Last FM tries something else, hopes it doesn't smell desperate

Last FM hasn't exactly been thriving in the last couple of years, what with Spotify basically doing what it did, but much better. (Because, face it, if you want to hear the Dum Dum Girls, you want to hear the Dum Dum Girls, not a bunch of bands that other people who wanted to hear the Dum Dum Girls listened to when they weren't able to listen to the band they wanted to hear.)

But now, Last FM have revived their player. They've got a question to ask:

“Ever wondered what radio would be like with video?"

Well, no, because (i) that'd be MTV and (ii) that wouldn't be radio.

It's like asking 'ever wondered what a car would be like with two floors, eighty seats and a timetable which requires it stop every so often to pick up passengers', and hoping that people won't notice what used to be a car is now a bus.

So the player - or at least the beta version - is now throwing out YouTube videos instead of music streams. MusicAlly reframes the question in a more honest way:

Although from a business perspective, it’s more about wondering what a personal radio service would be like with YouTube absorbing the licensing costs.

In the UK, Last FM remains twice as popular as MySpace, but... well, that's not saying very much, is it? It's also more popular than kidney stones. But there's hope, reckons MusicAlly:

Plenty of work to do for a comeback, then, but it’s worth noting that if Last.fm was launching in its current form today, as a YouTube-scraping personal radio service with big-data features in the background, it’d be all over the tech blogs as the Next Big Digital Thing.

Yes, because if there's one thing YouTube is lacking, it's access to a massive data-crunching operation crammed with detail about people's tastes and behaviour. If you ignore it being part of Google, obviously. If you factor that in, it's not entirely clear what Last FM might have to bring that's new.

Not the end, but perhaps the first of the Last.FM

For the time being, in the UK, Last FM on the web remains free, but the service has announced it is going to start charging for mobile.

Now, I like Last.FM, but charging for a service where you can't control what track you're going to hear, or even what band is coming next?

Last FM's Matthew Hawn even claims they don't really need the money:

"We think that the best experience is ad-free," said Mr Hawn, Last.fm's head of product.

"It's not that we're losing buckets of money on our service... but we're trying to make rational decisions about our business model."

If Last FM really believes the best experience is ad-free, then wouldn't the "rational decision" be to launch a paid-for ad-free version alongside the free, ad-supported edition?

Last FM is pretty good for a freebie; but surely if you just want songs you might well like coming at you in a random order, you've got the radio?

Lost FM: Last FM does less

It's not quite as apocalyptic as it sounds as first:

Last.fm is retiring a feature whereby users could play any full song they like, and is instead outsourcing the feature to a range of third-party, cloud-based music services.

You can still listen to music through Last FM: it's just you can only do so now through its clunky random radio service.

So it's not quite Last FM falls silent; and pointing listeners to hear a specific track on a different service isn't a bad idea. Kind of implies that they're struggling to make enough money to cover the bandwidth costs of people having a quick, specific listen, though.

Easter track smackdown: Round five - The Field Mice

The Field Mice. Springing from the at-least-for-a-while seven inch fetishists at Sarah Records, some of the back catalogue has moved into CD form - so has it completed the journey and popped up online?

For our next round, can we find September's Not So Far Away online?

Spotify:
Oh, Spotify. You poor, poor beast. Not only does it boast a single Field Mice track (although rather more from the Toxic Field Mice, who sadly aren't an evil alterego band), but the album it comes from, Sarah Records compilation Electric Common has got the names of the songwriters where the title tracks should be. This is what a fail sounds like. Minus one.

Last FM:
Eleven pages of Field Mice tracks, half of which have had a single scrobble. CBS might want to invest some money in finding ways to tidying up their data, mightn't they? Anyway, just four full tracks, and not even a thirty second burst of September's Not So Far Away. Zero points.

iTunes:
Two (count 'em) identical versions of the song to choose from. But because the software is buggering about with an update, it's going to lose a point. Nine.

we7:
Did you mean the Field Mob?

No.

Zero.

YouTube:
The Field Mice might be a difficult ask for YouTube - the didn't come from a label which invested heavily in promotional clips; and while their fans were obsessive, coming before iMovie and Windows Movie File Manipulation Tool, there's not likely to be many home-made videos... is there?

No! Here it is - with an admission that "the copyright is owned by artists & corresponding record companies" - and perhaps a less-than-inventive visual:



Ten points. Minus one, to be given to the artists, and one, to be given to corresponding record companies.

Amazon:
Amazon has a surprising amount of Field Mice mp3s, including September's Not So Far Away. Ten points.

Imeem:
Having been a bit of a let-down so far, Imeem comes up with the goods this time, thanks to someone who's uploaded the whole of Field Mice compilation Where'd You Learn To Kiss That Way. And they've also got My Little Airport's song When I Listen To The Field Mice, too. Eleven points.

eMusic:
If eMusic's claims to be the kings of the indie mp3 are to have any value, they're going to have to score here. And they do: besides the compilation, they've also got other gems from the Field Mice's work. Twelve points.

So, let's have a look at the old score board:

Amazon - 35
iTunes - 24
YouTube - 18
Last FM - 12
Imeem - 12
we7 - 09
Spotify - 09
eMusic - 08
Sweeping The Nation - 0.5
The Internet As A Whole - -10

We'll be back later this evening with the greatest band ever to hail from the home of Oliver Cromwell.