In 2002, Last.fm Was the Cutting Edge of the Social Web ⇥ cybercultural.com

Richard MacManus, Cybercultural:

[Martin] Stiksel explained that the idea for Last.fm came about when the students asked themselves, “how do you look for something that you don’t know?” So in the case of music, how to discover new music when you don’t necessarily know what type of music you’re looking for? The answer, he said, was the social component.

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What both Last.fm and Audioscrobbler stumbled onto in 2002 was the collective value of user data in discovering new content — something that Amazon was also taking advantage of at this time. […]

The recommendations suggested by Last.fm have been among the best for any service I have used — music or otherwise. What I mean by that is that it often suggests things I have not listened to, it explains why I am seeing this recommendation, and it is very often right. And this is all based on data I choose to hand over.

I am a tiny bit worried about Last.fm’s future, given it is a subsidiary of CBS Interactive, now owned by Paramount Skydance. Also, it is now governed under that company’s expansive privacy policy and I have no idea what to make of that; it is so comprehensive as to be vague. I enjoyed reading this lovely history of the service, however.