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Last.fm history:

Last.fm is a music community website that acts as internet radio. Last.fm was founded in the year 2002. The present website is from the merge of Audioscrobbler and Last.fm in 2005.

Last.fm was acquired by CBS Interactive for $280 million on May, 2005. This social media website uses a music recommender system called Audioscrobbler to build profile by previously listened song. Members can create their own internet radio stations and playlists using music from many of audio tracks on this websites music library.

Last.fm won the Europix award for 2002 and in 2006 this website was awarded the Best Community website at BT Music Awards.
Last.fm generates revenue from online advertisements, user subscription fee and announced that it would charge users from March, 2009.

Development:

Last.fm made an update on July, 2006 released a new software application for playing radio streams. The friends system was updated to include two-way friendship.


Last.fm localized its website into the languages: German, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish and Chinese (Simplified).

CBS Interactive acquired this website on May, 2007 for $248 million. CBS Radio announced that Last.fm radio stream would be available from KCBS-HD2 in Los Angeles, KITS-HD3 in San Fransico, WWFS-HD2 in New York City and WXRT-HD3 in Chicago City.

Registration is free and to access the website, but to use its radio service a subscription fee of 3 pounds per month.

Current usage:

Last.fm acts as an internet radio and also with social networking feature. It works by learning from user's music choice. It statistically learns which music genre the user prefers to listen. It needs an application to be installed in order to obtain statics for which music genre you often listen.

Last.fm works by music player plugin that works on user's system. The plugin collects user frequently listened music genre from users music player. This information is displayed on member profile. Members can download selected music tracks. At present more than 100,000 tracks are available for free download. From January, 2007 this website introduced "Free The Music" model by which users can stream music tracks from the website up to 3 times. "Free The Music" is still in beta stage and available only in US, UK and Germany.



User benefits:

Members of this website can get the following benefits from using it:

  1. Members can get music tracts of their interest.

  2. With the scrobbler system that makes you discover new music tracks based on your interest.

  3. Social networking feature is offered that connects you to other member having similar music taste.

  4. Members can recommend a music tract to others.

  5. As huge music collection is available, so you can get any music tract available.

  7. You can download free music from this website.

  9. Last.fm has lots of information on artists, albums, tracks and you can choose to listen music to your interest.




Technical explanation:

Registering at Last.fm you make the most of it. After registration is complete, Last.fm asks you to download software. This software works as plugin for most media players to collect information about music you listen.

Last.fm software installation asks you for user name and password. It then searches for supported media players installed on your system. You can select the media player you use to install the plugin.

The media player plugin collects song information when it reaches half or 120 seconds. It then submit the data to your profile.

In your profile, you can get information like weekly top artists, similar music tracts you may like and also other members with similar music interest.


worldwide usage:

Last.fm is a UK based social media website and claims that it has over 30 million active members from 200 countries.

Content by Mark Anderson, Websites4results.

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I am a freelance web developer and business manager with over 20 years experience.
My main interest area is emerging web technologies and trends.
I enjoy developing state of the art websites through my company at http://www.websites4results.com.au
I spend many hour per week researching, I hope you enjoy my articles.
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