet (see our coverage), Squeezebox Classic or the high-end Transporter network music systems who are based in the U.S., UK or Germany will be able to access Last.fm’s music catalog through their home stereo systems. Users will be able to listen to Last.fm Internet radio stations based on artist or genre, as well as stream personalized stations created based on their listening habits — thanks to Last.fm’s “scrobbling capability” which debuted on Squeezebox earlier this year.

In a written statement Martin Stiksel, Last.fm Co-Founder, said, “It’s something of a milestone to be offering the Last.fm streaming music experience for the first time on a hardware device, and we’re pleased to be reaching that milestone with Logitech. Last.fm is now no longer limited to your computer, and this marks another step toward giving music fans access to Last.fm’s unparalleled music services anywhere and everywhere they go.”

Also see: Pandora on your mobile and in your living room

While Logitech’s Robin Selden is quoted as saying: “Now users can create custom radio stations and playlists from any of the audio tracks in Last.fm’s music library and thanks to Logitech’s network music systems, people can enjoy that music anywhere in their home.”

Last.fm isn’t the first online music service to land on Squeezbox, which already supports Pandora, Rhapsody and Slacker.

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CBS to introduce new online video player with promising social features

Daniel Langendorf — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:38:48 +0000

CBS Interactive is launching a new online video player this week, with more features to be added throughout the summer. It’s one we may actually end up cheering about.

Our normal reaction to news that a traditional media company is releasing a new online video player might go something like this: Big deal. They’ll just cripple it so we spend time watching shows on their network.

No so fast buckeroo.

AdAge wrote today that the CBS player will use a content and advertising engine powered by technology acquired in the purchase of Last.fm, the popular streaming music site. The new player will include an HD viewing experience that does not require a separate download, sharing features, and social viewing rooms that let people watch and discuss content together.

CBS was unfortunately vague in its press release today, noting that the new player will present users with:

“innovative options to interact with content and other users” [last100: what innovative options specifically?]
“new navigation and search features to make browsing and watching videos more user-friendly” [what new navigation and search features specifically? And isn’t ‘user-friendly’ over-used and meaningless today?]
and social features that will include embeddable video clips, allowing people to put clips on blogs and social networks

As AdAge notes, with its new online video player CBS Interactive is giving advertisers what they want: better reporting and targeting data. The question is: Will people find the new player intriguing enough that they will sign up and use it themselves and with friends and family, who also must register and adopt?

“If CBS can build in enough valuable, community-oriented features to persuade people to register to use them, it will be able to use that data to give advertisers more immediate, granular ways to measure viewers,” AdAge notes.

The community-oriented features of Last.fm worked well for music, and CBS is betting it will again for video content. Last.fm recommends music to people by comparing profiles and listening preferences to those of others. The same kind of thinking can be applied to video.

We’ll have to wait until this summer to see the new CBS online video player in full action, but even now it’s encouraging to see a traditional media company taking steps (albeit slowly) into the new media world.

“It’s fun to watch the scales fall from the eyes of the big networks as they begin to see the light that is the power of online video,” Chris Albrecht of NewTeeVee wrote today.

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Where do you get your recommendations on the Web? From a service like The Filter? Or from friends?

Daniel Langendorf — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 03:56:12 +0000

It’s hard to fault Peter Gabriel’s logic: We are overwhelmed by the amount of information and choice we have on the Web. But is his solution — a recommendation engine called The Filter — really the answer?

Of course Gabriel, the genius behind the British rock band Genesis and the solo artist who gave us such tunes as “Solsbury Hill,” “Exposure,” and “Games Without Frontiers,” thinks so as he and England’s Eden Ventures have invested $8 million in The Filter. They believe people are overwhelmed by the Web and can’t find good content because it’s buried out of sight.

“When you drown people in an ocean of information, you’ve got to give them navigation tools,” Gabriel told News.com. “I know that there is better stuff out there than what I generally am exposed to . . . So if I have a sort of intelligent ally working with me 24 hours a day, I think I have a much better chance of getting stuff that will entertain, excite, and inspire me.”

The Filter, originally launched as a music recommendation service about a year ago in Europe, re-launched today in private beta as a more complete solution. It will be available to the public sometime in May.

But there’s something about The Filter that bugs me. What separates The Filter from any of the other algorithm-based recommendation engines out there, whether a human is a part of the process or not — Amazon, iTunes, lastFM, Netflix, Imeem, Digg, Pandora, and many more?

Founders say The Filter’s recommendation engine is more sophisticated than competitors because it doesn’t rely on the ratings that people have assigned to songs, albums, movies, or books. It determines user recommendations by observing what they do with these on the Internet.

To get the full power of The Filter, users can download its software to their desktop, where it watches and digests various streams of Internet behavior — what you buy at iTunes, what songs you sample at MySpace, what video you stream, your browsing history, to name a few. To use The Filter, however, you don’t have to rely on the desktop client.

Users also can connect with friends and track their media-consuming behavior.

The Filter takes this learned behavior, mixes in its algorithms, and generates highly targeted and personalized recommendations for not only what they think you might like but also what you are in the mood for at a particular time.

I don’t know at any given moment if I will stick with what’s playing now — Melody Gardot’s “Worrisome Heart” — or if I will switch to Modest Mouse, Miles Davis, or Phronesis in the next five minutes, so how will The Filter know?

But I digress.

A compelling alternative to algorithm-based recommendation engines is people-powered search, something that entrepreneur Jason Calacanis is shouting about from the rooftops with his human-powered search engine, Mahalo.

Both algorithm and people-power introduce bias — the ones who wrote wrote the algorithm (in this case for The Filter) or the actual humans hired by Calacanis to generate Mahalo content. In both cases, I don’t necessarily distrust the brainiacs or the folks dedicated to bringing me the absolute best the Web has to offer on Ambre Lake, the winner of “Rock of Love 2.” But I don’t know these people, either.

Who I do know are those in my Social Information Network. Family. Friends. Friendly strangers. Co-workers. The dude who runs the local coffee shop. Even friends of my 13-year-old kid.

Lately, I’ve added my extended social network of Facebook and Twitter into my SIN. I may not know @amyguth, @thebuffster, or @Bwana personally, but I do have a better sense of them, their likes and dislikes, than I do anonymous algorithm writers because I choose to let them into my life by following their lives.

So when it comes to The Filter, it’s just another service, another tool, another data point that I can check in on and see what’s there. I’ve found great music on Pandora and lastFM. And, once I either get my invite or the public floodgates open, I expect to find some cool stuff through The Filter.

But aren’t all these recommendation services — there’s so many of them out there these days — just adding to the noise, albeit in a different manner?

I mostly find great information and content through my personal social information network, through people like @therefore, @academicdave, @nicholasspencer, and @stevegillmor on Twitter. I suspect you do, too.

In fact, it’s time to check out M83. Thanks @nicholasspencer.

Additional coverage: Fortune, New York Times, and Silicon Alley Insider.

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Free ad-supported music leads to more sales

Steve O'Hear — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:19:34 +0000

So says Last.fm

Since CBS-owned Last.fm re-launched its free ad-supported music service in January, with licenses from all four of the major labels, overall CD and download sales through the site’s partnership with Amazon.com have experienced a 119% increase. The upturn in sales can be accredited to an increase in new visitors as well as existing users who, according to Last.fm, have purchased 66% more music than they did prior to the free-on-demand offering. Last.fm also has affiliate deals with iTunes and 7Digital.

Last.fm’s co-founder, Martin Stiksel said in a written statement: “In just over two months it’s become clear that people will buy CDs and downloads if they get access to the kind of service we offer. No one else can give music fans this amount of music for free — but more importantly also drive their discovery, as we do through our unique recommendation engine. That’s why people are sticking around on Last.fm — minutes spent on site are up 118% month-on-month — and discovering new music to listen to and buy.”

It’s not really all that surprising that an Internet radio type of service is providing leads to music sales — it’s hardly a novel concept. Listen and discover new music for free, then purchase it for repeat listening on any device, including iPods. Not only does Last.fm have better tools for discovery than traditional radio but the site’s restrictions also give a gentle nudge towards purchasing, whereby each track can only be streamed three times for free before you’re redirected to a music store.

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