Build

Thursday, 28 February 2008
by flaneur
filed under Announcements and Stuff Other People Made
Comments: 43

I started building webpages at Last.fm in early 2005. In the days of the old Audioscrobbler site, from our glamorous Whitechapel headquarters, the social music revolution was starting to take shape. And I thought I was the one of the lucky few shaping it.

I was wrong.

The first time I sat next to RJ watching our real-time access logs, I didn’t recognize half the URLs scrolling past. Instead of profile pages and forum posts, it was screenfuls of recenttracks.rss and artisttags.xml requests. Huh?

“Yeah, those are the webservices. Could be anything, really…”

Anything (and Everything)

Since 2003, we had been operating under a pretty simple premise: Being able to get data out of Last.fm –- whether one person’s recently played tracks or community-driven artist and tag info — was as important as being able to put it in.

Five years on, traffic from the incredible wealth of mashups, widgets, and services that leverage Last.fm data matches traffic to our website itself. These applications — contributed by fans, companies, and partners around the world — have literally built the social music revolution. I can take my music profile wherever I go on the net; I can sort my friends by musical compatibility; I can explore interactive graphs and stats; I can scrobble tracks from platforms and devices whose names I can’t even pronounce.

build.last.fm

Today we’re pleased to introduce build.last.fm, a gallery of apps and services that take slices of the Last.fm experience into tons of cool new directions. We’ve only just started adding to it, but — with your help, of course — we expect it to grow quickly! (In features too; stay tuned for search, RSS feeds, user comments, and more.)

This is just a small piece of our much larger goal for 2008, which will include a re-launch of our developer site, along with new and improved APIs for some of our most important functionality.

We hope you enjoy checking out all the things you can do with a Last.fm profile. But we’re even more excited to see where you’ll take the music next. :)



Have you built something too?
We’ve already added some popular apps to the gallery, but if you can’t find your creation, please tell us all about it.

Comments

  1. Attila Györffy
    28 February, 13:42

    cool, I am going to submit my new ruby library soon. should help integrating last.fm support to rails applications.

    Attila Györffy – 28 February, 13:42
  2. trovster
    28 February, 14:18

    Pretty cool. I can’t wait for the ‘re-launch of the developer site, along with new and improved APIs for some of our most important functionality.’ — YES. Hopefully something along the lines of the Flickr API or anything which is better than the feeds / plain text data at the moment.

    trovster – 28 February, 14:18
  3. Abu-Dun
    28 February, 14:28

    “build.last.fm” redirects me to the dashboard site.

    Abu-Dun – 28 February, 14:28
  4. James Wheare
    28 February, 14:33

    @Abu-Dun:

    Yep, this happens if your language isn’t English. We’re working on a fix to this.

    James Wheare – 28 February, 14:33
  5. Justin
    28 February, 14:44

    I submitted my crappy little PHP experiment (more meant as a learning tool for myself than anything) but I don’t really expect to see it put on the gallery.

    I’m very excited about new APIs and other developer tools :)

    Justin – 28 February, 14:44
  6. Joel
    28 February, 15:42

    Wow, suppose the stats group is going to feel a little unneccessary now !

    Great stuff, love hearing from you last.fm

    Joel – 28 February, 15:42
  7. Abu-Dun
    28 February, 17:13

    @James Wheare

    thank you! it is working now.

    Abu-Dun – 28 February, 17:13
  8. McKillaboy
    28 February, 17:25

    Cool, my service is also included in the list :)

    McKillaboy – 28 February, 17:25
  9. C26000
    28 February, 18:52

    very well designed and useful page, I wonder if you are going to add a permanent link to it in the official page , maybe in www.last.fm/widgets ?

    btw can you please fix the link to the wave graph request here: http://build.last.fm/item/34, or maybe remove entirely that part if you prefer. That ‘here’ without the link feels strange ;)

    C26000 – 28 February, 18:52
  10. greg
    28 February, 19:54

    just miss the rss thing to be aware of new stuff

    greg – 28 February, 19:54
  11. Tartalo
    29 February, 00:27

    Showing the requirements in an obvious way would be great (OS, Browser, …)

    Tartalo – 29 February, 00:27
  12. Sureally
    29 February, 09:02

    Is there going to be full album playback at any time in the future?????????????????

    Sureally – 29 February, 09:02
  13. Amr Hassan
    29 February, 10:31

    looks great :D

    i’m with showing the requirements too, and maybe making it available for the editor to edit his submission ;)

    Amr Hassan – 29 February, 10:31
  14. Matthew Ogle
    29 February, 11:00

    Thanks for the feedback everyone!

    Yup — we hope to improve the categories and requirements stuff soon, plus add the ability to add / edit / rate items.

    Matthew Ogle – 29 February, 11:00
  15. Gnac
    1 March, 12:13

    The layout seems to be broken in Firefox – tested in 2.0.0.12 and 3.0b3, looks fine in Opera 9.26 & IE 6/7, all on WinXP

    Gnac – 1 March, 12:13
  16. Gnac
    1 March, 12:14

    ^^^ False alarm. Damn Greasemonkey. Sorry Matt.

    Gnac – 1 March, 12:14
  17. Erika
    1 March, 20:36

    man, with this PLUS the ball pit, I would practically kill to work with you guys now. I would be a perfect customer service rep, too, except I live in Iowa (USA) and not London. I LOVED London when I was there, too. (And yes, I was mostly in East London—Leyton, specifically. loved it.) I am quite serious and quite sad. Mourning my loss!

    Erika – 1 March, 20:36
  18. Creciente
    2 March, 01:03

    Another great addition!

    Creciente – 2 March, 01:03
  19. onno
    2 March, 18:43

    maybe a way to see the last added tools would be handy.

    onno – 2 March, 18:43
  20. Mike B.
    3 March, 04:53

    something to work with yahoo pipes easier, such as those rss feeds, would be really great, although I’m a noob at pipes.
    heres the only pipe I know of:(maps out upcoming concerts of your top artists of the week)
    http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=8vhvqztJ3BG4tUQhl7okhQ

    Mike B. – 3 March, 04:53
  21. InSinU8
    3 March, 07:08

    I most eagerly await the new API’s.

    It would be nice to see some of the various info bits available through the API (listeners, plays, etc.) instead of being forced to resort to scraping.

    InSinU8 – 3 March, 07:08
  22. victor matell
    3 March, 17:52

    Last.fm has given me the tools to the kingdom – i can now reach millions of fans – have a one on one with the fans – so thanx last.fm i will support you in whatever you do next to lead the way in the music industry – you are truily a leader

    matell

    victor matell – 3 March, 17:52
  23. onno
    4 March, 11:17

    spam ;-)

    onno – 4 March, 11:17
  24. Philippe
    4 March, 12:39

    woot :)
    One more thing (that might already been there!?). When you propose an app, it would be nice to be notified by email if it was put on the page or rejected. I’ve posted an app on Saturday, see that it was reached once from ‘otrs.last.fm/otrs/…’ on Sunday, but have got no clue if it’s in the queue for treatment or if it has been rejected.
    Thanks anyway, much appreciated service!

    Philippe – 4 March, 12:39
  25. openbookquestionmark
    4 March, 21:39

    this page didn’t have a sign in place, so i wasn’t able to sign in so you might not know who i am, but i just want to say, that last.fm is the greatest idea in the world! thanks!

    openbookquestionmark – 4 March, 21:39
  26. Julian
    4 March, 23:20

    And that’s the thing, I use Last.fm to discover music and like-minded people. I’m rarely interested in actually listening to music on Last.fm (though I do that occasionally). I’m more interested in what the music that I’ve already listened to says about me: what I may like, who I may like, what discussions I could be having, etc., etc. Sometimes Last.fm has the visualization that I want, other times someone else does. Even something as simple as a recently played badge does this. Since everything I put in I can get back out, Last.fm is my first stop for looking for music information, similar artists, people, etc. The result is more page views for you and more click-throughs to purchase music. Keep the focus on social: social is everyone and everything.

    Julian – 4 March, 23:20
  27. Teknojnky
    5 March, 18:08

    last.fm data feeds are one of the coolest features of the site, I am glad that new and improved features will be available in the future.

    One feed I am really hoping for is for global top tracks and global top artists so I can add them to my last.fm node script for mediamonkey.

    screenshot

    Teknojnky – 5 March, 18:08
  28. Roel van der Ven
    7 March, 11:39

    Awwh men! No I really want to come up with sum’thing really cool based on those webservices… I love it.

    Roel van der Ven – 7 March, 11:39
  29. Jelle
    12 March, 11:24

    It would be great to have a list of the newly added apps. As it is, the page is really only worth visiting once/a couple of times. I cba to keep track of the number of apps per category to find out if new ones have been added! :)
    Cheers

    Jelle – 12 March, 11:24
  30. damplify
    14 March, 20:07

    cool stuff….thanks!!

    damplify – 14 March, 20:07
  31. Whosthatrandom
    15 March, 17:57

    Nice of you to stick it to the idiots at Apple by posting MobileScrobbler on the front page of build.last.fm.

    It’s worth noting that a similar app could not be made using Apple’s official SDK, as their terms require that all apps be self-contained, and that you can’t run background processes.

    Whosthatrandom – 15 March, 17:57
  32. mattk
    18 March, 16:55

    nice

    mattk – 18 March, 16:55
  33. Sam Kuonen
    23 March, 07:17

    As a venue operator, I need an API to add/edit events for single venues, multiple venues per-artist and festivals.

    I’m looking at re-enabling our webservices to push the gig information to last.fm and other event lists like upcoming.org.

    Sam Kuonen – 23 March, 07:17
  34. Anil Bawa
    23 March, 12:31

    Hey Sam, you will see a big web services drive from us in the coming months. This will include the ability to submit different types of content to Last.fm. That particular API hasn’t been discussed yet as there are moderation issues around event creation, but I will keep it in mind.

    Anil Bawa – 23 March, 12:31
  35. safetygooner
    24 March, 11:49

    I had last.fm open automatically for months before I realised how much my wife and kids listen to their stuff on itunes and hence how incompatible I am now with my mates (thanks to Sting, Blink 182 and Junior Senior). I have now set Last to open when i want but how do i rid myself of the naff stuff that I wasn’t listening to?

    safetygooner – 24 March, 11:49
  36. Click
    26 March, 02:23

    Very Nice? :B

    Click – 26 March, 02:23
  37. C26000
    27 March, 18:32

    I’m not sure if this is the correct place to report a problem but the pages are broken in IE7, the description and link are missing. BTW I see that you added option to add comments , nice!

    C26000 – 27 March, 18:32
  38. Jalali
    1 April, 15:33

    Hey there – how can I incorporate my JamsBio into Last?

    http://hollywoodsquared.com/jamsbio-my-life-through-music/

    Jalali – 1 April, 15:33
  39. Kimmie
    2 April, 19:33

    How does one add events onto this site? Can we?

    Kimmie – 2 April, 19:33
  40. edwinivan
    3 April, 01:57

    soy un oyente de esta radio y programa quiero conectarme denuebo

    edwinivan – 3 April, 01:57
  41. Kewbs
    3 April, 05:15

    I love MobileScrobbler so much.

    <3

    Kewbs – 3 April, 05:15
  42. REGNAJ
    3 April, 18:06

    6

    REGNAJ – 3 April, 18:06
  43. landazuri1975
    8 April, 14:15

    viva modern talkiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing

    landazuri1975 – 8 April, 14:15

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