Every now and again two things come together that make perfect sense, sometimes by design and sometimes just by natural affinity: gin and tonic, cheese and tomato, Jagger and Richards, Lennon and McCartney… two things that get better when they’re together.
Today Spotify announced that they’re opening their platform up to apps, and Last.fm is going to be one of their launch partners.
Introducing Last.fm for Spotify: personalised recommendations based on the music you play.
Track: “Calm Down” by Canterbury
Ever since Spotify launched, I’ve heard many people suggest that Last.fm and Spotify each do different but essential things they want from a music service. Spotify integrated Last.fm scrobbling into their service almost from day one, but scrobbling on its own really didn’t connect the two services meaningfully enough.
I remember saying the exact same thing long before coming to work at Last.fm. “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could somehow use Last.fm’s recommendations to decide what to play on Spotify?” Some of our community even used our APIs to build homebrew versions of it.
So when, earlier this summer, Spotify came to us to talk about their new platform and asked us “what would you do if..?”, it took us just a few seconds to agree that this was a massive opportunity to create something that we’d want to use ourselves, every day. It was a chance to take the scrobbles we were getting from Spotify users and then pay them back, with interest, in the form of great recommendations.
So what does Last.fm for Spotify do?
You can:
• Sign in to Last.fm, or start a new profile (new users have a very easy setup process)
• The overview page displays the listener’s recent top albums…
• …some recommendations
• …their recent tracks
• …and some of their loved tracks
• The Albums and Recommended tabs in the app will offer a deeper insight into those lists
• The app will allow users to build playlists of recommendations, top albums, recent tracks and loved tracks with just one click
• It also powers a Now Playing screen, which features scrobbling stats about artists
• …and users can launch a Similar Tracks playlist from the song currently playing in that tab
• And yes, it scrobbles too
Spotify users without a Last.fm account will be able to use the Now Playing view and Similar Artist playlists, but the personalised experiences are only available to new or existing Last.fm users. As ever, the more you use it, the better those personalised recommendations get.
The one-click playlists really are effortless, and you can play them on any Spotify app (mobile, etc.)
If you want to try this out for yourself, Spotify have a preview version you can download now. It’s going to be going out to the wider world very very soon. You can send us feedback in the Last.fm for Spotify forum as soon as you start using it.
We’re really excited to see this in the wild. We’re big fans of Spotify at Last.HQ, and a lot of work has gone into making this a great experience for old and new users.
Enjoy!
Comments
Eliseo
30 November, 20:12
Thanks for posting the link to the preview version! I was wondering why my current version still didn’t have the apps tab
Guillaumel
30 November, 21:16
Really nice app ! However, in the loved tracks section I can’t see every track I loved :/
Lukas
30 November, 21:30
Awesome! But that means I’ll keep my Spotify subscription and probably cancel last.fm subscription.
juepucta
30 November, 21:47
Hmmkay…
-G.
Will
30 November, 21:59
This is so awesome! As a huge fan of both of the services I’m really happy to hear that! Good work!
pecusita
30 November, 22:09
I just got the beta version and there’s no way to go back to the main “Overview” once you’ve browse in the “Loved Tracks” or “Recent Tracks” playlists. You have to go to another section to return to the Overview homepage.
Parker
30 November, 22:14
This is great! A dream come true!
My one complaint from the trial version so far, though, is a big one. The number 1 reason I was excited for this was to be able to listen to my loved tracks as a playlist, and I was thrilled to find that you included that as an option. However, only 34 of my 600+ loved tracks made it into the playlist. I understand why, but I’m still supremely disappointed. Is there SOME way to improve this? :(
pecusita
30 November, 22:37
By the way, it would be great if we could tag or love songs though Spotify!
I’m really excited about the prospects of this holy union. :D
cms
1 December, 06:38
@pecusita I think you can use the ‘back’ button in spotify to move back to the main overview page.
LaHaine
1 December, 07:46
I am not on Failbook, so I will not use Spotify.
hawkse
1 December, 08:36
Good to hear that you’re helping them out – that Spotify client really is useless as it stands today. I’d rather play Spotify tracks from my last.fm client though since I subscribe to Last.fm but not to Spotify.
Streaming is such old tech, your service OTOH still feels fresh and useful.
ppShivaknen
1 December, 08:46
That’s great! But I have to rename my artist name. My album is already on Spotify and artist name is without period. on LastFM with period. uh-ohhhh… I have to fix it.
Matt Sheret
1 December, 09:52
Thanks for the feedback so far folks!
For those asking about Loved Tracks, we’re limited to 50 tracks in this release, and of those 50 we’ll only display the ones we have matches for in Spotify’s catalogue. But we’re hoping to increase that number in later updates. We’ll keep you posted.
daniel
1 December, 13:51
The same thing of we7 but like “big news”
-Dante-
1 December, 16:53
The Recommendation function doesnt work for me
couldtryharder
1 December, 19:16
@pecusita you can love the track you’re listening to, in the “Now Playing” view
ferglobal
1 December, 23:24
I was getting bored of the Spotify list centric service. This adds quite a lot of salt to the service. Two thumbs up!
To me last.fm still reamains at the centre of my music discovery. I use Spotify as a nice bolt on to narrow the shot.
The value that you guys add that still justifies my subscriber profile can be summarised:
1-In my perception, broader license base.
2-Tag radios.
3-Social in the good sense: discover music via neighbourhood and some given individuals.
4-Mobile app at an unbeatable price.
5-Second to none recommendation engine.
All in all, congratulations on the friendly integration and keep up the nice work!
MXMLLN
2 December, 03:51
The best thing about Spotify is that it scrobbles. I’m with @hawkse on this one: Why even bother helping Spotify when they’ll start their 10 hour/month limit for free access soon?
¿Instead, why doesn’t Last.FM get into the on-demand music game themselves and give the people what they really want?
AHAVA Products
3 December, 13:06
Overview” once you’ve browse in the “Loved Tracks” or “Recent Tracks” playlists.
just love to play
David
3 December, 22:01
Scott/Matt, this is great news but how about providing love to the existing scrobbers that have been broken for many months now. For example, the following Mac issue has been unaddressed for far too long. http://bit.ly/twlkoK
I’d love to continue using last.fm but having difficulty justifying it much longer.
pecusita
3 December, 23:45
@couldtryharder YES! I found the love button yesterday.
@cms if you use the Spotify back button after you browsed to Loved/Recent tracks, it switches to the previous tab like Now Playing. It works if you go to either “Albums” list though.
A recommendation/request: I wish we could have access to generating playlists based on our “Top Tracks Charts”. It’d be a lot more useful than Albums from last 3 months.
Martijn
6 December, 09:57
Does not seem to work in Belgium…
MM
9 December, 03:02
Does that mean it will be possible to transfer and combine the plyklists from last.fm to spotofy and vice versa? I really love spotify focus on playlists myself since I love making them.
norz
12 December, 11:53
Very nice, but I would love to have even deeper integration: a ‘play count’ column, based on data from my Last.fm account. :)
But I’m certainly dreaming…
@MM you can transfer playlists from Last.fm to Spotify via xspf, using Playgrub then Playlistify. (NB: There might be simpler methods.)
Jesper Lindgren Hejlesen
23 December, 20:29
Think Spotify is going to be the winner of the what streamingservice is going to rule the world, do to the tons of supporting services, the possibility of developing apps, and sites like shareyourplaylist and <a href=” http://myspotify.dk/”>MySpotify</a>
cwall
27 December, 17:04
@ norz, thanks for that tip. Playlistify is AWESOME!
bgod
28 December, 14:00
Fantastic, works great! Especially for recommendations!
wctube
5 January, 20:16
just love to play..
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