Last.fm has never had a public radio API, although we’ve tolerated third-party clients using the undocumented calls that our client uses. This is finally about to change – we’re going to make a public, documented streaming API available to everyone who has an API account.

This will block out existing apps like Songbird and Fire.fm to name a couple.

Way to go.

I don’t envy them their position of having to deal with the recording industry (to which they are closely connected via parent company CBS). I don’t expect it’s easy to run a company that gives away music when the RIAA is doing its damnedest to squash file-sharing. I do find it annoying that they’ve carved out three large populations and said, “you can play for free and we’ll just make our money off of these other countries”. I was always under the impression that giving Last.fm our music listening data via scrobbling was all the payment they required. That data’s valuable for tracking what people listen to, how often they listen to it, and I’m sure they can do all sorts of interesting statistical and probabilistic analyses on it to sell it back to the music industry. I guess that’s not the case.

About that data. Knowing that I was shipping listening information to Last.fm made me aware of my listening habits in an unusual way. I was always cognizant of the fact that my listening was being sent upstream to another entity. I was interested in increasing the number of songs I listened to. I was aware when I was listening to certain music “too frequently” and would try to curb that to a degree. I wanted my played music to be representative of my entire collection rather than a few favorite albums. This is subtle, but it changed the way I listened to my music, and not necessarily in a good way. It’s like I was listening to my collection for other people and not just myself.

What did I get out of this? I did get a few very solid musical recommendations. I sent some money to iTunes to buy albums from *stellastar, Cut/Copy, The Helio Sequence and others directly based on Last.fm’s recommendations. The social aspect never really panned-out for me though. I don’t pay attention to what my friends are listening to in any meaningful way. The discussion groups were not interesting to me. It doesn’t really feel much like a “community” in the way that Flickr and other social sites do.

To be fair, $5 per month isn’t a lot of money. I pay that for Xbox Live, but I would have to say that I get a lot more for my money on Xbox Live. Or Flickr Pro. Being able to stream low-quality music over a Flash-based player is not a good value for me considering I always have an iPod of some type close by.

So there we have it. I’m sorry we can’t be friends anymore, Last.fm. I may be back from time-to-time to check in and look up some music. Maybe I’ll take a look at Blip.fm to see what that’s like… If you’ve got a favorite music service on the web (don’t talk to me about Pandora. They don’t like Canada) that works in Canada. Drop me a note in the comments.

I’ve mentioned my enthusiasm for Last.fm recently. It’s an interesting service whose value isn’t immediately obvious when you first look at it. It plays music? You think. Why would I want to tell them what I’m listening to? You ask. Aren’t I just giving them information for nothing? You wonder.

The value becomes apparent when Last.fm begins to get to know you. I woke up Thursday morning with 4900 plays on my profile, all from iTunes or my iPod. I figured this was going to be the day I cracked 5000 so, to make it interesting, I connected to the Recommended station through the desktop software and started listening. There were a few skipped tracks in there, but amazingly, I came away with 89 tracks that I did not hate. That is a pretty impressive hit rate. You can see the playlist of recommendations but may need to be a subscriber to view the contents, which kind of sucks, but I guess there are limits to how much sharing you can get away with for free. In any case, here are a few of my favorites:

Fluke: A trio of electronic musicians from the 80s, their career spans over 20 years. Similar to The Crystal Method, Junkie XL or Underworld, the tracks I heard were interesting and had some depth to them.

Calla: an experimental, post-rock band with elements of (or inspiration for) I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness, Arab Strap or Blonde Redhead, they struck me as dark, noisy and worth digging deeper into.

stellastarr*: an American indie band based out of New York City. Comparisons to Interpol, The Stills and the Dears abound.

Elefant: A relatively new band in the vein of Interpol and stellastarr*. I liked what I heard.

It’s hard enough to find new bands without trusted recommendations. Having a system that can recommend music you’ll like with a fair degree of success is definitely cool.

Here’s the playlist:
1. The Walkabouts – Devil in the Details 4:25
2. Fluke – Bermuda 7:55
3. Swervedriver – Sci-Flyer 5:13
4. Elefant – Love 4:01
5. The Constantines – Million Star Hotel 4:41
6. Galaxie 500 – Blue Thunder 3:49
7. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Spread Your Love 3:44
8. Jason Collett – These Are the Days 3:00
9. Shriekback – Lined Up 4:05
10. stellastarr* – Somewhere Across Forever 3:40
11. A Place to Bury Strangers – To Fix The Gash In Your Head 3:48
12. Swervedriver – Duel 6:20
13. XTC – Making Plans for Nigel 4:14
14. Fluke – Snapshot 4:08
15. Adorable – Still Life 2:38
16. The Constantines – Time Can Be Overcome 5:43
17. The Watchmen – Any Day Now 4:39
18. The Psychedelic Furs – Pretty in Pink 3:56
19. Cuff the Duke – Take My Money And Run 2:54
20. Gang of Four – Glass 2:28
21. Memphis – Into The Wild 3:27
22. Pavement – Baptist Blacktick 2:02
23. The Diableros – Olympic Island 4:07
24. stellastarr* – In the Walls 3:48
25. Amy Millan – Come Home Loaded Roadie 3:57
26. Moist – I’m Going To Judo Chop Your Boyfriend 6:12
27. Belly – Pressure 4:35
28. The Wrens – Nightswimming full track 4:30
29. IMA Robot – Disconnect 3:30
30. The Unicorns – The Unicorns: 2014 (demo version) 3:35
31. Delays – We Together Make A City (Love Made Visible) (Torchteam Remix) 5:01
32. The Stranglers – Golden Brown 3:25
33. Nada Surf – Concrete Bed 2:23
34. Big Audio Dynamite – Rush 4:15
35. Calla – Mayzelle 3:13
36. Swervedriver – Rave Down 5:06
37. Pavement – Shoot the Singer 3:15
38. Swirlies – Pancake 3:14
39. The Telescopes – You Set My Soul 4:00
40. Airiel – Stratosphere 5:51
41. Enon – In This City 4:00
42. Modwheelmood – MHz 4:42
43. Sufjan Stevens – Ring Them Bells 6:20
44. BT – The Internal Locus 10:25
45. Ochre – Oneirist full track 2:08
46. Ochre – Sosacharo 6:39
47. The Cinematics – A Strange Education 5:24
48. Lilys – Day Of The Monkey 3:48
49. Architecture in Helsinki – Do the Whirlwind 4:38
50. M. Ward – O Lazy Days full track 3:19
51. Calla – Love Of Ivah 5:15
52. Jesus Jones – International Bright Young Thing 3:11
53. Les Savy Fav – The Year Before The Year 2000 4:10
54. Wisp – 1stop 2:05
55. Simple Minds – Don’t You (Forget About Me) 4:19
56. Plaid – Light Rain 3:49
57. Nada Surf – See These Bones 5:10
58. Abfahrt Hinwil – Tech7 3:56
59. Bedhead – Beheaded full track 4:43
60. Secede – Born in a Tropical Swamp 9:26
61. The Flashbulb – Lawn Wake IX 2:35
62. The Wrens – Destruction/Drawn 1:29
63. Guided by Voices – Hold on Hope 3:33
64. Wisp – Congratulations 4:15
65. Starflyer 59 – Underneath 4:35
66. The Telescopes – Flying 2:53
67. Simple Minds – Alive and Kicking 5:26
68. Superchunk – Pink Clouds 3:23
69. Julian Cope – Sunspots 5:15
70. Working For A Nuclear Free City – Troubled Son 2:44
71. The Divine Comedy – Diva Lady 4:16
72. Plaid – Squance 5:00
73. Ester Drang – Proustian Moments full track 4:05
74. Nada Surf – Blankest Year 2:12
75. Lloyd Cole and the Commotions – Rattlesnakes 3:26
76. Chris Clark – Bricks 2:40
77. Dinosaur Jr. – Freak Scene 3:36
78. Bola – Versivo 7:51
79. The Dismemberment Plan – A Life of Possibilities 4:33
80. Loop – Spinning 6:29
81. Lloyd Cole – Woman In A Bar 3:36
82. Proem – Invisible for All 3:51
83. Pretty Girls Make Graves – Bring It on Golden Pond 2:57
84. Jega – Phlax 3:51
85. Venetian Snares – Hajnal 7:44
86. The Music – Welcome to the North 5:09
87. Rogue Wave – Lake Michigan 3:48
88. Clark – Dew on the Mouth 1:05
89. Pop Will Eat Itself – Ich Bin Ein Auslander (Loved track) 4:00

PS, not a single member of Coldplay was harmed in the writing of this blog post.