[Quick Executive summary: I have weird listening habits.]
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.