Travis Vocino Experiments in Art, Science & Technology.

I use Last.fm quite a bit (feel free to +friend me). I’ve logged over 10,000 played songs, and that’s after creating a new account in the not-so-distant past. I also use it for my “Playing in iTunes” list of recently played tracks at the bottom half of this site. The AudioScrobbler can almost always been seen in my menu bar.

Since I associate my Last.fm stream to what’s playing in my iTunes, it got me wondering why it’s not just living in iTunes. I know not everyone uses iTunes (although I can’t understand why not!) but still, we have Web Galleries for iPhoto included in .Mac. It seems like very nice companion functionality to iTunes.

Logging My Listening Habits

I’m always “scrobbling” my iTunes music. I figure the more audio I have, the more data I have to base future music-buying decisions on and more for the Last.fm robot to use to make suggestions to me. Why not?

There was somewhat of a nerd panic when Apple released a new version iTunes which had a suggestion box. In an old post of mine, iTunes Advertisements, I talked a bit about how I didn’t really like the idea since Apple is in bed with record companies. Most of my music comes from “other sources” so I can’t say I’m particularly fond of iTunes knowing everything.

Now, however, I’ve come to want that kind of functionality. The fact that the data may be sent to some mining companies which then is sent to the record companies doesn’t bother me anymore. Hell, I even scrobble my iPod when I plug it in — Last.fm knows everything about my music habits. Fuck it, 1984.

In fact, I actually want that to happen. I want them to know who I’m listening to so they can give them more money or sign the artists that aren’t signed yet. Makes sense to me.

Finding New Music

I find the majority of my music from Last.fm. In a nutshell, I look at what I’ve been listening to and then get to see what other people that like the same thing are into. A lot of times our music tastes will align nicely and I’ll be able to find some good suggestions from there.

I also use it to select which particular album of an artist to get. If I’m interested in grabbing something from a new artist whom I have no music for, it’s nice to see what the top album is.

Also like iTunes, I can listen to a preview of the songs very easily with the Last.fm flash player.

The player keeps grabbing new tracks, so you could theoretically let it roll and see what you happen to like. I find this to be vastly easier that the iTunes preview system. Clicking the iTunes “listeners also bought” (shown below) links and then streaming a preview just seems cumbersome after using Last.fm.

So, Why Not iTunes?

I do like Last.fm and I like supporting the underdog, as it were. I can’t say I would complain if all of the Last.fm community, tracking and recommendation features were integrated directly into iTunes, though. It might be nice. For one, you would no longer need to have yet another application running up in your menu bar — that’s always nice.

From a business perspective, it makes sense for Apple. The quicker I can discover new music in the community, the faster and more likely I will be to simply grab it on iTunes rather than some other way (the other problem is of course, not everything I want is on iTunes — but that’s a different post). Keep me within iTunes and I’m much less likely to stray.

While iTunes sort of supports a little of this functionality within the Music Store, it’s severely lacking since it doesn’t take into account any listened music (frequency, rating, etc) and it doesn’t come close to support the kind of community features which make Last.fm so great.

So there you go, Apple. I give you permission to take over my entire music experience. Congratulations.