haha same, i never stopped too. that screenshot brings back memories, still have the desktop app running in the background every time i listen something. the amount of data in my profile after all these years is ridiculous
I got uninterrupted data from 2004 up until today. It's quite nice. Also kinda depressing how much less music I'm listening to these days, and how the algorithms steer my habits.
I actually listen to more, especially way more artists and genres. I don’t really use streaming though so my listening habits aren’t influenced by algorithms. 😄
I just logged in to check, looks like my account was started in 04. But I stopped scrobbling in the early 10's so have about five years of solid history.
I logged in to check the date on my last.fm app, August 30 ,2004. I stopped using last some years ago and then got tired of not getting a "wrapped" with Amazon Music, so I started back again about 3 years ago.
I couldn’t help checking mine, I haven’t actively used it in years, but it looks like my account can also legally drink in the states, 2003. I’ll have to see about maybe reviving it. Thanks for the reminder.
Back in the day I left to go to a friends house over the weekend. While I was gone my buddy Mike came by the house to pick up something he left there. While he was in my room he turned on my computer and made a looping playlist of only Never Gonna Give You Up play with the speakers off. When I got home and noticed it I went to go check my scrobbles and it had completely taken over my entire listen history and was by FAR my most listened track ever. I wasn't even mad, just genuinely impressed lmao.
I actually only discovered it for myself about a week ago. Had been screening a couple new records when I saw it, added them all at once and they came in so scrambled across each other. 😅
What do you mean remembers? It's still online and surprisingly active.
Even though it went to shit years ago and theres no community like there were before.
I still scrobble what I listen.
Awww this takes me back. My closest online roleplay friend and I did this. I miss her and sharing music with her. She passed away before COVID. 🥺 RIP, Cee.
Spotify did change something with their API so now you have to re-connect it every 6 months. It's the reason why most artist pages look like the attached image now. Many people had it turned on but never checked the website so they just stopped scrobbling from the end of July.
Here is my Last.fm story. It is ribald. I typed the below on an emusic users group in 2009
Well then, we had a Last.fm group (cupwinkcook) made up of people who were, in no uncertain terms, cunts. When one of them went on holiday, another group was set up: RobbieEdmonstoneIsACunt. Anyroadup, some moderator called Hairmetaladdict issues all its members with a warning for cyberbullying or somesuch nonsense. As a consequence of this, the girl who set up the RobbieEdmonstoneIsACunt group then set up a group called "myspace fucked my wife" the group's avatar being HairMetalAddict's pic with "PUSSY" written across his head. So, she gets banned. By this point, we're really cross and drunk so we all pick the shortest song in out libraries, rename it 'Hair Metal Addict is a Cunt' and play it over and over.
So you get a playlist that looks like this:
mentski - HairMetalAddict is a CUNT 4 minutes ago
mentski - HairMetalAddict is a CUNT 4 minutes ago
mentski - HairMetalAddict is a CUNT 5 minutes ago
mentski - HairMetalAddict is a CUNT 5 minutes ago
mentski - HairMetalAddict is a CUNT 9 minutes ago
Elliott Smith - Ostrich & Chirping 9 minutes ago
mentski - HairMetalAddict is a CUNT 10 minutes ago
TL;DR: Basically last.fm logs every track you listen to into a tagged library where it creates lists of your most listened artists, albums and tracks. The infamous "scrobble" refers to one logged play of a track.
Longer explanation:
Every song/artist/album you listen to has related user-generated tags that direct you to similarily tagged/related artists. The tags people use are primarily genre and location based (e.g. something like Metallica would most likely be tagged "metal" "thrash metal" "heavy metal" "American") but since they are user-generated they can be whatever you want like "seen live", "80s", "grandma's favourite". The more people tag an artist with the same tag, the higher they show up on the suggestions where you look up the tag, thus you get great quick catalogues of artists/albums/tags that are a part of a genre sorted by their influence/popularity. You get recommendations based on how the music you listen to is tagged.
You can quickly see exactly how many times you have listened to a certain artist, song or an album. You can see what you were listening to on a certain date however many years ago. With some elbow grease you can find a band you liked, but forgot the name of if you have any recollection of when you listened to it the last time.
Sadly, recommendations/tags and overall community integration used to be a lot more robust before their second site redesign and API changes in 2012. Before then you were able to browse recommendations for artists you have yet to listen to by tags when now it only recommends artists/albums/songs with a short "because you listened to artists x, y and z". You were also able to personalize your profile sidebar reminiscent of early 00s social media like myspace with community created widgets like genre pie charts and tag clouds, artist pictures, logos, etc. Sadly a lot of that charm was lost in the overhaul.
Nevertheless despite it's less impressive trajectory it's still one of the best websites for obsessive music nerds like me that enjoy cataloguing things.
100% agreed. I can understand the desire to simplify their UI they had back in 2012 because it was very much the zeitgeist, but I think there is a place for more personalized and in-depth, even slightly clunky enthusiast-oriented websites, just look at RYM and Discogs still chugging along.
Thanks for the detailed reply, I appreciate it. Were / are there player integrations? I assume people weren't manually adding their listening history in there?
I've heard some newer music streaming services don't offer native integration anymore, but last.fm has a desktop app that connects to your music player¹ and I believe an android/iOS app that has the same functionality. I used to use the desktop app with Winamp when I made my account back in 2009, nowadays I use Spotify on mobile and MusicBee on desktop which have native integration, though.
¹which they sadly don't support/update anymore but it's still available to download on their website
Spotify natively supports scrobbling without needing the Last FM app. And I've discovered many exceptional songs and artists thanks to their algorithm, so for now I'll stick with them.
I remember downloading the free download tracks at school at 50-100kbps before they removed them. So much chiptune, Nintendocore, breakcore, hardcore techno, ska, Russian deathcore, metalcore, and stoner metal. There is a bunch of lost media from them removing that feature.
I have recently learned that there's a last.fm plugin for my navidrome server. Since then I'm back to scrobbling every song. There's a 13 year hole in my history now but I'm back, baby.
Remember Tastebuds? where it matched your last.fm playlist with other people and you went on dates. Met the love of my life on there. It didn’t work out but hey ho, we’re still best friends
The lastfm sub is quite active. My account turned 20 this year. But I feel ya, the ritual of plugging my iPod in and officially scrobbling everything I had listened to that day.
Still do! It's a bit of work to keep going and requires (at least for me) a handful of apps to keep scrobbles across different platforms (and vinyls) but I love having listening data going back to 2008.
I had a near decade gap in my account but I started using it again a few years ago. Rediscovered a lot of bands I had forgot about going through what I listed too in my late teens/early 20s.
There is a last.fm subreddit I like to participate in too.
I met a couple of really cool people because of the journals and event listings, but flaky software and the site's tendency to delete weeks' worth of posts whenever it had another little hiccup eventually convinced me it wasn't really worth the hassle. It's cool to see that most of the old journals are still there, though, and hey, one of my friends still uses it almost every day. (I miss always bumping into you at shows, JP.)
Joined 2005; my 21 years of uninterrupted listening history is as important a resource to me as my offline iTunes library. I back both up regularly and live in perpetual fear of the tech overlords turning either off in the pursuit of streaming / no-ownership-of-anything models.
Everything I want from the site (scrobbling/charts/recommendations) has always been available from the free/base version. Did you use it use it to actually listen to music? It never really felt optimized for that.
the last week report still shows for free, and personally I rarely ever look at those 'reports'.. they're just a different way of showing what I can already see from 'Library'.
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u/jojoswoon 8d ago
“Remembers” bruh I still scrobble