Last.fm Beta - My Impressions

Posted by Pallab on 3 July, 2008

10 Comments

This item was filled under [ Web 2.0 ]

Last.fm - the social music website has been testing a new revamped interface for quite some time. Until now it was limited only to beta testers. Yesterday, they started rolling out the new interface to a normal last.fm members. After, playing around with it for more than a day I must say, I am impressed.

The interface has been revamped. It’s cleaner and better organised thatn before. But to me it just looks a bit too bland and simplistic. The Top Artists and Top Tracks chart is now tabbed and only displays the top 10 results by default. You can choose to see charts for Last 7 days/3 months/6 months/12 months/all time. The best thing is that all the charts are updated in real time! The reccomendation engine seems to have improved, and now every artist’s page features a list of similar artists.

Last.fm has clearly put a lot of emphasis on improving the social aspects. An enhanced music player with your playlist has replaced the shoutbox in the top right corner and the shoutbox has been put in main body of the page making it more prominent. Sharing music with your friends is now easier than ever before. Activity Feed similar to popular social networking websites like Facebook has also been added.

But, the most noticeable addition is the Media Library. This is somewhat similar to your local media library. Everything that you play gets listed in the media library. You can also add artists to your library manually. You can browse through your and other user’s library, view artist information, play songs or get recommendations on similar artists.

Here are some screenshots :

The Main Userpage

Media Library

What are your thoughts on the new interface? Does it work for you or is it too bland?

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10 Comments

At 2008.07.04 13:13, Manan said:

Ah! This looks good, simpler & elegant, a lot less cluterred.

[Reply]
At 2008.07.07 09:53, ameo said:

i’ve been a fan of it for some time but now i only listen to locally stored music on my HD some sort of bandwidth saving

[Reply]
At 2008.07.08 15:43, Goobi said:

I’ve always wondered whether or not to sign up for this last.fm thing. I just might…

[Reply]
- At 2008.07.08 17:10, Pallab said:
  
  It’s a great place for any music lover. And being the musicaholic that you are, you would njoy last.fm.
  
  [Reply]
- At 2008.07.09 15:08, Sree said:
  
  Yeah goobi, it surely helps a lot. I’ve liked so many of the recommended music.
  
  @ Pally, when the hell is it gonna come out of beta man?
  
  [Reply]
At 2008.07.09 09:57, Lavayn said:

i love last.fm ive been useing it for months now (http://www.last.fm/user/lavayn/) i had no idea they were even changeing the interface around. The best part is probably the tabbed charts that saves so much space

[Reply]
At 2008.07.10 03:22, cewood said:

I think the redesign looks fine, its cleaned up the interface reducing clutter and simplifying things somewhat… although this is purely aesthetics based as I am not on the beta list atm

Anyone know how I can get on it?

[Reply]
At 2008.07.14 10:34, al said:

it is a nice web site it learns me a lot.

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At 2008.07.18 07:26, Asif said:

Nice, We both have same heading for our blogs. Check it out.

[Reply]
At 2008.07.19 04:22, Ron said:

I know they put a tremendous amount of effort into the design. Who is last.fm’s main competitors besides pandora and even your youtube-like video sites?? Look at this for tips to build a business from scratch.. http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2

[Reply]