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Why Last.FM is better than Myspace
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In the evolution of the Web 2.0 world tons of sites grow out of nowhere as social networking communities. An early darling of this revolution was mySpace. Marked as the heaven of promotions and marketing, mySpace is a first stop for many musical artists. But now with the growing content and user saturation of Last.FM, sites like mySpace are poised to become the second class citizens of artist promotions.
Comparatively both mySpace and Last.FM provide a unique environment for artists and users to communicate with the community. Both were grown around the many to many experience forum format, and easily scale down to a one to one dialogue. These sites provide anyone with access to the environment the ability to discover their favorite artists, as well as their own musical peers. But which one REALLY enhances value?
mySpace is the place where artists and fans can gather as many friends as possible. A place where they can rally and push for that superstar status appearing as the hit destination, collecting "friends" into the thousands. A badge of success not without its distraction; the majority of these numbers are based on an artificial value. Artists and bands with many friends do not necessarily translate into having many listeners or devoted fans.
Case in point, NIN... the new album Year Zero has been generating quite a stir to listeners and fans of Trent Reznors' music. While on mySpace the information is shared and exposed, it's mostly at the drive of the admin of the NIN page. Meanwhile on Last.FM,... as fans of the artist discover more of the album, whole new threads generatively appear, sharing the information directly between fans... and the evolution of content happens WITHOUT direct interaction from the band, or the NIN account owner. In-fact all the content on Last.FM regarding NIN was user created, although it might have been seeded by the artist, and is open for change as the listeners and fans see fit.
The environment of mySpace limits the set of options fans have regarding how they can access and share content on an artist... Last.FM furthers the options by allowing user generated content to have reference to the artist. additional user content, or other artists as the user base see fit.
Statistically, while mySpace artists can have thousands of "friends", Last.FM is populated with actual accounting information on listening habits... which is the true test of which artists are REALLY popular. Comparing some of the top artists in both environments shows some clear indications on who has real value.
While mySpace has all the control that labels like in creating and branding artists... A site like Last.FM shows the power of the community and builds in the "truthiness" of the artists' value. Friend ratings don't actually represent the value of the artist in comparison to how many people really are supporters / fans / listeners. That single function was something mySpace never planned for in their all glitz page creation and artist promotion. Regardless of promotional branding and "friend" value shaping, listeners only have one set of ears....
(Originally posted on Lx7.ca) | |
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02/28/07
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mlbot
LOL@otterfan!!
02/28/07
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craque
last.fm is much more of a tool than myspace could ever hope to be.
the scrobbling aspect of it is my favorite, even though i enjoy the website. but the statistical/relational playthings available through last.fm are one-of-a-kind.
edited: Feb 28 2007
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naw
last.fm is self healing like a wiki... hense any one can go ther eand add info and any one can go in thee and correct the info with an active account...
03/01/07
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lunatinker
off topic: link
i have no friends on last.fm - actually the interface is not my kind of intuitive...i don't care for it.
03/01/07
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straight
yeah but the chances of you getting laid on last fm are like zero
03/01/07
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bsr
and you get laid all the time through myspace? best not tel' the missus!
03/01/07
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vveerrgg
atleast with Last.FM you get the real numbers on who's getting laid and who isnt..... myspace is all smoke and mirrors.... and the ppl who are getting laid..... would you REALLY want to hop into bed with them?
03/01/07
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Otterfan
What myspace can offer that last.fm can't is the ability to launch a band.
You don't show up on last.fm unless people are listening to you, and since no one's listening to you last.fm won't promote your music. With myspace you can start from nothing. You can start the promotion as soon as you have the band. For people who do the old-fashioned "play live, get contract, make record" thing last.fm is useless until step 3.
Since it focuses on what people are actually listening to rather than what they're buying (or excited by) last.fm in general is biased towards more established artists. The Beatles, Radiohead, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers have been the top three artists almost every week since the site launched. The shuffle-all-the-time attitude towards listening means that bands who have lots of releases will get more promotion on last.fm--not necessarily because they're the most loved, but just because they offer the most targets in a shuffle set.
Last.fm is also biased towards shorter songs, so people who make longer songs will receive comparatively less promotion. That's a problem for musicians in long-song genres like electronic music.
As a user--not a musician--I of course prefer last.fm to the godforsaken crapworld of myspace; and I definitely think that it gives musicians a more realistic view of themselves than myspace.
edited: Mar 01 2007
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bsr
couple of issues:
1 - it's not biased towards shorter songs (or have i got it wrong?)- a user has to listen to a percentage of a track or a minimum predefined time before the track is scrobbled. it may have been different in the past but not anymore, songs below a certain length aren't scrobbled at all.
[edit - link
* Each song should be posted to the server when it is 50% or 240 seconds complete, whichever comes first.
* If a user seeks (i.e. manually changes position) within a song before the song is due to be submitted, do not submit that song.
* Songs with a duration of less than 30 seconds should not be submitted.
* If a MusicBrainz? ID is present in the file (as defined here), then you should send it.
* If a user is playing a stream instead of a regular file, do not submit that stream/song.'
]
2 - a new band can host their music on last fm the same they can on myspace, what it's less easy to do is then cynically spam-the-fuck out of everyone on your so-called friend list, you can do it, start a lable on last.fm, upload your music, request to be a friend with every fucker whether you think they're interested or not and bombard them with messages the same as happens on myspace, it's the reason i deleted my myspace account, noise to signal ratio was so high - last.fm try to tackle this.
3 - the fact its based on what people are actually listening to rather than anything else makes it incredibly democratic. it is what it is. if radiohead are in the top three it's simple cos more people listen to that than anything else. it's not a problem, just a truism.
4 - they obviously are trying to make a useful good product, myspace just sit back and earn their advertising revenue and laugh when the server crashes multiple times a day
5 - good point about band with lots of material appearing more often in the random player - but knowing last.fm they'll address this, they really do seem to be good folk who give a shit. (they might already have fixed this, surely they have some code that prevents a band that played from being repeated too soon)
6 - useability - i love the fact that you can't tweak the site, myspace is a mess. last.fm has a nice clean design, every artist page is the same so you can get the info easily without getting a headache from some dumbass stylesheet. the 'quilts' are a step in the wrong direction though.
03/01/07
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chri5
03/01/07
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Otterfan
Let me just say I definitely love last.fm. It's the only site I check more often than em411. It's just a brilliant idea, and they execute it well. They've had occasional trouble keeping up with the growth, but that's mostly because the site is so great (and they offer so many extra resources, like their API).
And I hate myspace. With a passion.
But last.fm still biases towards musicians who make short (or at least, shorter) songs--at least if you listen to the songs all the way through. Here's a personal example:
I've listened to Kraftwerk's Autobahn maybe a dozen times over the years since I've been on last.fm. I listen to each song all the way through. That gives me 60 plays, but about 9 hours worth of listening.
A few weeks ago I bought a double CD of tunes by Leroy Carr, a 30s blues singer. It has 40 songs in 110 minutes. I've listened to one disc twice and the other once. This gives me a total of 60 plays, just like the Kraftwerk CD. But because the Leroy Carr songs are less than 3 minutes each, it's only about 2.5 hours of listening.
This certainly isn't a deal-breaker for last.fm and me. It's just something to be aware of.
03/01/07
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Otterfan
03/01/07
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Roshi
Great, another time sink. 
I'm now on as link , btw.
03/01/07
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Logo
I tried Last FM once but I couldn't get my beats to squabble in Winamp, I never really tried but it was probably a firewall rule I had or something.
I hate Myspace too but it's a my only connection to a few peeps that live far away, and the only way I can try to look cool/sexy to teh ladies. So far pictures of my cat and Arp on my profile aren't really helping...
As crappy as it is I have actually found new music on it, so it kind of half works.
03/01/07
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Otterfan
Roshi said: "Great, another time sink.
I'm now on as link , btw."
Until you have 10000 tracks scrobbled you will officially be known as n00b.
N00b.
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