Last.fm announced in a blog post that they will be shutting down their on-demand streaming service. Instead, they will be linking individual songs for streaming through a variety of partners. Spotify (for everyone outside of America), MOG (for all us lowly Yanks), and Hypemachine (for everyone; hype around the globe) will now power their MP3 streams, while Last.fm will change its focus to being primarily a music recommendation service. Last.fm writes:
Consistent with how people have used Last.fm since the early days, engagement with features like user profiles and personalised radio stations has remained much higher than usage of on-demand playback. We feel strongly that we can better fulfill our core mission by instead connecting our users to services in the ecosystem that, unlike us, focus primarily on a jukebox-in-the-sky streaming experience.
That’s all fine and good, but what about my play counts? How will the world know that I still stand behind Travis Morrison’s decisions on All Y’all, and listened to it seven times this week on MOG? Luckily, Last.fm is only partnering with services that already “scrobble.” Meaning that if you stream a song off Hypemachine while logged into your Last.fm account, Hypemachine will report that play to your Last.fm account. Absolutely scrobbulous!
Last.fm is also partnering with VEVO for video streaming, which also scrobbles. And Last.fm radio will remain unchanged.
Meanwhile, adding “scrobble” to the dictionary would create a great new way to bingo in games of Scrabble. Plus they half-rhyme. C’mon, Webster. Everybody’s scrobbling these days.
• Last.fm: http://www.last.fm
