The Underscore Archives

On 23/01/2008, Laura Francis <laura.k.francis at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, I tried last.fm but didnt get it so excuse me for being dense... if
> prior to this I had a last.fm account would I not have been able to hear the
> full track? whats the point of that? just trying to work out what is
> different here?

It depends on the artist/label. Some were happy for full-length tracks
to be played in the Flash player and the Last.fm software; others
limited the previews to 30s.

It works differently to Pandora in that it's people's actual listening
("scrobbling") of music that builds up their profiles and powers the
recommendations: "if you like X, the other people that like X are also
listening to Y, Z and Q".

Pandora works by looking at the music itself, and determining what's
similar based purely on that, rather than how it's listened to, and by
whom.

Tim