Someone asked me recently why I'm not a subscriber even though I spend (way too) much time on it. I've seen the topic come by a lot on the Forum recently and thought it would be handy to place my thoughts in a place that's accessible by all.
Let me start of by telling that CrybKeeper gave me a month subscription recently so my opinion is founded on some experience when I say I never (for now) want to be a subscriber again ^_^ But I want to thank him again for the opportunity to at least try.
Recent Visitors
The biggest disadvantage for me when I would be a subscriber is that I then would have a Recent Visitors-box on my profile and it makes me totally paranoid: "why were they here? why didn't they say anything? why would they come here? where did they come from and why?" and a whole lot more.
The strange thing is that I can get stuff I do want to know, like "what's the average number of people that come by in a month, how many repeat visits, from what country, what OS?" already from statcounter.com (also very handy if you want to see the amount of traffic a group generates). Somehow I feel better about anonymous stats. Too bad it doesn't support long URLs so I would know how many people read this journal for instance (hint, hint Last.fm).
Sadly, none of these things are available through Last.fm, not even for artists.
Reply Tracker
Next, that box would replace my Reply Tracker-box that is the result of the best (IMHO) greasemonkey-script for Last.fm: I can set the number of replies, blacklist threads and how many times it updates (currently once every 60 seconds). Lightyears ahead of the Last.fm-page.
Radio vs On-request
Third, I hate radio...correction, I hate radios where I'm not the DJ. If I'm not 100% in control of what gets played I don't listen to it. None of that "you've only listened to this artist once" for me, in that regard I'm a cruel A&R-manager: I know when an artist is swine or good within 30 seconds and there are a lot more of them that I have to review.
Playlists
Fourth, the playlists are a total waste on Last.fm: maximum 200 tracks? Try 10000 tracks on Spotify with the ability to sort that playlist based by artist or track name, album, length of track, album name, date added or who added the track if it's a collaborative playlist...
Also, Last.fm? No collaborative playlists, or an option to sort those lists into (sub-)folders.
That Black spot
Fifth (but minor) point, some of the people I know on Last.fm frown on being/becoming a subscriber because of all the changes. Me subscribing is like saying that I disagree with their protesting against those changes. It's the wrong version of the Fairness Doctrine at work: if you don't hate Last.fm then you must be a filibuster. I'd like to support but I don't want the hassle that comes with that.
The strange thing is that I don't care about those changes at all but I do dislike the fact that I would be treated differently from people in other regions if I wanted to use those services. Last.fm can't help it but neither can I.
Banning artists to get a somewhat working radio
Sixth (and major) point, I hate banning artists all of the time in order to get a radio that works the way I want it: play only new artists and throw in some genres I've never listened to before in the mix. Somehow, dismissing from my recommendations is not a big issue with me for some reason.
When I tried the radio as a subscriber I hated that I had to whack it into submission before it became something of use, but only after I had banned 2K+ artists.
Even the Recsplorer became a hated thing when it started to play artists/tracks I had dismissed in the Recommendations and then only played genres I already knew. There's thousands (if not more) of genres and I want to discover them: tejano, fado, industrial, alt-country, contemporary classical and death country all came into my library because I started to look for new genres and the system now somewhat follows. Maybe if it started to use the similar tags-option and I could weight them it would be better. Here's hoping for some updates.
Self limitation
Seventh, I like to be able to judge how far you can get listening to music without paying for it for a fixed fee. It makes me be a better reviewer for my group.
Spotify
Eight, I already had a paid (unrestricted) account on Spotify, that costs more then a subscription on Last.fm. I would like to say because I want to support artists but it was mostly because of their annoying radio-ads. I have no need for mobile stuff so a Premium account would have been overkill.
The amount of obscure artists that are available there means that even when Tomahawk becomes fully functional to me (it has some issues right now), I would still use that as a source for music. There is no way I could find friends that obscure who would have those files.
Conclusion
I like the combination of a lot of music-sites in combination with Last.fm and I'm not exclusive about where I play tracks from. To me Last.fm is good for the stats, since there are no sites anymore that have that (looks at the remains of thesixtyone.com), the groups and the music community that comes from that.
gr.
Alain
PS. Sorry about that wall of text.
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